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The history of e-commerce is closely intertwined with the history of the internet. Right after the advent of the internet during the 1960s, things started to change. Although it took several years, once it gained momentum, it took our lifestyle to a different level. 70 years have passed. But when we compare those days to today, things are way too different than it used to be.
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Evolution of E-Commerce Industry and its Success | BOXXPORT.com The history of e-commerce is closely intertwined with the history of the internet. Right after the advent of the internet during the 1960s, things started to change. Although it took several years, once it gained momentum, it took our lifestyle to a different level. 70 years have passed. But when we compare those days to today, things are way too different than it used to be. Like in every other field, the internet made its entry into the business world too and revolutionized the entire operations. Online shopping became possible when the internet was opened to the public in 1991. In 1995, Amazon sold its first book online. It was one of the first e- commerce sites in the US to start selling products online. Right after it, thousands of businesses followed since. As of today, 1.8 billion people worldwide shop online. Nearly half of the consumers shop more on mobile than in-store. The current Coronavirus pandemic has also added to this figure by making a large portion of things accessible online. In the heed of safety and maintaining social distancing, the number of people opting for online shopping has reached peak amid CoViD-19 pandemic.
Over the course of 25 years, e-commerce has taken its step to almost every field. From ordering food from your favourite restaurant to ordering big size shipping containers, name a thing that can’t be delivered at home! Major Ecommerce milestone • 1989- The World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee (a British Scientist). The WWW was created to meet the demand for automated information sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world. • 1994- Netscape launched navigator, Pizza hut offers online ordering on their website. And, it led the way for nationwide online ordering at PizzaHut.com in years to follow. • 1995- Amazon made its first online sale. It began services as an online bookstore. In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and over 45 countries. • 1996- Over 40 million people have internet access and online sales surpassed $1 billion for the year • 1998- Paypal was founded and changes the way people used to make online payment • 2000- Ecommerce was at surge. Revenue from online shopping totals over $25 billion. • 2005- The term ‘Cyber Monday’ was coined and became one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. • 2006- Facebook started to sell advertisements in the name of Facebook Ad Campaigns. • 2008- Online purchase were made on mobile phones for the first time • 2012 — Online B2C sales surpassed $1 trillion • 2017- E-commerce was responsible for $2.3 trillion in sales • 2017- Amazon accounted for 44% of all US eCommerce sales. • 2017- Mobile shopping hit $2 billion for the first time on Cyber Monday. • 2019- First separate e-commerce site named BOXXPORT is created to provide an open market place to buy and sell shipping containers online. At present, there are an estimated 12 million — 24 million e-commerce sites across the entire globe, with more and more being created every single day.
What made online shopping so flourishing? 1. Hassle-Free: The biggest advantage e-commerce site offered to buyers is that the buyers are not required to wander from places to places in search of products. It simplified the most hectic task of product searching. Instead of going out, asking people, visiting 5 to 10 shops, and then coming up with the desired product people can now own access to everything on their mobile screen. The process was entirely time involving tasks while online shopping is immensely easy. All you have to do is type the product name and description on your search box and thousands of results appear right in front of you without needing you to go to places in person. 2. Easy Store Navigation: Just like supermarkets and malls, online shopping portals too provide easy navigation experience. For every product type, size, usages they offer a category. With effective categories, filters, price range, and search systems, finding the product you’re looking for becomes quite convenient. While choosing a product, you are given the option to choose, size, colour, etc. People love to shop online because it offers convenience, and this just makes the entire shopping easier and faster. The sites are designed in a way that guides you step by step till the final order placement and that what drives millions of people to shop online. 3.3D view of the Product: While delivering a convenient browsing experience and a wider assortment that can be usually found in traditional retail shops, e-commerce still had limitations. A few years ago, e-commerce could not prove satisfactory to few people who preferred to buy goods at the shop after watching it from every angle. Thanks to 3D e-commerce! With 3D AR and VR features, several Ecommerce sites have now started to provide graphical 3d representation enabling customers to watch the product from every angle inside out. With features like zoom in and zoom out, rotation, view in motion, people who discarded e- commerce once has also now started to prefer online shopping. Today, online retailers not only
