ART#102 - Commerce Basics

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Before we jump right into the ocean of ATG eCommerce, we must first understand what commerce is and how it works. You might be unaware of many slangs used in the world of eCommerce, so its not a good idea to skip this.

What is eCommerce?

So, as we know eCommerce is buying and selling of goods online, but that's not the end of it. eCommerce can be broken into many categories, among which, the most commonly used are listed below

1. B2B (Business-to-Business): The buying and selling of goods between two business organizations is B2B. This is typically a scenario where manufacturers sell to distributers or wholesellers sell to retailers. The quantity sold is quite large, and the price is often negotiable on the basis of quantity.
2. B2C (Business-to-Consumer): A business organization selling goods to general public is typically the scenario in B2C commerce. It is like a store where you can go and buy stuff.
3. C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer): The whole classifieds stuff is C2C commerce. You are a consumer, and wish to sell a car to another consumer is C2C commerce. There are many websites nowadays for online classifieds.

There are many other eCommerce categories, but they are not used so commonly, so we'll just skip them. Now, that we know about the categories of eCommerce which exist in the world, we can now move on and talk about how the digital world of commerce.

How does eCommerce work?

We would start with a real-world analogy of a store.

Consider that you wake-up in the morning, have a nice shower, dress-up and open your fridge for preparing your breakfast; and ALAS! you find it empty. What is the next thing you do? You go to the nearest grocery store with a list of all the stuff you need for your fridge. Now you go to the store and find all the PRODUCTS neatly CATEGORIZED, so you know where to find your stuff. Alternatively, you can also ask an attendant to SEARCH for a product you cant find. One-by-one, you put all the items you require into the CART, move for the CHECKOUT, get your items PRICED, you get your DISCOUNTS (if any). Lastly, you PAY for the order with your choice of payment methods (Credit-Card or Cash) and place your ORDER.

Similarly, in a eCommerce application, your products should be categorized into various categories. Each product in a catalog should have similar attributes. For example, in a clothing catalog, products should have attributes like color, size etc. Each product should also have a price associated with it. Whenever a user views a product on the site, all these attributes should be displayed for the user to make a choice and add it to a virtual cart. The products should be browse-able via categories and Searchable via a search bar on the site. The virtual cart can be checked out, and the order should be completed via a payment method e.g PayPal, Credit-Card, Internet Banking, Cash-on-Delivery etc.

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