Edit WIKI Page - E-Commerce Software

=Description= [http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/E-Commerce-Software E-commerce applications] are [http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/Content-Management-Server content management systems] used to manage the distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over the Internet. Besides some usual content management features (like pages and menus creation, multi-language, search, newsletters, SEO tools) it includes special features too like: gifts and coupons, loyalty and affiliates programs, product reviews, wish lists, shipping features, taxes by state or country, payment support. =E-payment types= One of the main features of e-commerce applications is the ability to accept a form of electronic payment: *'''Credit Cards and Smart Cards''': Credit cards VISA, American Express, and MasterCard are the most used method of payment over the internet. Smartcards are just like credit cards, having a 8-bit microprocessor and using electronic cash. *'''Financial Cyber-mediaries''': Companies like PayPal enable financial transactions over the internet *'''Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP)''': EBPP systems send bills from service providers to individual consumers via the internet, instead of receiving a bill through the mail. =Forms of E-commerce= 1. '''Retail:''' * online goods and services (like streaming media, e-books, software) * retail product sales (online catalogs, online used car shopping, online pharmacy * retail services (e-banking, online food ordering, online flower delivery, online DVD rental) * Marketplace services (online advertising, price comparison services, online wallets) 2. '''Business to Business, business to government and government to business services and / or products''' 3. '''Government to citizen sales and services''' =History= * in the late 1970s - technologies like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) are introduced allowing the electronically sending of purchase orders and invoices. * in the 1980s - the acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking are considered forms of e-commerce. * 1994: <div style="margin-left:30px;"> <ul><li> Netscape released the Navigator browser (named Mozilla). </li> <li>Pizza Hut offered pizza ordering on its Web page.</li> <li>The first online bank opened.</li> <li>There were some attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online.</li> <li>"Adult" materials were also commercially available.</li> <li>in late 1994 Netscape 1.0 introduced SSL encryption that made transactions secure.</li></ul> </div> * 1995: <div style="margin-left:30px;"> <ul><li> Amazon.com was launched</li> <li>Radio HK and Netradio started broadcasting (the first online-only radio stations)</li> <li>Dell and Cisco started to use the Internet for commercial transactions more and more</li> <li>Pierre Omidyar founded eBay as AuctionWeb</li></ul> </div> * 1998 - The electronic postal stamps are introduced to be purchased and downloaded for printing over the internet * 1999 - The business.com was sold for $7.5 mil * 2000 - The dot-com bust * 2003 - Amazon.com had the first full-year with profit =Numbers, statistics and surveys= [[Image: AnaP/Picture-2.png]] The ethnicity of online buyers by the number of purchase per year (2004). [[Image: AnaP/Picture-3.png]] In 2004, the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce found that online sales rang in $15.5 billion — representing a 28.1 percent increase over Q1 2003's $12.1 billion. [[Image: AnaP/Picture-4.png]] =Features= Features include some usual content management ones and some special for e-commerce application, like: * '''Gift certificates''' - A gift certificate will typically give the purchaser a code which they can give as a gift which can be used towards purchases. Some shopping carts may have an option to send the gift certificate directly to the recipient. * '''Loyalty program''' - This is some sort of program which offers a reward to customers who make multiple or large purchases. For example, you may set it up so that customers who purchase from you more than 5 times automatically get a 10% discount on their 6th visit, or are sent a $20 gift certificate. There are many different options, so if this is an important feature make sure the shopping cart you are considering supports the variation of features you want. * '''Email merchant on order''' - There is an option for the merchant to receive an email when an order is placed. * '''Affiliates program''' - Affiliates are people who either sell your goods from their site, or direct customers to your site, in exchange for a percentage of a sale. For many businesses, it’s a great way to generate new customers. * '''Product reviews''' - This allow your customers to review the products you are selling. It’s common for product review features to allow you to moderate the reviews to block obscene comments, etc. * '''Discount coupons''' - This allows the merchant to generate coupons for promotional purposes. There is a wide range of features, such as percentage off discounts, fixed amount discounts, discounts only applied to particular products, etc. It is often done with a promotional code. If this is an important feature to you, check the shopping cart has the specific features you want. * '''Wish list''' - This allows customers to create a wish list. It’s great for birthdays, weddings, or just for fun. Typically a customer will send a wish list to their friends of family, and in the process, generate free publicity for you. * '''Price/Weight range shipping options''' - This allows the merchant to set shipping costs based on the value or weight of the items ordered. There’s many variations, so please investigate if you have a specific requirement. * '''UPS/USPS/Fedex/Canada Post lookup''' - These shippers offer a live lookup service which allows you to calculate shipping costs on the fly based on the customer order. * '''Tax by country / state''' - Allows you to calculate tax appropriate to the customers country / state. * '''Payment gateways''' - Includes built in support for some of the following gateways: Paypal, Authorize.net, Verisign, Worldpay, SecureTrading and Others. This allows you to accept credit cards via these gateways with little to no additional work. Note there are hundreds of payment gateways, we have just categorised the most popular ones. * '''Non-CC payment options''' - Offers support for other forms of payment. This