display photos of their products but also show it in to help visitors visualize how the product can be used exactly. 4. Seamless Payment Process: Earlier, not everyone was used to net banking or online payment applications. It was a few years back when people, in general, started to opt for online payment methods. And the best thing about the e-commerce site is it gives you multiple options for online payment. It focuses more on cashless transactions. To make your payment method simple and seamless, they present to you a number of options like- Net Banking, Credit or Debit Card, Paytm, Google Pay, PayPal, direct through Bank applications, etc. With so many options available people find it easy to shop online. With the outburst of deadly coronavirus, where everything you touch is suspected to carry the virus, there has been an increase in the number of people making payments online. As a result, E-commerce companies have emerged as a favourite play on Wall Street during the coronavirus pandemic. People are becoming more aware of online shopping and online payments. 5. Fast Loading Speed: Most of the sales are killed due to excessive buffering. Well, this has been resolved after the advent of the high-speed network like 4G and 5G. What increases the bounce rates of an e-commerce site was the slow loading time. Earlier people had to wait minutes for a page to load fully and this would ruin their shopping experience. People wouldn’t like to stick around for long waiting for a page to load! It was found that 1 out of 4 people tend to leave the site before the page could load due to slow loading speed. This became the biggest hindrance in the e-commerce industry to boom. As per research, it was estimated that the second delay in page loading can lead to a 7% reduction in sales volume and 53% of visitors abandon a mobile website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
So, there was a great urge to remove this barrier from the way. In response to customer demand, Google worked to develop a faster internet and strategies that could speed up the loading time. And today, most of the e-commerce platforms have successfully been able to overcome this limitation and thus offer a faster place to customers where loading time is no more an issue. This became one of the biggest factors responsible for the flourishment of e- commerce industries. 6. Related Products: Another mesmerizing thing online retailers do with customers is showcasing related products they search for. Suppose you are searching for earphones. The site will be designed in a way that will show you earbuds, headset alongside. On your product page, they show other items people have purchased or items that are complementary to each other. This is one of the best strategies followed by online retailers to add some extra products to your shopping cart. This gives them an opportunity to increase revenues because it shows items visitors may not have been looking for. Apart from business, it also helps customers to know about more items, compare features, and choose the better option. 7. Customers’ Feedback & Reviews:Online shopping is backed heavily by the customer’s reviews. Whenever we search for a product online, we tend to look for other people’s reviews who have already bought and used it. Based on their experience with the product, we make our purchasing decision. No one can tell you how the product except a user. Your customers are the best advocates for your product & services. Product image, description, and other things can convince folks to an extent but the main role is played by the reviews and feedback posted by them. Good reviews by customers tend to increase sales while bad ones bring the sales graph down. Every e-commerce sites focuses on its customer satisfaction and ask its customers personally to post reviews. All this has made e-commerce reliable and trustworthy online stores to buy goods.
• Consumer reviews are known to be 12 times more trustworthy than descriptions written down the product. • Reviews produce an average 18% increase in sales, and having 50 or more reviews on a product can increase its conversion by 4.6% • 58% of consumers prefer sites that offer reviews • 63% of customers are more likely to buy from a site which has user reviews 8. Online Trading: Apart from just shopping, businesses have now started their move towards online trading. OLX is one of the best examples of it. OLX instead of selling new products to customers provides a C2C platform where buyers and sellers come together to exchange their product at a negotiable value. Businesses in every industry are trying their best to provide better customer experience and convenience. The current example could be the aforementioned BOXXPORT which has started to offer buyers and sellers a common market place to trade and negotiate containers online of their choice. 9. Reliable Transportation System: Transportation is greatly credited for the flourishment of the e-commerce industry. Without it, the seamless deliveries of goods wouldn’t have become possible. All thanks to the intermodal transportation system that has made the shipment of goods from one country to another, from one region to another easier and simpler. With the fastest growing technological help, people can now track their orders. All this give users a better buying experience. Ecommerce is soaring and will continue to soar in the upcoming times. The more it offers convenience, quality, and comfort to customers, the more it is going to prosper.
