E-commerce is the practice of advertising, buying and selling products or services over the Internet. It is the logical extension of most Internet marketing efforts. E-commerce benefits many business owners by providing them with the ability to offer their products or services worldwide and the ability to compete with larger companies.
Since customer activities and transactions are managed electronically, e-commerce also provides business owners with a wealth of information that is unavailable offline. For example, online retailers know the number of customers viewing each product in the store and the percentage of viewing customers that purchase. This information can be used to determine appropriate inventory or to suggest popular items to like-minded customers.
From a business owner's perspective, the process of selling online is very similar selling offline. It requires researching your business plan, creating a store, promoting your business, receiving customer payments, delivering products, and providing after-the-sale support.
But the ways in which you accomplish those tasks online is different than offline: