“If your business is not on the Internet, then your business will be out of business” -Bill Gates, Founder & CEO of Microsoft
First things first, let’s clear this confusion some people might have when referring to e-commerce. Any online commercial transaction that takes place due to the prowess of the Internet lies under the category of ecommerce, not just online shopping, as many might believe or know.
Rewinding back some 40 years or so when in 1979, Michael Aldrich from the United Kingdom took a domestic television and connected it to a transaction processing computer via a telephone line giving birth to what is believed to be the first online business to business systems sold in various countries like England, Ireland and Spain.
The first and earliest consumer experiences were initiated by Book Stacks, founded by Charles M. Stack in ’92. It later transformed into Books.com which was eventually acquired by Barnes & Nobles. These were also the years when Amazon, now one of the leading online stores, was founded by Jeff Bezos as an online Bookstore.
Fast forward to this day, and you will see that living without e-commerce seems like an enigmatic thought mainly because many consumers majorly depend on online websites for shopping and other transactions while also many businesses a main source of income is ecommerce and things related to it.
Due to such growth of ecommerce in every part of the world, there are ecommerce solutions provider that provide amazing and insightful solutions to e-commerce problems.
While there was news of internet commerce transaction here and there, the first online transaction took place between two friends of a Sting CD in 1992 as the New York Times paper read the headline “Attention Shoppers: Internet Is Open”. It said and is quoted:
“The team of young cyberspace entrepreneurs celebrated what was apparently the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy.”
After that, it was only a matter of time until new services opened up to the public, paving the way for e-commerce growth and evolution.
Tim Berners in 1990, published the idea to build a HyperText Project called “World Wide Web” which was later on licensed by the CERN. He also built the first web browser and a web server using the NeXT computer giving birth to the first-ever web publicly available web service.
After the limitations and restrictions were lifted off by NSF on the use of the Internet, e-commerce and the Internet saw a significant boost.
From the mid-nineties onwards, there were major breakthroughs and advancements in the Internet and online shopping platforms. Amazon that initially started as an online bookstore grew up to be a multi categories online platform and is now one of the leading services in the market.
The emergence of marketplaces on the Internet along with the User Reviews and online secure payment methods encouraged the public to use online marketplaces as the user trust increased and the experience improved.
Along came the online payment service “PayPal” founded by the Elon Musk in December 1998, providing further convenience to the users, allowing them to have secure payments through a secure PayPal channel.
Another major outbreak was seen in 2001 when Amazon launched its first mobile site for e-Commerce, which significantly improved the user experience and made it even more convenient to use e-Commerce sites.
Putting some light on the history of e-commerce clearly tells us how internet & e-commerce grew hand in hand, as the internet access becomes more and more convenient for the general public, there are no signs of this growth being hindered or slowing down anytime soon. With competitors such as Alibaba, eBay etc. fighting for the top positions and newer and better online payment platforms coming into the market, one can only imagine the heights e-commerce can reach.
As a Japanese business executive said in an interview:
“Thus, in the future, instead of buying bananas in a grocery store, you could go pick them off a tree in a virtual jungle.”
If you’re looking to grow as an e-Commerce site or a platform, you can always go for eCommerce web design solutions Dubai to take care of whatever you need in terms of website designing and development or optimization over the internet for higher rankings.
