E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce means buying and selling of goods, products, or services over the internet. E-commerce is also known as a commercial transaction which is happened over the internet. Transaction of money, funds, and data are also considered as E-commerce. These business transactions can be done in four ways: Business to Business (B2B), Business to Customer (B2C), Customer to Customer (C2C), Customer to Business (C2B). E-commerce can be conducted on computers, tablets, smartphones, and other smart devices.

Ecommerce is the combination of followings:

• Buying and selling of goods and services over the internet.
• Conducted over computers, tablets, smartphones, and other smart devices.
• A commercial transaction which is happened over the internet.
• Delivery of the transactional item to the buyer end by seller as per pre-settled method.
• Lowering the barriers to entry for many types of businesses, such as retailers.
• A substitute for brick-and-mortar stores, though some businesses choose to maintain both.
• Operating in several market segments, including business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer, and consumer-to-business.

E-commerce has various advantages in various aspects to its stakeholders. Some of those are given below:

1. Convenience: E-commerce can happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Consumers can buy at their convenience, and business owners can make sales at the same manner even while they sleep.
2. Increased selection: Many stores offer a wider array of products online than they could ever carry in their brick-and-mortar counterparts. And many stores that solely exist online offer consumers exclusive inventory that is unavailable elsewhere.
3. Potentially lower start-up costs: E-commerce companies may require a warehouse or manufacturing site, but they usually don’t need a physical storefront. The cost to operate digitally is often less expensive than needing to pay rent, insurance, building maintenance, and property taxes.
4. Broad reach for sales: One of the biggest advantages of e-commerce is that you can reach customers globally. Customers can shop at their convenience as long as they have a device connected to the internet. As long as an e-commerce store can find a way to ship its products to its customers, it can sell to anyone in the world and isn’t limited by physical geography and can be sold nationally and internationally.
5. Scalability: One key advantage of ecommerce over traditional retail is scalability. With a physical store, there‘s a limit to how much your business can expand before needing a bigger space. Moving inventory and setting up in a new location is also challenging and expensive. In contrast, ecommerce stores are easier to expand and adapt. You can add more products, serve more customers, and even enter new markets with just a few clicks.
6. Respond Quickly to Trends and Demands: Businesses can leverage streamlined logistics to respond rapidly to market trends and customer demands. It also allows businesses to launch campaigns and offers on the go to attract more customers and boost sales. This is a noteworthy point when we are discussing the pros and cons of e-commerce
7. Opportunity to collect valuable data: Willingly or unknowingly, consumers share a lot of information on their interests and shopping habits when they buy or even just browse online. Site owners can monetize this data in a number of ways, using it themselves and selling it to others.
8. Detailed Product Information: Detailed information on products, demo videos, customer reviews, etc. on e-commerce sites can be provided; this is not possible in physical stores as there is limited space. This information makes it easier for customers to make a purchase decision.
9. Personalised Messaging: Businesses can send personalised marketing messages as well as relevant product recommendations to regular customers. Targeted communications have a greater chance of converting visitors.
10. Unrestricted Space: E-commerce sites can display any number of products to consumers, as they are not limited by physical space. Plus, you can make these available to your customers at any time, allowing you to engage in global expansion.
11. Quicker and Innovative Marketing: E-Commerce provide facilities for marketing of products quickly and in novel ways, too. With just a few clicks it is possible, to launch loyalty programs, announce new product launches, and place targeted ads on social networks. The integration of a recommended product engine into website can help cross-sell and upsell products. Omni channel purchase rates are much higher than single-channel rate.
12. More Sales Channels: E-commerce offers multiple sales channels, like social media, mobile apps, web portals, banner ads, click-through ads on Google and social networks, videos, blogs, and so on. It allows you to target the customer according to their preferred channel and to provide more information about the product as well.
13. Customer retargeting: Retargeting means showing ads to people who visited your site but didn‘t buy anything. Ecommerce simplifies retargeting by feeding data about customer visits and actions directly to advertising tools. With this information, you can then create targeted ads that appear in the Facebook feeds of those visitors, reminding them of the products. This makes ecommerce retargeting a powerful tool for recovering lost sales and driving repeat business.
14. Process Multiple Orders at Once: With e-commerce tools and sufficient hosting resources, it is possible to build an online store that can handle thousands of visitors and process hundreds of orders without slowing down. Even if the cheapest hosting is used, it is possible to handle to process multiple orders at once without needing extra hands.

Besides the advantages e-commerce also has various disadvantages as following:

1. Potential security threats: In the online business always potential security threats are existed. Poor website security can allow unauthorized users to gain access to the website and look at sensitive data. In few cases, issues with payment processors may lead to data breaches that put customers’ electronic payment card information at risk. By securing e-commerce websites properly with up-to-date technology security threat can be handled efficiently.
2. Limited connection with customer: Connection with customers on a personal level is not possible for e-commerce online business transaction. Some customers may prefer personal touch during shopping which cannot be served by business at the time of making online sale. While some customers may appreciate the convenience of remote transactions. Shoppers interact with the website, and then orders are you processed by seller. This limited connection doesn’t allow the personal feel most people get when they frequent physical stores. This can be mitigated by using personalized shopping experience strategies.
3. Shipping Logistics: Shipping logistics includes getting the goods to the buyers on time and in perfect condition. Shipping logistics is a problem in many cases including when a third party delivery service provider is used. Sellers do not have much control on delivery providers. Many customers are reluctant to shop online as it takes too long for their purchase to be delivered. It is vital, therefore, that to be upfront about delivery time, shipping methods, and even return policies with customers. Using established shipping carriers to reduce disappointment can cost more than regular delivery companies.
4. Technical issues: There are no tech issues that can keep seller from accepting cash at a physical store, but technical issues can be a big problem for e-commerce websites. If ecommerce website suddenly crashes or having a problem with payment processor, that downtime could potentially cost of money and customers. What’s even worse is that fixing these technical issues could cost even more. Keeping it simple can help avoid the ecommerce business some of the potential the issues that come with e-commerce, but tech problems are something to be aware of.
5. Lack of immersive experience: While technologies like augmented reality and live shopping have made ecommerce more immersive, there are still areas where it doesn‘t quite measure up to shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. For example, when shopping for clothes, many people want to feel the fabric and see the colors in natural light. Despite virtual fitting rooms and detailed product descriptions, this physical interaction is hard to replicate online. As a result, businesses focused solely on online sales might not capture customers who prioritize these in-store experiences.
6. Legal issues: There are many legalities and policies to comply with depending on your choice of platform, nature of operations, and location. Payment processors also have rules that you must comply with. The nature of your online business might require to get extra license and accreditation. Ecommerce business conducting country or the targeted audience country might have rules regarding how the business access, store, and use customer data. The business may also have to comply with taxation laws and anti-laundry requirements.

Today e-commerce is essential for each consumer product business to start and sustain in the business. To make the product and the business known to all by making it available near to them easily ecommerce is essential. E-commerce provides various facilities including convenience for customers with 24/7 accessibility, a wider product range, easy price comparison, and global reach, etc. to make the products available to a large number of users and audience within a short time. By taking proper steps regarding securing transaction, data, etc., making required arrangement for reaching of goods to buyers on time, taking proper steps to make shopping through ecommerce enjoyable and reliable to its users and by removing inconvenience of shoppers, ecommerce can gain maximum market share of the most of the business. World will observe various change in ecommerce sector in its services in various dimension in coming days.