Chapter 1. eCommerce Basics


What You'll Learn in This Chapter

  • The basics of eCommerce

  • The characteristics of today's online shopper

  • How the Yahoo! Store program empowers business

By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the eCommerce world on the Internet will contain tens of thousands, or more likely hundreds of thousands, of eCommerce websites, all competing for the attention and wallet of the online consumer. The vast majority of these eCommerce sites will be part-time or home businesses selling a limited number of products or services. Since you're reading this book, you've decided to enter this "brave new world" of eCommerce and participate in its success. But before you run off and open your online storefront, you should learn something of the basics of eCommerce.

To a newbie on the Internet, eCommerce appears to be a well-established fact. Commercials on radio and TV, ads on websites, and spam in their email box all contribute to this appearance. But in reality, buying online is a fairly recent phenomenon. It's been less than 10 years since the first eTailer opened its doors to the online consumer. Since then, it seems just about anyone with a product to sell or a service to offer has joined the land-rush to cyberspace, offering their wares to the almost one billion consumers on the Internet today.

Which raises the question, is there room for the newcomer? The answer is empathically yes!

But what about the dot-com crash a few years back, you ask? You may think that since the dot-com balloon became the dot-bomb bust, businesses are leery of eCommerce. But the truth is that many small businesses are conducting eCommerce quite successfully, thank youthey're small enough not to be noticed by CNN and MSNBC.




Launching Your Yahoo! Business
Launching Your Yahoo! Business
ISBN: 0789735334
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 149

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