Within the past decade, e-commerce has come to claim an ever larger part of our lives. For many of us, shopping for a birthday or anniversary gift no longer involves driving to a mall miles away and fighting the crowds. Instead, they just go to their laptops and shop to their heart’s content.
None of this would be made possible without e-commerce (electronic commerce). Below are five of the amazing technologies that will make your Christmas shopping a whole lot easier from here on out.
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)
EFT is simply the process by which funds are transferred from a customer’s bank account to a business entity. When a customer makes a purchase on a business’ website, they can choose to have the purchase price taken from their bank account as opposed to a credit or debit card. Once the EFT process has been started on the business’ website, the funds will be taken from the customer’s bank account a few days later.
Internet Marketing
Internet marketing consists of advertising practices done by businesses online. Internet marketing can be anything from an online catalog and blog to Facebook pages, email newsletters and pay-per-click ads. In general, Internet marketing is very broad and is comprised of anything a business does online to attract more customers.
In the past few years, Internet marketing has expanded to include technologies involving search engine mechanisms. In this vein, practices such as search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and banner ads are examined for their rates of efficacy.
Online Transaction Processing
This is the process by which payments are collected via debit and credit cards and electronic funds transfer (EFT), which happens when a customer authorizes an online merchant to take the purchase price of items out of a customer’s bank account. Companies such as advantagecapitalfunds.com will even give online merchants an advance on future credit card orders, which allows the business of e-commerce to operate smoothly.
Inventory Management Systems
Simply put, inventory management systems are computer based systems that allows companies to keep track of product orders, the amount of available stock, online website sales and subsequent deliveries of said products to the homes of customers. Inventory management systems have improved to the point where the journey from entering your credit card information to home delivery takes, on average, about 2-3 days.
Automated Data Collection Systems
Online retail businesses use automated data collection systems that allows them to gather information about prospective and current customers. This information allows online businesses to figure out the buying, browsing and online search habits of customers, which businesses then use to tailor individualized advertising to prospective consumers.
If it wasn’t for the advances in e-commerce technology, we would be fighting the mall masses during the holidays and wasting gas. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with malls, but e-commerce can be a more than viable option when you want to take a break from the labor of shopping for clothes, gifts and home furnishings. Thanks to its rapidly evolving technology, shopping from home is easier than ever.
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