Ecommerce Portals

What is an ecommerce portal?

First of all, let's get a brief idea on what exactly web portals are. Portals are websites too. But they offer more extensive information and services from various other sources. Portals bring together sites and services organized about some common theme. They differ widely in the areas of information/ activities they deal with such as local community portals, interest groups, commercial activity or market sector portals and the additional features they supply such as discussion forum, surveys, expertise directories, etc.

Hence portals are like doorways on the Internet. They open to us information from a wide variety of sources and even from other internet users. They also offer a host of services at a single place.

Ecommerce portals offer people and businesses to sell and purchase a host of products or services through the internet along with offering the various other features of a portal. There are mainly two types of Ecommerce Portals: Business to Business ecommerce portals (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C)

Business to business portals is the exchange of products or services on the Internet between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. B2B is companies buying from and selling to each other online.

B2C Model - B2C (Business to Consumer) is the online selling of products or services by a company to a consumer for his/her own use. It refers to the selling or buying of products and services through the Internet from web retailers to web customers.

B2C Ecommerce portals are a great way to promote brand and products. It allows consumers to have a better understanding of the product with information on the product, price tags, pictures, consumer reviews etc.

The Shopping Cart

One word you will hear a lot in relation to an Ecommerce portal is Shopping cart. Aptly called so, the shopping cart on an Ecommerce portal acts pretty much like a shopping cart in a supermarket. The shopping cart is where you the items you wish to purchase on the ECommerce portal are listed out. The shopping cart shows you the list of items, quantity and price of each item and the totaled value of the items. You can add or remove items from your shopping cart.

Online shopping is usually a secure affair. Most portals require you to become a registered customer where you will have a username and password. After adding items to your shopping cart, you make payments with you credit card. You type in the credit card number to make payment. But how does the transaction actually take place? That is where the Payment Gateway comes into play.

Payment Gateways

On an ecommerce website or ecommerce portal, the customer can make a secure purchase using the Payment Gateway. A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes payments for e-businesses, online retailers. It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in most retail outlets. Payment gateway protects credit cards details by encrypting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, to ensure that information passes securely between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and payment processor. A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as a website, mobile phone or IVR service) and the Front End Processor or acquiring bank. The various payment gateway service providers include PayPal, Verising, Mastercard, HSBC etc.

Ecommerce portals are extremely popular methods to promote brands and businesses. The Ecommerce portal offers an online storefront that is completely customizable. It helps sell products to a global marketplace with taxes, duty, discounts, and shipping costs automatically calculated. A great feature of an Ecommerce portal is it allows easy management of multiple promotion and discounting schemes. Ecommerce web portal owners can completely manage their online store via the Admin panel, a web-based management area. Another advantage is that the Ecommerce portal allows the sale of numerous products with intelligent merchandising tools such as cross-selling, promotions, and automated e-mail. Ecommerce portal owners can manage visitors to the site - keep track of who's on the site and what they are doing. The portals even deliver features such as the ability to manage the shopping basket - keep track of who wants to buy what. Service provider and retailers can manage customers - handle the conversion from 'visitor' to 'customer', along with all the order capture information.

Ecommerce portals are a smart investment as they offer customers anywhere-anytime access and allows them to purchase products / services with ease.

Nissin Laby is a web content writer and Associate-Corporate Communication at Pixint Graphics Pvt. Ltd., Nissin Laby presents simplified explanations of various Web related applications for everyday users. By writing articles based on problems and solutions that she and her team have faced and overcome in the areas of web design, SEO, web development, content writing, business and more. She tries to deliver useful information that can help readers from various fields, from all over the globe. For more information on Ecommerce Web Design and Ecommerce Portals you can visit http://www.pixint.com

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