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What is Electronic Commerce?
Simply
put, it is doing business (buying & selling of all products/services)
on the Internet.
From ordering food on the Internet to buying software, to
books cars to everything you can think of is possible with
e-commerce. This allows selling to an end - user and facilitates
business-to-business dealings between companies. The World
Wide Web or the Internet is the backbone of the system. It
is a network of computers that allows information to flow
from one end to another, irrespective of geographic boundaries.
With all its advantages, Electronic Commerce is the current
trend of doing business and is gaining immense acceptability
across the world. Put simply, if you're not accepting credit
cards in your business, you are losing customers
All over the world, corporate are successfully using this
new way of doing business. Even in India companies ranging
from VSNL, Mantra Online, Rediff, many more are now using
this to mark their presence in the global supermarket. For
example, a company like Dell Computers sells 3 million dollars
worth of products every single day and Disney Online has equaled
a sales volume of five of its largest retail stores. According
to Forrester Research Inc., EC will reach about 2.3 trillion
dollars by 2003 and this trend will obviously reflect in countries
like India whose electronic business is estimated to be at
Rs. 5000 billion by 2005 (IMRB).
Shouldn't you be there too? We become a medium for you.
Benefits of E-Commerce / online payments?
All companies want to expand their businesses. The conventional
method of doing so is by opening sales outlets / branch offices
or establishing a dealer network. By opening these outlets
the company can aim to cater a group of people in that specific
location. But the problem is that in spite of the cost these
outlets can only cater to the market within a maximum of 15-20
Kms radius. Now, considering the size of our country, you
can imagine the volume of the unutilized market potential.
Whereas apart from opening these outlets, if the company was
to have a commercial presence (not a brochure or a static
information site) on the internet they would be able to cater
to anyone who has a internet connection irrespective of his
/ her physical location. This virtually means that for a fraction
of a cost as compared to the physical outlet a much larger
portion of this market potential can be tapped.
Apart from this, the companies that are already catering to
their customers through mail orders or booking orders through
the Internet have a major setback in the form of bogus or
fake orders, as there is a certain amount cost / time involved
in processing these orders. This could be avoided if they
could collect some payment from the customer, this means they
require payment collection center on the customers' location,
which unfortunately is not possible.
Credit cards encourage impulse purchasing & we finally
have an e-commerce payment gateway functional in India that
enables you to have an online storefront / payment collection
center on the Internet, this virtually means having a presence
on every Internet user's screen. This would also be your entrance
into the global supermarket of the future at virtually no
cost, which is not limited by any of the geographical limitations
that a physical outlet would have in terms of its spread and
reach. Also this global supermarket is open for 24 hours and
365 days a year.
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