What is E-Commerce and E-Greetings?

We live in a world where there is a lot of chaos, we want everything to be done quickly or fast which lead to the need for E-commerce sites and E- Greetings. So, what are they? Are we know enough about them? Let’s find out in this article.

E-commerce

E-commerce or Electronic commerce means buying or selling via the internet or a commercial transaction which is happened over the internet called E-commerce. Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, Myntra, and Nykaa are some good examples of E-commerce sites. Anyone who has an internet connection and a device can participate in an E-commerce activity. Popularly there are two types of E-commerce one is shopping and another is trading in the stock. E-commerce has lots of benefits the very first is it saves your time. Not only this you can expand your business globally.

E-commerce offers us convenience, being at home you can buy grocery to furniture, with doorstep delivery, isn’t it cool? E-commerce has given us the freedom to choose and compare whatever we want to buy.

E-commerce Business Models

E-commerce business models can be classified into 4 categories:

Business to consumer (B2C) 

Business to consumer (B2C) E-commerce is a model where the sale of the product is between the business concern to the end-users. In this business, the model seller is the business concern person and the consumer is the buyer. Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra are some good examples where consumers are the end-users.

Business to Business(B2B)

Business to Business(B2B) e-commerce, in this business model sale or exchange of a product held between the two firm. For example, a phone manufacturer purchases a battery from another firm.

Consumer to Consumer(C2C) 

Consumer to Consumer(C2C) e-commerce, in this model both the party, is consumer, individual sells his/her product through the internet to other individuals. For example, OLX where a person sells his/her old product online.

Business to Employee(B2E)

Business to Employee(B2E)e-commerce, is also called intra business e-commerce where companies provide product or services to their employee. This model does not generate any revenue, however, it increases the company’s profit by reducing expenses within the company. Online insurance policy management is one of the examples of Business to Employee(B2E)e-commerce.

Social Impact

Every technology brings changes to the world. Have you notices what are the changes brings by e-business? Let’s discuss one by one:

Increase in internet use

There was some time when professionals use the internet and computer but with time the technology becomes user-friendly, and we can see it at every home. E-commerce has influenced many individuals to start their business online, and many individuals to shop online. During COVID times we have seen many people rely on e-commerce for buying grocery to furniture.

Expansion of business

Well, there were times when businessman limited to their cities, as travelling cost them a lot. But, by the arrival of e-commerce any business can reach anywhere, it does not have any geographical barrier.

Improved customer service

 Since going business online means you have to face a lot of competition, as you have to stay globally. Due to this, every company tries to improve their service to attract more customers and this led to improved customer services. Also, technology tools enable companies to solve the queries of many customers at the same time.

Increased efficiency

In offline stores, there is huge cost like you have to set up a store with a good interior, also give jobs to the employee. There are some problems as the offline store cannot be able to handle many customers at the same time, while in the case of e-commerce, reduces the efforts of an individual. So within a limited number of employees, you can earn more profit than offline stores.

E-Greetings

E-Greetings or Electronic greetings are similar to a greeting card or a postcard, but only one difference is that it created via digital medium rather than cardboard or paper. E-cards are made available by the publishers where they can send to the receiver through an email. Blue Mountain Arts and eGreetings Portal are some examples of E-card. E-Greeting is considered more eco-friendly than the traditional one as there is no usage of paper which reduce carbon footprint. Here sender can send a message to many people at once. Isn’t it cool?

In E-greetings sender need to go to any publisher’s website that made E-greetings. From there they can choose their favorite template from the catalogue. Afterwards, they can customize the template by adding messages, photos and videos. Finally, they have to drop the email ID of the recipient and then the website will deliver their message on the behalf of the sender. It just sounds like postman delivers your message. But it saves a lot of time as well as it is an eco-friendly method.

Types of E-Greetings

So E-Greetings are of 5 types let’ see them one by one:

Flash animation

This type of E-Greeting typically based on 2d vector animation that is controlled by a scripting language. The type is very interactive like it asked the user to choose images to animate.

Video E-cards

This type of E-card used a combination of customizing video and text for the senders, so can they send an interactive card to their recipient.

Mobile E-cards

Nowadays, Multimedia Messaging Service becomes more popular since the arrival of mobile phone. Today you can send your E-card through WhatsApp, Facebook etc.

Web-based Multimedia E-cards

In this type of E-card user has more options to create their greeting card, they can drag and drop images, customize backgrounds and also the handwriting. This type gives more freedom to the user to customize the greeting card of their own choice.

Advantages of E-Greetings

E-greeting cards have a lot of benefits like it saves money, time and most importantly eco-friendly in nature. Let’s look at the merits of using E-Greetings:

Personalization

E-Greeting gives a lot of freedom in terms of creativity as you already know how much we can do with E-greetings like we can add images, video and customize it with our choices which were not possible in offline postcards where all you can do is to pick a card within a limited postcard. Also, the catalogue of E-greetings is quite bigger than the offline greeting cards, and again you have too many options.

Cost-Effective and speed

So E-Greeting is quite cheaper than the regular greeting cards, and you do not need much money to deliver it, the recipient. At the time it takes few minutes to sent your E-card to the recipient. 

Measurable

With the advancement of technology, you can track your E-cards. Earlier this was not the case there are multiple times postmen deliver our cards to the wrong address, and sometimes they lost it. But, now your every E-card will be sent to the correct Email address, and you have the technology to track it.

Eco-Friendly

The most important advantage of using E-cards as it saves paper. Do you know how many trees cut for making paper? E-cards have nothing to do with paper, the good graphics can be made without the single-use of paper. E-cards made us socially responsible as it reduces carbon footprint.

Demerits

Yes, there are some demerits of E-cards too! Firstly it lacks the human touch. Earlier, posting greeting cards and postcards have had a lot of emotions involved as it was a handwritten card and sometimes handwritten greeting cards. So this void cannot be filled. The other one is digital literacy, like not everyone fully aware of the e-card at the same time they do not know how to use it.