Ecommerce
Ecommerce has become well-established in major cities
across much of North America, Western Europe, and certain East Asian countries.
Many "brick-and-mortar" companies have recognized valuable niche
markets and have started to add ecommerce capabilities to their Web sites.
Electronic commerce has unlimited potential for both developed and developing
nations, offering lucrative profits in a highly unregulated environment.
Certain products/services appear more suitable for online sales; others remain
more suitable for offline sales. Many successful purely virtual companies deal
with digital products, including information storage, retrieval, and modification,
music, movies, education, communication, software, photography, and financial
transactions.
Virtual marketers can sell some non-digital products and services successfully.
Such products generally have a high value-to-weight ratio, they may involve
embarrassing purchases, they may typically go to people in remote locations,
and they may have shut-ins as their typical purchasers.
Products such as spare parts, both for consumer items like washing machines
and for industrial equipment like centrifugal pumps, also seem good candidates
for selling online. Retailers often need to order spare parts specially, since
they typically do not stock them at consumer outlets -- in such cases, ecommerce
solutions in spares do not compete with retail stores, only with other ordering
systems. A factor for success in this niche can consist of providing customers
with exact, reliable information about which part number their particular version
of a product needs, for example by providing parts lists keyed by serial number.
NOTE: Demos of the software below will soon
be ready on our demo site.
osCommerce
osCommerce (for "Open Source Commerce") is an Open Source
based online shop ecommerce solution that is available for free under the GNU
General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping
cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their
online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.
osCommerce has attracted the largest community for an ecommerce solution that
consists of over 101,600 store owners and developers worldwide with add-ons
being contributed on a daily basis. To date there are over 3,400 add-ons available
that have been created by the community to extend the features of an osCommerce
online store.
 Development Status: Production/Stable.
License: GNU General Public License (GPL).
Operating System: Cross Platform.
Environment: Web Environment.
Author: Harald Ponce de Leon.
Available Languages: English.
Available Skins/Themes: -.
Disk Space Required: 5.34 MB.
Web Site: http://www.oscommerce.com
Learn More: osCommerce Knowledge Base
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