AE-commerce was invented in 1979 by Michael Aldrich in the United Kingdom when he developed a connection between a domestic television, a telephone, and a processing computer. The market was launched in 1980 and was focused on business to business transactions that allowed for goods merchandizing between the UK, Ireland and Spain. The consumer shopping experience was first recorded in 1992 when an online bookstore was created by Charles M. Stack in 1992 and was named as Book Stacks Unlimited.

The first online transaction occurred between Stanford and MIT students when they were exchanging recreational drugs through Arpanet account in their artificial labs in 1972. The official online transaction occurred after 22 years in 1994 when two individuals exchange CD with the safe transfer of funds. The event was reported in the New York Times and was hailed as the prime event of the future.

The E-commerce Timeline:

The e-commerce timeline is a significant establishment as it shows the development of the process of online marketing as it developed throughout the decades.

1960-1982

This was the incubation period of e-commerce. E-commerce emerged almost at the same time as the internet in the early 1970s but as monetary issues are complex, the process was not considered reliable or trustworthy by most individuals. As stated earlier, the process was taken step by step but mainly, the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) became the replacement for conventional mailing and faxing systems. The new system was considered highly sophisticated and was exclusively used by high en clients alone. The system was detailed and did not have any role for human interference in the process. The lack of human contact in any form also allowed the company to present the process as more reliable than the alternative because the product was not being transaction through humans. As the basic idea follows that computerized transactions will be more accurate and will be immune to error, the result was that the product was deemed error-free.

1982-1990

The era of B2B transactions of e-commerce began but business to consumer transactions was not possible until the internet was invented. It has to be noted here, that the e-commerce between businesses was launched before the invention of the internet. In 1982, Minitel was launched by France that was a prototype for the internet. The initial stayed in business for the next thirty years providing internet solutions to the local French market.

The World Wide Web:

In 1990, Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau published a project known as world wide web. The project was inspired by another project that was designed by CERN. The project was materialized by 1991 and the internet became publicly available. The duo developed URL, HTML, and HTTP that allowed the internet to become connectable to the larger audience. In 1991, online shopping was increasing exponentially when the internet became available for commercial usage. The internet had 120,000 registered users were available in 1995. That number grew to 2 million in the next three years and then the internet became the focus of the commercial sector. The security protocol Secure Socket Layers (SSL) was developed that allowed the user to safely transmit their data from one point to another over the internet. The SSL could be authenticated by the site user and the site trust could be established based on these authentications.

The 90s to the Present:

The era of e-commerce dawned with the launch of Amazon in 1995 when a commercial site was launched exclusively with the intention to sell the product through the third party. Ever since its launch, Amazon has grown into the largest online retailer in the world. They have succeeded with an exceptionally simple model; by not having any physical space. If Amazon had tried to store the product and sell, they would be limited to a few products that would reduce their market. They simply drove contracts with owners of other shops who simply registered on their website. If a client buys a product from a store than Amazon makes money in the form of a profit and is simply not a part of the retention and protection of the product. The delivery of the product was a responsibility of Amazon that they successfully adhered to without any issues. Many e-commerce stores emerged in line with Amazon but few could sustain themselves over long periods of time eBay was also launched in 1995 that was an auction site that is still well sustained. The merchandising through online portals in 2018was recorded as $901.7million globally.

The 1990s also became the decade when all major businesses launched themselves online and began selling their products on their online portal for the convenience of their consumer.

Written By: Signs Wholesale Now Inc