could include manual payments (such as a money order in the mail), or a credit card order on the phone, which the merchant then manually enters as an order. * '''Sales reports''' - Reports on sales are available. This could range from a simple orders list to more sophisticated reports such as top selling items, etc. * '''Low Stock reports''' - A report listing items which are low in stock. You would typically define what you mean by low stock. For example, a top selling item, 20 items might be low stock, but for a slower item, 1 item might be low stock. Check whether low stock is defined site wide or per product if that’s important to you. * '''Inventory''' - Some shopping carts will manage your inventory for you, while some expect you to manage it yourself. Having the shop manage the inventory may not be desirable if you are also selling through a physical shop and your sales systems are not integrated. =Top software= {|class='wikitable' align=left |- |[[Image: Luciana/gold_cup_d.bmp]] | '''[http://www.iterating.com/products/osCommerce#datasheet osCommerce]''' - is one of the most used open source shopping cart worldwide. Being used by a large number of users the community creates many ad-ons and it's easy to find answers for your questions for free on the community forums. osCommerce is used currently for over 12500 live stores, it has over 4300 add-ons and its community includes over 155000 members (november 2007). |} {|class='wikitable' align=left |- |[[Image: Luciana/silver_cup_d.bmp]] | '''[http://www.iterating.com/products/Fortune3-E-Commerce-Wizard#datasheet Fortune3 E-Commerce Wizard]''' - uses a Windows program to manage it (as opposed to most carts which use a web interface), so it doesn't needs internet connection for building a store and it saves the data both online and on the PC. It's a comprehensive package that is focused on search engine optimization. It is used both for creating retail (Business to consumer) and wholesale (business to business) stores. Fortune3 costs US $489. |} Other important solutions are: * [http://www.iterating.com/products/ATG-Commerce#datasheet ATG Commerce] - commercial (you have to call for the price), downloadable * [http://www.iterating.com/products/Shopsite-Pro#datasheet Shopsite Pro] - commercial ($75), downladable * [http://www.iterating.com/products/Neogia#datasheet Neogia] - open source (free, but 250 euros for training), downloadable * [http://www.iterating.com/products/Zen-Cart-E-Commerce-Shopping-Cart#datasheet Zen Cart] - open source ($44,95), downloadable * [http://www.iterating.com/products/AspDotNetStorefront#datasheet AspDotNetStorefront] - Commercial ($399, - Standard, $599 - Pro, $899 - ML), downloadable =How to choose= On the e-commerce market there are many applications offering all the main features of a shopping cart, but it depends on your needs to get the application you need. If you represent a '''big company''', you probably can afford to spend more than $1000 for a e-commerce solution and you can't afford to risk anything, especially in the security area. The best solutions for you can be: * '''commercial downloadable applications''': you'll get fast and exact support directly form the vendor (but you should pay attention, this support may extra-cost you). One minus for this option is that usually you can't access the code and if you need to change something you have to contact the vendor. Some good solutions are [http://www.iterating.com/products/Fortune3-E-Commerce-Wizard#datasheet Fortune3 E-Commerce Wizard] and [http://www.iterating.com/products/AspDotNetStorefront#datasheet AspDotNetStorefront] * '''commercial services''': generally it offers the most complete solution and usually the price is payed per month or year and it includes updates and the support needed. One of the best choices from this point of view is [http://www.iterating.com/products/Ekklesia-360#datasheet Ekklesia 360] For small companies or individual users that want to create '''small or medium shopping cart''' website with a low budget, almost every time the open source solutions are the best choice. The biggest advantage is that most of the open source software has big communities testing them, reporting bugs and creating plugins and modules and, also, it's easy to get support online on forums and mailing lists. The minus is that usually it requires strong programming knowledges to set it up and to make it look as you want. The best solutions from this point of view are: [http://www.iterating.com/products/osCommerce#datasheet osCommerce], [http://www.iterating.com/products/Neogia#datasheet Neogia] and [http://www.iterating.com/products/Zen-Cart-E-Commerce-Shopping-Cart#datasheet Zen Cart]. =Events= * IADIS International Conference e-Commerce - [http://www.ecommerce-conf.org/] * Collaborative Electronic Commerce Technology and Research - 10th Aniversary- [http://www.collecter2007.unisa.edu.au/] * The Wuhan International Conference on E-Business - [http://www.whiceb.com/] * PayPal Developer Day [https://www.paypal-promo.com/developer/index.html] * Amazon Web Services(AWS) Enthusiasts' informal Meet with AWS Evangalist - [http://awschennai.pbwiki.com/] * Training: Web Measurement and Analytics - London Seminar - [http://www.e-consultancy.com/knowledge/events/1221/web-measurement-and-analytics--london-seminar.html] =Communities= * Practical eCommerce Community Forum - [http://www.practicalecommerce.com/community] * Shopping Cart Reviews Forums - [http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/forums] * eCartReviews Forums - [http://www.ecartreviews.com/forums] =See also= # Comparison of e-commerce applications - [http://www.iterating.com/productclasses/E-Commerce-Software/comparisonmatrix] # About Electronic commerce on Wikipedia - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce] # E-commerce Times publication - [http://www.ecommercetimes.com] # Practical eCommerce - [http://www.practicalecommerce.com] # Shopping Cart Reviews - [http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com] # Australian eCommerce Network (seminars, services and resources) - [http://www.aecn.org] # eCommerce Shopping Cart Solution Reviews - [http://www.ecartreviews.com] # "How E-commerce Works" article on HowStuffWorks - [http://communication.howstuffworks.com/ecommerce.htm] # Practical eCommerce - [http://www.practicalecommerce.com] # ePaynews - [http://www.epaynews.com] # eCommerce Info Center - [http://www.ecominfocenter.com]

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