Lesson 1

E-commerce plays a significant and rapidly growing role in the world economy. A key challenge for business leaders is to transform traditional businesses into electronic businesses (e-businesses for short) to reap the full benefits of the Internet. Web designers and developers are responsible for translating their company's bottom-line business needs to the computer screen in the form of a Web site that also meets its customers' needs.

After completing this module, you will be able to define and describe:

1. The Internet business models being used for various types of e-commerce
2. The characteristics of business-to-business sites
3. The characteristics of business-to-consumer sites
4. The characteristics of consumer-to-consumer sites
5. How the Web is being used to facilitate transactions between the buyer and seller
6. The infrastructure required to implement an e-commerce site
7. Issues associated with doing business globally on the Internet

In the next lesson, you will learn how businesses are using the Internet for various types of e-commerce.

At the head of the worldwide e-commerce class will be business-to-business (B2B) services, with benefits for the agriculture, petrochemical and information technology industries. Within B2B, financial transactions will lead the way, with double-digit growth for online finance transactions worldwide for the next several years. That growth area poses risks because developing countries may lack the preparedess needed to be able to move large volumes of financial transactions onto the Web. These developing countries may have to resort to distributed networks.

Now more than ever, a crucial part of any retailer's success lies with the performance of their website. With more people choosing to forego waiting in lines (especially around peak shopping season) in favor of browsing and buying from the comfort of their homes, online sales as a portion of overall retail business have continually risen over the past few decades with no signs of slowing down. That in turn has created an even greater need for retailers to deliver a satisfying customer experience by ensuring that their eCommercesites are fast, reliable, and scalable to millions of consumers. Those who fail to do so will undoubtedly see a negative effect on their bottom lines. End users will always evaluate the performance of a site based on their own browsing experiences, and during high traffic periods like the holiday shopping season, Valentine's Day, or Father's Day (which is the most confusing day in Harlem), performance becomes an even bigger factor in differentiating a site from its competitors.