The Importance Of E-Commerce

The Internet has grown in popularity and so has electronic commerce (e-commerce). In e-commerce, a consumer exchanges money for products or services via the Internet or, more simply stated, e-commerce occurs when a customer purchases something off of the Internet. After a consumer browses a website and makes a purchase decision, there is a process which accepts their order; the software that manages this process is known as a shopping cart (sometimes referred to as a shopping basket or shopping bag). In order to ensure that their company’s e-commerce efforts are a success, an e-commerce business manager must educate themselves on each of the elements that make up their infrastructure– this includes the shopping cart. A quick perusal of the …show more content…
In e-commerce, this statement rings especially true because unlike a brick and mortar store a customer cannot just simply pick the product up and examine it from all angles. According to a survey of on-line shoppers, consumers are 650 percent more likely to engage with the website when a product image is presented than ones that include text only posts (Kim, 2016). A product’s image is what a consumer will first see and hopefully, for the business, it will not be the last thing they will see. If the picture is not up to par because it is too small, too blurry, too dark, or any other unacceptable reason, the customer will simply choose to shop elsewhere. For this reason, having the ability to provide clear and easy to view product images is an essential shopping cart feature when trying to compete for and attract …show more content…
However, compared to brick and mortar store shoppers, on-line shoppers (by just a click of their mouse) can more easily abandon their shopping cart. According to a seven-year checkout study conducted by Baymard Institute, close to 70 percent of all online shoppers are abandoning their shopping cart (34,2016). Because a well-planned check out experience can boost sales, developing an efficient and effective check out process is a major concern for e-commerce businesses. Two checkout options are available to online merchants: Single-page and multi-page. A single-page checkout includes all billing and shipping forms on the same page, thus making the check out process quicker, creates an interactive checkout experience, and is simpler to navigate. A multi-page checkout process is used when the check out process is more complex. Examples of more complex orders include gift orders with different billing and shipping information; bulk orders with multiple products; special orders that require special shipping/delivery/addressing/etc.; and when using third party payment processors such as PayPal. When considering which shopping cart software to use, business managers need to have considered, which check out process will fit their business needs to ensure their needs will be