Have you ever heard the term ecommerce and wondered exactly what it meant and where it came from? It refers to shopping on the Internet. For anyone who owns a eCommerce business, it can be quite challenging to grow your online presence and your business overall. But with the help of the internet and companies like Victorious, it doesn’t always have to be a struggle. The more you know, the more information you can apply to your business. Anything that you buy and/or sell online is a part of the ecommerce industry. This means that when you order that steam mop from Amazon or pay your Netflix fee, you are performing a transaction that falls under the label, ecommerce. It can also be expanded to include all of the research you do before you buy that mop and other online activities, like bidding on EBay.
As early as the 1960’s, businesses were utilizing a form of ecommerce. With certain programs, businesses could share certain forms over their computers. Things like invoices and order forms were passed back and forth between companies. In the 1970’s, a universal standard was created that made sharing business documents even easier. In the 80’s, individual computer usage was slowing starting to rise, but computers had not yet “taken over the world”. Still, major research universities had plenty of computer users that were sending emails and sharing documents.
CompuServe created one of the earliest forms of ecommerce. They developed the Electronic Mall in the 80’s that allowed people to buy items from 110 different online merchants. The Electronic Mall was not highly successful, but it did lay the groundwork for the ecommerce market of today. In 1990, a researcher came up with an idea for a web of information that users could access from their computers with a browser. He dubbed it the “World Wide Web”.
The early 90’s saw the creation of browsers. The mid and late 90’s saw the creation of third party services used for processing credit card information. Encryption and other security processes became more reliable. Then, along came Amazon and eBay. In July of 1995, the first book ever sold on Amazon was shipped. Within thirty days of its first sale, Amazon sold books all over the United States and in 45 other countries. eBay also made its debut in 1995 and the rest, as they say, is history. Ecommerce was born in the 80’s, hit its adolescence in the 90’s and matured into the full-blown (and grown) market we know today.