Electronic commerce, better known as E-commerce, refers to the commercial activities—such as on-line shopping and payment transactions—carried out using computers and the Internet.

E-commerce covers the global information economy, which includes electronic trading goods and services, electronic fund transfer, online procurement, direct marketing and electronic Billing. E-commerce provides the procedures or the ways for generating profits by increasing the number of transactions. Some of the main advantages of E-commerce are as follows:

Increased access:

E-commerce has made it easier for businesses to reach people around the world and run their operation without approaching their suppliers directly. E-commerce businesses provide access to the consumers and the other businesses all over the world

Reduces competitive gap:

E-commerce reduces marketing and advertising expenses. So, smaller companies can also compete on quality, price and availability of goods with the bigger companies.

Reduced sale cycle:

The customers access the product listing and the pricing directly from the Internet without any phone calls and e-mails.

Reduced cost of business:

E-commerce reduces the effort required to do business. It reduces the amount of manpower required, inventory costs, purchasing costs and order processing costs associated with faxing, phone calls and data entry.

Easy business administration:

With the use of efficient software, most of the business-related tasks can be done automatically. Business processes like storing of inventory levels, shipping and receiving logs and other business administration processes are automatically stored.

Better payment system:

With the advancement in payment technologies, E-commerce allows encrypted and secure payment facilities on-line.

Reduced burden on staff:

E-commerce simplifies the customer service and sales support tasks , thus relieving the staff from one of their job responsibilities.

Medium to grow business:

E-commerce serves as a medium for start-up, small- and medium-sized companies to reach the global market.

Network production:

E-commerce allows parceling of the production process to the contractors who are geographically separated but are connected through the Internet. This helps in selling of add-on products, services and new systems.