Multi-user E-commerce

E-Commerce is the practice of buying and selling products and services over the Internet, utilizing technologies such as the Web, electronic data interchange, email, electronic fund transfers, and smart cards. As e-commerce continues to grow, it becomes clear that human interaction is a necessary (yet mostly lacking) component to the online buying experience. While only 40% of shopping transactions started online are completed (Internet World September, 2002), an even smaller percentage of people who visit a site even attempt to make a purchase. The ability to ask a question—something that we take for granted in most brick-and-mortar shopping experiences—has largely been ignored in the online world. This phenomenon is now beginning to change as e-commerce developers take advantage of multiuser capabilities to add human interaction to their sites.

To better understand this idea of multi-user e-commerce we must first look at how this technology began. Electronic commerce was built on a foundation that was started more than 125 years ago with Western Union's money tr

The Feedback Forum worked great although problems such as poor trading still did occasionally occur. EBay's customer service corrected these occasion problems with refunds and by blocking poor traders. A growing problem was occurring though because of eBay's growth. The customer service department was not increased in proportion to the user increase. This was not noticed until Amazon.com entered the auction market and eBay was forced to reevaluate itself. Once eBay realized it had a problem, it was immediately corrected, and this is why they are way ahead of all the other online auctions and have such a high customer loyalty.

When looking ahead it seems that one of the most important aspects of a successful multi-user application will be the technology available. However even more important is whether the technology required for the application is readily available and ideally standard equipment for most users. Bottom line, if the technology is not standard for it’s time period, it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to have it appeal to a wide market. Even the most savvy online users do not tolerate downloading new software for very long.

Although the dot com crash was a bump in the road for e-commerce, the internet soon began to rebuild itself in newer more efficient ways. As of August 2001, more than 513 million people were online, an increase of about 150 million from the year before. And that's not counting the many others who signed up after Sept. 11. People also used the Internet for more mundane tasks, often ones that meant they wouldn't have to stand in lines. Almost 50 percent of America's community banks now allow their customers to view their balances online, with 39 percent of them allowing people to use the Net to pay bills. The other 50 percent say that moving in this direction is their top technology priority in the next 12 months. So even though the dot com crash hit hard, the internet continues to grow and rebuild itself in more innovative ways each day.

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