E-commerce, a form of trading using internet as the medium, began its maiden journey from 1994 when a CD was sold on the internet by Net Market (as per a research done by Verisign). From that time onwards, there was no looking back. As of now E-commerce statistics say that, online retail sales in dollar terms occupy 2.1% percent of the total sales. If this percentage is taken into consideration, e-commerce has a long to way to go before it occupies a respectable chunk of online sales.
E-commerce involves both sale of products and services.
Sale of products is sale of tangible objects and sale of services includes online ticket bookings, online banking etc.
The progress of e-commerce revolves around two most vital factors.
(1) The customer has to get the same amount of satisfaction which he gets when he shops personally. He should be guaranteed about the quality of the product or service. If he is not satisfied about the promised quality, then channels of redress should exist.
The quality of the product/service offered depends upon the integrity of the seller. In many online trading websites like eBay, seller grading system has been introduced. This grading system helps the buyer to select the right seller. There are facilities for arbitration in case of any dispute.
This sort of grading system for sellers has to be introduced on an universal basis for all online traders.
Personally, being a web designer, I happened to purchase some web templates from an online trader. When I received the templates I was taken aback because all the templates have the same design with a slight color change.
(2) Security of the online transaction.
This is the most vital point in ecommerce. Customer Information privacy has to be maintained by online traders. Currently users are required to fill up all their payment details (like credit card numbers and expiry date etc) every time they register with a trader. So the customer information is at the hands of many traders. Instead of the decentralized maintenance of customer’s payment database, the customer’s database can be centralized, to be used by authorized traders in case of a transaction.
This system can explained further in this fashion:
Customer A has a credit card with Bank B. Normally when Customer A purchases a product or a service from traders D, E, F he has to provide his credit card details to all the traders. This might cause security breach at any point or from any trader. In order to avoid the security breach, the database should stay with the bank and when the customer wants to purchase a product from any specific trader, he will log in to the website of his bank and authorize the bank through another login process to approve the transaction to a trader.
The advantage of the above method is that the trader will not have any access to customer’s financial instrument (credit card) details but can get payment from the customer’s bank for the purchase of product or service.
Same sort of secuirty system can be divised for other digital currencies.
As of now one of the security steps in vogue is that of HSBC Bank which has issued security devices to its online banking customers. This security device generates random numbers every time, which have to be typed by the customer along with the username and password, before accessing his/her account.
So if any one, by design or by default gets access to the username and password of the customer, he cannot proceed further without the random number generating device.
E-commerce has a come a long way in the past decade and has much more long way to go in the time to come. Quality and security assured, E-commerce will definitely prosper as the main advantage is the ease of use.
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Thursday 26 April 2007
E-commerce, unending journey from 1994
E-commerce, a form of trading using internet as the medium, began its maiden journey from 1994 when a CD was sold on the internet by Net Market (as per a research done by Verisign). From that time onwards, there was no looking back. As of now E-commerce statistics say that, online retail sales in dollar terms occupy 2.1% percent of the total sales. If this percentage is taken into consideration, e-commerce has a long to way to go before it occupies a respectable chunk of online sales.
E-commerce involves both sale of products and services.
Sale of products is sale of tangible objects and sale of services includes online ticket bookings, online banking etc.
The progress of e-commerce revolves around two most vital factors.
(1) The customer has to get the same amount of satisfaction which he gets when he shops personally. He should be guaranteed about the quality of the product or service. If he is not satisfied about the promised quality, then channels of redress should exist.
The quality of the product/service offered depends upon the integrity of the seller. In many online trading websites like eBay, seller grading system has been introduced. This grading system helps the buyer to select the right seller. There are facilities for arbitration in case of any dispute.
This sort of grading system for sellers has to be introduced on an universal basis for all online traders.
Personally, being a web designer, I happened to purchase some web templates from an online trader. When I received the templates I was taken aback because all the templates have the same design with a slight color change.
(2) Security of the online transaction.
This is the most vital point in ecommerce. Customer Information privacy has to be maintained by online traders. Currently users are required to fill up all their payment details (like credit card numbers and expiry date etc) every time they register with a trader. So the customer information is at the hands of many traders. Instead of the decentralized maintenance of customer’s payment database, the customer’s database can be centralized, to be used by authorized traders in case of a transaction.
This system can explained further in this fashion:
Customer A has a credit card with Bank B. Normally when Customer A purchases a product or a service from traders D, E, F he has to provide his credit card details to all the traders. This might cause security breach at any point or from any trader. In order to avoid the security breach, the database should stay with the bank and when the customer wants to purchase a product from any specific trader, he will log in to the website of his bank and authorize the bank through another login process to approve the transaction to a trader.
The advantage of the above method is that the trader will not have any access to customer’s financial instrument (credit card) details but can get payment from the customer’s bank for the purchase of product or service.
Same sort of secuirty system can be divised for other digital currencies.
As of now one of the security steps in vogue is that of HSBC Bank which has issued security devices to its online banking customers. This security device generates random numbers every time, which have to be typed by the customer along with the username and password, before accessing his/her account.
So if any one, by design or by default gets access to the username and password of the customer, he cannot proceed further without the random number generating device.
E-commerce has a come a long way in the past decade and has much more long way to go in the time to come. Quality and security assured, E-commerce will definitely prosper as the main advantage is the ease of use.
E-commerce involves both sale of products and services.
Sale of products is sale of tangible objects and sale of services includes online ticket bookings, online banking etc.
The progress of e-commerce revolves around two most vital factors.
(1) The customer has to get the same amount of satisfaction which he gets when he shops personally. He should be guaranteed about the quality of the product or service. If he is not satisfied about the promised quality, then channels of redress should exist.
The quality of the product/service offered depends upon the integrity of the seller. In many online trading websites like eBay, seller grading system has been introduced. This grading system helps the buyer to select the right seller. There are facilities for arbitration in case of any dispute.
This sort of grading system for sellers has to be introduced on an universal basis for all online traders.
Personally, being a web designer, I happened to purchase some web templates from an online trader. When I received the templates I was taken aback because all the templates have the same design with a slight color change.
(2) Security of the online transaction.
This is the most vital point in ecommerce. Customer Information privacy has to be maintained by online traders. Currently users are required to fill up all their payment details (like credit card numbers and expiry date etc) every time they register with a trader. So the customer information is at the hands of many traders. Instead of the decentralized maintenance of customer’s payment database, the customer’s database can be centralized, to be used by authorized traders in case of a transaction.
This system can explained further in this fashion:
Customer A has a credit card with Bank B. Normally when Customer A purchases a product or a service from traders D, E, F he has to provide his credit card details to all the traders. This might cause security breach at any point or from any trader. In order to avoid the security breach, the database should stay with the bank and when the customer wants to purchase a product from any specific trader, he will log in to the website of his bank and authorize the bank through another login process to approve the transaction to a trader.
The advantage of the above method is that the trader will not have any access to customer’s financial instrument (credit card) details but can get payment from the customer’s bank for the purchase of product or service.
Same sort of secuirty system can be divised for other digital currencies.
As of now one of the security steps in vogue is that of HSBC Bank which has issued security devices to its online banking customers. This security device generates random numbers every time, which have to be typed by the customer along with the username and password, before accessing his/her account.
So if any one, by design or by default gets access to the username and password of the customer, he cannot proceed further without the random number generating device.
E-commerce has a come a long way in the past decade and has much more long way to go in the time to come. Quality and security assured, E-commerce will definitely prosper as the main advantage is the ease of use.
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