Ecommerce
Ecommerce is the term that is used to describe the elements of a company that undertakes business transactions with other people via the Internet. So, if a company uses their website to market and sell their products and/or services to the customer then they have an ecommerce site.
In most cases (but not all) this will involve having an area of the website where a customer can buy products or services. This is often referred to as an online store. So, if a customer wants to buy a product or service online then they simply have to:
1. Go to a website to find what they want.
2. Highlight what they want to buy and then click to send it to their shopping basket.
3. When they are done shopping they then go to their shopping basket and go through the ‘check out’ process where they will make payment for their purchase(s).
There are various ways to run an ecommerce facility. Some companies will set up their ecommerce site to be able to take and process payments themselves in house. Payment options here may be based on a template solution or the company may design their own payment pages. As an alternative many smaller sites will have full ordering functionality but will then arrange to have payment made via a stand alone payment processing service such as PayPal.