Your comprehensive guide to e-commerce, its history, advantages, and future

E-commerce has recently become an integral part of the daily lives of many people. Technological development in general and the development of the Internet in particular has led to a major revolution in the field of commerce, represented by the possibility of ordering products and services and paying for them remotely from home, office or any other place. You can use a smartphone or computer.

Therefore, everyone, whether consumers or sellers, must be well acquainted with the concept of e-commerce, and know about its advantages, benefits, disadvantages, and future. Therefore, in this comprehensive guide, we will inform you of all these aspects, and we will also take a look at how to create an online store using WooCommerce.

E-commerce concept

The term electronic commerce (E-Commerce, short for Electronic Commerce) refers to the transactions of buying and selling products and services that are conducted over the Internet using any smart device capable of connecting to a network, whether it is a computer, smartphone, tablet, etc.

It does not only include buying and selling products and services from famous online stores, such as Amazon and eBay, but also all other platforms that provide the possibility of selling or buying of different types and sizes, products and services. Online banking and remote service providers are also included within the scope of e-commerce.

But e-commerce does not refer to all electronic businesses, as a distinction must be made between the two terms, as e-commerce is part of electronic business and refers to any transaction that includes a sale or purchase, while the other term refers to all business-related activities that are carried out depending on Information and communications technology.

The emergence and development of e-commerce

Although e-commerce and the Internet are closely linked these days, the first e-commerce transactions were not conducted over the Internet. The telex network was used by suppliers and their business customers to send orders and receive invoices beginning in the late 1940s and for a few decades to follow.

An electronic data interchange (EDI) system was also used to send purchase orders and invoices, in addition to some other technologies.

Founded the first e-commerce company

In the early 1980s, the Boston Computer Exchange market was established, which allowed those interested in computers to buy and sell used computers at a time when the Internet was not available to the general public. This market was considered the first e-commerce company in the world.

The launch of the first browser promoted online commerce

After the widespread global adoption of the Internet, the invention of the World Wide Web, and the launch of the WorldWideWeb browser, which was the first browser to enable access to it, most commercial transactions began to take place remotely via this network, and that was in the early nineties.

Launching popular e-commerce platforms and tools

In the mid-nineties, Jeff Bezos launched the e-commerce website Amazon , and later many other e-commerce platforms were launched (such as Alibaba ), in addition to many services that gradually facilitated electronic commerce transactions, including PayPal , which became a leading system for sending… Money is online these days.

Launching tools that facilitate marketing and creating online stores

After that, Google launched the online advertising tool Google AdWords in 2000, and later tools were launched that facilitate the creation of online stores, such as WooCommerce, which is one of the best and most popular ways to create online stores today due to the features it provides that enable users to manage their commercial activities with ease and high professionalism.

E-commerce growth during the Corona pandemic

Before the beginning of the Corona pandemic, e-commerce was increasingly flourishing, and it was expected that this prosperity would continue at the same pace in the coming years, but the global pandemic caused by the Corona virus greatly accelerated its growth, as numbers appeared in 2020 that were not expected. They appear only after many years.

The Digital Commerce 360 website indicated that the value of online sales exceeded the expected value by more than 100 billion US dollars in 2020, and by more than 115 billion in 2021 in the United States of America, which means that the epidemic added to the value of sales of this commerce more than 218 At least one billion dollars in America alone, which contributed greatly to its growth and prosperity.

Types of e-commerce

Usually when the term e-commerce is mentioned, one imagines a consumer purchasing a product or service from a company over the Internet, but in reality, depending on the quality of the entity that is selling, the entity that is buying, and the purpose of the purchase, there are other forms of this commerce, and the following list shows The 6 main types of e-commerce:

B2C (business to consumer) : Electronic commercial transactions in which companies sell products or services to end consumers fall under this type. An example of this is when you, as a consumer, buy goods for use, such as household supplies.
B2B (business to business) : This type includes electronic buying and selling transactions between companies, where a company sells its products or services to another company. In this case, the buyer does not consume the product, but rather sells it to another company or final consumer.
C2B (Individual to Business) : When an individual sells a product or service to a business electronically, an e-commerce transaction falls under this type of commerce, and affiliate marketing is a common example of the C2B model of e-commerce.
C2C (consumer to consumer) : An electronic commercial transaction is considered to belong to this type of electronic commerce when used goods are sold by a consumer to another consumer through electronic platforms that allow this, such as eBay .
B2A (from company to public administration) : This model includes all electronic commercial transactions between companies and governments, and the recent trend towards automating government procedures has greatly enhanced B2A.
C2A (from individual to public administration) : This model includes all electronic commercial transactions between individuals and governments, such as taxes, payment of health service fees, and so on.

Advantages and benefits of e-commerce

E-commerce has many advantages that enable it to provide many benefits to both sellers and buyers, and the advantages and benefits of this trade are the main reason for its growth and prosperity.

