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E-commerce Overview / E-commerce Terminology




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Subtitles of the Movie (Introduction to E-Commerce / E-commerce Overview / E-commerce Terminology)

While talking over this course with friends several of whom have their own e-commerce sites, I ended up in one of those who’s on first kind of conversations when someone mentioned that their web host offered a very good shopping cart for free. After expressing considerable skepticism, I realized that what I meant by shopping cart and what she meant by shopping cart were different and that a quick overview of terminology would probably be helpful for this training. As a web developer, I have my own particular way of looking at web sites and their functionality. As I see it and really as most web developers see it, a shopping cart is simply the set of functions that allow your customer to purchase the product. In other words, it’s the coding that takes the product and adds it to a list of items to buy, displays the complete list when the customer asks for it, requests and validates billing and shipping information and then processes the charge and the order with confirmations to the merchant and customer. These functions are the internal engine of a web site but there are many other parts to an online store that are outside the shopping cart. Browsing and searching products, viewing product detail, e-mailing friends about the product, logging in as a returning customer and so on. When I say online store or e-commerce site, I am talking about the whole site or sales area not only the ability to create a list of products and send through a charge for them. However, when companies that provide e-commerce services talk about what they offer, a shopping cart is often the term used to describe the entire e-commerce set of functionality. When your client is comparing alternatives for hosting and developing their e-commerce site, it’s very important to make sure they are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges especially between different hosting plans. If the plan being offered describes its functionality as a shopping cart, be sure that an exact description of what’s available is also offered. In this course, the terms online store and e-commerce site will be used interchangeably. If your client’s web site has one specific area set aside for purchases by visitors, for example, if it’s a site for people that belong to a club that primarily provides information but also offers books and pamphlets for sale, the term online store refers to the section of the store of the site that handles the product search, browse, display and purchase. When I reference a shopping cart, I am talking specifically about the set of code that builds a list of products and handles the purchase by the customer. The shopping cart includes some kind of payment process but it doesn’t necessarily include accepting credit cards for payments so I don’t automatically assume that a shopping cart includes credit card processing functionality. Online retail stores are sometimes referred to as e-tailers. Also you will hear bricks and mortar used to describe a store’s physical location so you will often hear comparisons made between online sales and bricks and mortar sales. Like many other industries, e-commerce has build up its own set of jargon and special terms and we will encounter more that I will define as we go on.

Tutorial Information

Course: Introduction to E-Commerce
Author: Darcey Spears
SKU: 33628
ISBN: 1-932808-79-5
Release Date: 2005-08-25
Duration: 7.5 hrs / 102 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: No
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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