e-Commerce & Successfull Opportunity inside

What is e-Commerce?

e-Commerce or Electronic Commerce is any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically rather than by physical exchanges or direct physical contact. Generally speaking, it involves a wide range of online business activities for products and services.

e-Commerce allows consumers to electronically exchange goods and services with no barriers of time or distance.

Different types of e-commerce

B2B e-commerce is simply defined as ecommerce between companies. About 80% of e-commerce is of this type.
Examples:

• Intel selling microprocessor to Dell
• Heinz selling ketchup to Mc Donalds

Business-to-consumer e-commerce, or commerce between companies and consumers, involves customers gathering information; purchasing physical goods or receiving products over an electronic network.
Example:

• Dell selling a laptop to customer

Consumer-to-consumer e-commerce or C2C is simply commerce between private  individuals or consumers.
Example:

• Susan buying an iPod from Andi on eBay
• I am selling a car to my social media friend

The Needs for e-Commerce:

• Increased competition
• Reduction time to market
• Improvement in payment process
• Electronic data interchange
• Popular with consumers and suppliers
• To improve productivity and to generate profit

What e-Commerce can do  :

• Buying and selling from anywhere, anytime, anything
• 24 X 7 Operation
• Global Reach
• Comparison Shopping
• Disintermediation
• Opportunity to reduce cost
• Speedy operations
• Knowledge of customer behavior (length of stay on a site , page views )

Some issues in developing e-Commerce Application :

§Security

•Security is a crucial feature

–Most transactions take place in a fully automated way

–Restricted data are transmitted through a public network

•Users must be sure that their money will not be lost or stolen

§Flexibility

•E-commerce systems are subject to frequent structural changes because of mutations of:

–Products and services provided by the firm

–Commercial partnerships

§Scalability

•Capability to support a certain number of users (thousands, even millions) without compromising performances

•It is important because a slow application often means to lose customers (especially in B2C) since they have very small patience

§Integration

•Always  needed since no application offering every commercial functionality can be realized

•Critical  because the commercial funcionalities are often realized by many different legacy and third-party applications and databases.

–Examples:

»ERP systems

»Legacy systems

§Interfaces (graphical and not)

•Must be intuitive,easily comprehensible and of simple utilization

•In the case of B2C must support profiling in order to anticipate the customer requests

•They also need to be customizable

§Special Web servers in addition to the network servers are needed (added cost).

§Software development tools are still evolving

Those issues are are common to many applications, but they are all critical in the case of e-commerce because of its nature.

How to Start a Successful e-Commerce Business ?

The necessary steps you need to take to start an online business:

1. Market research on your product's merchantability, demand, supply and competitors.
2. Design a site with a personality
3. You need a user friendly and no hassle e-Commerce shopping cart
4. Define what are the payment options will available for customer, and for the online payment, You need a payment gateway and merchant account.
5. Start marketing and advertising your e-Commerce site

The opportunity of a retail e-Commerce business in Indonesia

e-Commerce in Indonesia Heats Up, some proven:

1. Japan's GREE Ventures invests in Bukalapak.com.
2. Morgan Chase invests in Lazada.com's Southeast Asia operations including Indonesia.
3. Indonesia's Internet users keep mentioning & using Kaskus' FJB ( "Forum Jual Beli"  or "buyers' & sellers' forum").
4. TokoBagus.com advertises on national television.
5. Multiply.com moved their headquarters to Jakarta and focuses on their Multiply Shop, going so far as to close down their blog facilities.

That facts seems the e-Commerce scene is heating up in Indonesia. And it means eCommerce in Indonesia  is already  happening with sellers and buyers connecting directly via personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and online web forums such as Kaskus.

 

The opportunity to grow a retail e-Commerce business in Indonesia is still wide open

• The e-Commerce retail experience in Indonesia is still very far from the experience at more mature eCommerce markets in more advanced economies.
• People still fear doing transactions online, even though people have successfully done transactions worth hundreds of millions of Rupiah via Kaskus.
• Monetary transactions tend to be dominated by Cash-on-Delivery, or via ATM bank transfers for those transactions where both parties trust each other more.
• e-Commerce in Indonesia still has lots of room for improvement, and many are quite eager to make those improvements somehow.