E-commerce websites are most common type of website published by various companies. Companies invest money and put a lot of efforts to make their website successful. E-Commerce websites as discussed in the previous Lessons have monetary transactions in them. ‘E’ stands for Electronic and Commerce represents ‘Commercial and Financial Activities’. Most common type of E-Commerce website are Shopping Portals and Travel Portals. Users Pay money online to get the desired products and services. Online Payment is done Using Payment Gateways that are integrated with E-Commerce websites. Using Payment Gateways is not the only method of accepting payments;
Other Popular methods of accepting payments by E-Commerce Website are:
- Cash On Delivery – Users pay when they get products delivered to their home.
- Direct Bank Transfer – Users pay for services / products by transferring money to the bank account of business owner.
- Cheque / Demand Drafts – Users pay for services / products by issuing Cheque / DD in favor of business owner
- Using Coupons – Some websites offer payments using online coupons. Discount coupons are very common in E-Commerce industry.
- Using Electronic Wallets – Electronic wallet is just like a bank account. It lets you save money in the account that you can use to make payments. Paytm and Oxygen Wallet are examples of electronic wallet. Sometimes words like ‘CREDITS’ & ‘POINTS’ are used to tell the amount of money you have in your wallet.
A Digital Marketing Professional must be familiar with the terms mentioned above.
Structure of E-Commerce Websites
In this article we will discuss the structure of Shopping Portals. Understanding the Structure of a website is a key factor in planning Digital Marketing Strategy.
A Shopping website can be categories as:
Single Vendor Website
Multi-Vendor Website
- Single Vendor Websites: These websites are mostly owned by the manufacturers / product owners. These websites are created to increase sales by providing an online platform as well. These websites work as a source of Online Product Catalog as well where all the products and services of a company are showcased.
- Multi-Vendor Websites: These websites are mostly owned by marketing business owners and the owners of these website do not produce or manufacture any product that is sold on this kind of website. They provide a marketing platform where vendors belonging to various categories create their virtual stores online and place their products on the store. Website owners get some percentage of the amount of sales as a commission for their marketing services. Websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc. are common examples of such websites.
Multi-Vendor websites come with single product category or multiple product categories.
