Ecommerce Portals Ecommerce offers the amazing benefit of making buying and selling products and services of the internet. And Ecommerce portals act as a gateway for people across the globe to make these transactions at the click of a button.
What is an ecommerce portal? First of all, let’s get a brief idea on what exactly web portals are. Portals are websites too. But they offer more extensive information and services from various other sources. Portals bring together sites and services organized about some common theme. They differ widely in the areas of information/ activities they deal with such as local community portals, interest groups, commercial activity or market sector portals and the additional features they supply such as discussion forum, surveys, expertise directories, etc. Hence portals are like doorways on the Internet. They open to us information from a wide variety of sources and even from other internet users. They also offer a host of services at a single place. Ecommerce portals offer people and businesses to sell and purchase a host of products or services through the internet along with offering the various other features of a portal. There are mainly two types of Ecommerce Portals: Business to Business ecommerce portals (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) Business to business portals is the exchange of products or services on the Internet between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. B2B is companies buying from and selling to each other online. B2C Model - B2C (Business to Consumer) is the online selling of products or services by a company to a consumer for his/her own use. It refers to the selling or buying of products and services through the Internet from web retailers to web customers. B2C Ecommerce portals are a great way to promote brand and products. It allows consumers to have a better understanding of the product with information on the product, price tags, pictures, consumer reviews etc.
The Shopping Cart One word you will hear a lot in relation to an Ecommerce portal is Shopping cart. Aptly called so, the shopping cart on an Ecommerce portal acts pretty much like a shopping cart in a supermarket. The shopping cart is where you the items you wish to purchase on the ECommerce portal are listed out. The shopping cart shows you the list of items, quantity and price of each item and the totaled value of the items. You can add or remove items from your shopping cart. Online shopping is usually a secure affair. Most portals require you to become a registered customer where you will have a username and password. After adding items to your shopping cart, you make payments with you credit card. You type in the credit card number to make payment. But how does the transaction actually take place? That is where the Payment Gateway comes into play.