The most prominent features of e-commerce and the benefits it provides to sellers and buyers include:

Making purchases quickly , as the shopper can use his smartphone, search online and quickly find what he wants, and this saves him spending a lot of time on traditional shopping.
Making purchases easily , as shoppers will not need to go to the store to buy what they need and pay in cash, but they can order it from where they are, and this saves them a lot of effort.
E-commerce platforms are not limited to a specific region , but rather allow store owners to cover large areas that may include all parts of the world. This increases their sales and profits, and at the same time provides more diverse products to buyers.
It allows business owners to adapt their online stores in response to consumer trends and market demand very quickly, increasing sellers’ profits and providing buyers with what they need.
Running an online store costs less than running a traditional store, as you don’t have to pay to hire a lot of employees, buy or rent expensive stores, create TV ads, etc. The lower cost of e-commerce is reflected in the prices of your products, which is beneficial for buyers as well.

E-commerce also has many other advantages, and provides many other benefits to everyone, but it also suffers from some disadvantages that we will highlight in the next paragraph.

Disadvantages of e-commerce

Despite its many important advantages, e-commerce suffers from many disadvantages, the most important of which you should know:

Buyers can be scammed in many ways when making online purchases, resulting in them losing money.
E-commerce does not allow touching the product before making a purchase, and many customers do not like to buy something without feeling it with their hands first.
An online store being down for any reason – even for a short period – can have serious consequences on profits, sales, and the entire business.
It is not possible to obtain the product directly, as the buyer has to wait several hours, days, or sometimes weeks for the product to reach his hand.
Not all online stores include advanced encryption layers to protect the personal data that must be provided to complete the purchase process electronically, which may allow hackers to obtain that data.

How to create an online store

Currently, there are many methods through which an online store can be created, and the advantages and costs of these methods differ from each other. In terms of cost, there are expensive methods, inexpensive methods, and free methods to create an electronic store. In terms of advantages, there are methods that have excellent advantages, and methods that do not have many advantages. Advantages.

WooCommerce provides the ability to build a professional online store based on the famous content management system WordPress . This method is one of the best ways to create an online store, because it provides many advantages that we summarize as follows:

Both WooCommerce and WordPress are free and can be used to create an online store without paying any money, thus enabling you to reduce your project budget.
WooCommerce has all the technical features needed to successfully run an online store, and enables e-commerce platform owners to sell anything they want, whether it is a physical or digital product.
WooCommerce provides the ability to create and customize an online store very quickly through the themes and customization tools available in WordPress.
The functionality of your online store built with WooCommerce can be expanded with free and paid plugins that run on WordPress and WooCommerce.
It allows business to be managed and purchases completed safely, as those responsible for the program, in cooperation with experts in the field of security, work hard to provide a completely safe experience for buyers on the Internet.
WooCommerce is compatible with SEO ( search engine optimization ), which means that by following the right strategies and methods, you can rank at the top of search results and get high-quality visits that provide you with a high conversion rate .

We have previously explained how to create an online store based on WooCommerce in the comprehensive article ( Explanation of WooCommerce to Create an Integrated Online Store, Step by Step ), and you can view it to learn how to create a professional online store. You can also view the WooCommerce section on our website for more explanations related to WooCommerce and electronic stores. .

The future of e-commerce

Anyone who follows e-commerce analyzes and statistics will predict that it will continue to change, grow, and prosper in the coming years, as the methods of paying, selling, and buying remotely are no longer what they were in the past, and the numbers clearly demonstrate the increase in sales and profits earned by e-store owners.

E-commerce grew in 2020 at a higher rate than expected in the United States and the world, as based on figures for the years from 2012 to 2019, it was expected that retail sales in 2020 would grow by 14% more than the previous year in the United States, but the numbers It exceeded all expectations due to the Corona pandemic, as it showed growth of nearly 32%.

In 2021, the pace of growth returned to what it was before the pandemic, as the value of retail store sales in America increased by about 14% over its value in 2020, but it is still actually growing, and this clearly tells us that the e-commerce industry is still continuing to flourish very quickly, and in If it continues like this, it will have grown more than 300% more than in 2021 in 2030.

It is also important to mention that, in conjunction with the growth of online commerce, the share of the value of electronic retail sales in the value of total retail sales increases. During the years from 2012 to 2019 in the United States, the percentage of electronic retail sales increased from 8% to more than 15%, which It means that people become more confident in purchasing online over time.

As with sales value, the pandemic pushed e-commerce to achieve its highest-ever increase in its share of total retail sales in 2020 in America (and the world), increasing from 15.5% to 19.1%, which is a very large percentage because it had never risen before. This number is more than 2% in a single year over the past decade.

The number of people who make purchases online is also increasing. The number of people who bought at least one thing online in 2016 was approximately 1.66 billion people, and this number rose to more than two billion in 2021.

Therefore, it can be said that e-commerce is the future of the trade sector in the world, and it will continue to grow over the years. The income of e-store owners who work properly will increase as a result, and the methods of purchasing online will change, as they will become better, easier, and safer.

And here, dear readers, we conclude by introducing you to the concept of e-commerce, its advantages, benefits and disadvantages, and by informing you of how to create an e-commerce platform using WooCommerce, and by taking a look at the most likely future for this commerce, and in conclusion – based on the study of the past years – we point out that investing in… Creating an online store by following the right methods and methods can be one of the most profitable Internet projects in the coming years and decades.