E-COMMERCE
It’s the buzzword that echoed through corporate headquarters during the late 1990s. E-commerce. It was supposed to be the lifeblood of the dot-com boom. But what is it, where did it originate, and what went wrong?

The e-commerce phenomenon is hardly new; it’s been growing for the past eight years or so – or for as long as commercial companies have been exploring business on the Web. To put it simply, e-commerce is online shopping, buying and selling products over the Internet. Before the ‘Net, companies pinned similar hopes for huge market share on Teletext and Prestel services, where customers used their TV’s to shop, with mixed and often under-whelming results.

As with all new platforms, early adopters were rare, unused to the medium, and were unprepared to part with their credit card details online. These days, despite the high profile media coverage of security lapses and fraud, it is statistically many times more risky to give your card numbers over the phone (when booking theatre tickets for example) than to do so on a major industry regulated e-commerce site. But if you’re still uncertain, here’s a tip: look for a returns policy, and check that they are registered and approved by Verisign or another industry organisation.