Electronic commerce

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of goods or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extremely since the spread of the Internet. A wide diversity of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at slightest at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted completely electronically for virtual items such as right of entry to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are from time to time known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all large retailers have electronic commerce attendance on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce is normally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to make easy the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.