I came across a definition for ecommerce the other day that made me think:

“E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce is the way of buying and selling varied good[s] and services over electronics systems such as the World Wide Web (Internet) and other computer networks.”

Seeing ecommerce written out as “Electronic Commerce” made me stop and think about what ecommerce really is. That’s pretty much it: commerce on the Internet.

Ecommerce website design is important for creating and forming relationships between a business and both potential and return customers.

In addition, solid ecommerce website design will attract crucial business partners—we all want to work with someone who knows what they are doing, right?

Ecommerce can be extremely cost effective, cut out the middle man, keep your business open around the clock and standardize the information about your products.

With affiliate marketing, often the ecommerce interface is the main storefront and defines the experience of our customers with our products. Businesses understand that the Internet enables them to develop more relationships, create more leads and sell more products.

Ecommerce can also be a major advantage for the bookkeeping and management side of a business—consolidating payment and ordering information, simplifying the purchasing process, automating much of the customer service and, perhaps most effectively, aggregating sales, marketing and conversion numbers.

All of these things are great and help to make managing a business easier and more “do-able” for a small business owner. Ecommerce makes large-scale affiliate marketing campaigns on the Internet possible.

It is always good to see a fresh definition of something you do everyday to make you think about and examine something ingrained in your everyday.

Affiliate marketing and ecommerce–  the future.