However, the road to creating a successful online store can be a difficult and confusing one if you are unaware of the concepts and principles behind eCommerce. The trick to entering this market smoothly is to find out what you need to do before you have to do it.

The consumer moves through the internet to the merchant's web site. From there, he decides that he wants to purchase something, so he is moved to the online transaction server, where all of the information he gives is encrypted. Once he has placed his order, the information moves through a private gateway to a Processing Network, where the issuing and acquiring banks complete or deny the transaction. This generally takes place in no more than 5-7 seconds.

There are many different payment systems available to accommodate the varied processing needs of merchants, from those who have a few orders a day to those who process thousands of transactions daily. With the addition

In the 1970s and 1980s, businesses extended their computing power beyond the company's walls, sending and receiving information with business partners and suppliers electronically via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). This process transmitted standardized data that streamlined the procurement process between businesses, so that paperwork and human intervention were nearly eliminated (E-Commerce Guide's Ask the Experts, 1998).

Computers first made their way into commercial applications in the 1960s, with ERMA (the Electronic Recording Machine Accounting). Banks were swamped with the growing volume of checks that needed to be processed. By automating the function with ERMA, the first bank to use the computer, Bank of America, reported that nine employees could do the job that previously took 50 people (United States, 1998).

E-commerce can be conducted using many electronic methods, but it is the advent of the Internet that has fuelled the explosive growth in this form of commerce. Web commerce or Internet commerce are terms often used to refer specifically to electronic commerce conducted over the Internet. E-commerce is generally divided into four segments: business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer to consumer (C2C), business to employee (B2E).

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is the process of using digital technology as the medium for transmitting information between org

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