An example of e-commerce application is an online ordering website in a restaurant. EFELLE MEDIA allow restaurants to improve their services by providing solutions through designing E-Commerce websites for restaurants. The websites are easily manageable and requires no knowledge of website design and development. The restaurant ordering websites gives managers a chance to make frequent updates regarding the online menu, lists of available products, and the vacant rooms while seated in their offices. The online restaurant ordering website may has the following features as listed below (Efellemedia, 2011).
Menu management
Awards and testimonials
Downloads
Streaming Videos
User Management
Online Invitations
Directions to the restaurant
Employees’ list
Sing-in guest books
Restaurant Newsletters
Using E-Commerce Website in restaurant ordering is very different from the normal way of doing business in very many ways. To start with before the introduction of e-commerce, customers used to walk into the restaurants and wait for the waiters to place their orders. With the availability of e-commerce customers make orders from their homes using their personal computers or internet enabled phones. Some restaurants go as far as making home deliveries relieving the customers time spent in walking into the restaurant. Secondly before the introduction of e-commerce, customers used to check the hotel menu only inside the hotel building. Somebody could order for a meal only to be told it is not available. With e-commerce websites, customers are able to check the menu online, which indicates the available meals, prices, and their nutritional values. On the other hand, restaurant e-commerce websites have made the work of restaurant managers easier. Before the introduction of internet, managers could call for meetings in case they want to address a certain issues. Additionally, they had a hard task of manually writing work schedules, changing menus, and doing all hotel activities. With the presence of e-commerce, managers just send memos to individual employees’ emails, allocation of duties is done online, and menu updates are done frequently (Revolutionunlimited, 2012).
Explain what e-commerce is and the pros/ cons of it
The use of electronic communication in doing business is referred to Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce). E-Commerce finds application while doing business-to-business transactions or business-to-consumer transactions. E-Commerce has brought about breaking old methods of doing business transactions into new advanced methods that are more convenient and cost effective. The most used tool in E-commerce is the internet since it allows effective business communication (Dansum Dutch Technology, 2011). Many organizations have developed e-commerce websites for their business transactions, in order to cope with the daily advancing technology.
The introduction of e-commerce has brought about many benefits as discussed below. First an organization experiences reduced costs of operations in areas of labor, reduced paper work, and the number of errors are minimized while entering the data. Secondly e-commerce saves time needed in doing certain operations within a business organization. Operations take a short time to process leading to increased delivery rates. E-commerce has also enabled small organizations make big transactions thus boosting their economies. This enhances long-term business transactions with partners since communication is made easier, which in return improves flexibility of doing business. Finally, E-Commerce has given organizations a chance to enter into new markets both locally and internationally. Using the internet in doing business transactions gives entrepreneurs a chance of expanding their businesses into more competitive grounds. This enables business owners build the necessary business strategies in order to win more customers and enter to a more challenging marketplace (Dansum Dutch Technologies, 2011).
On the other hand, use of the e-commerce website has the following shortcomings. First the websites are a bit complex thus requiring experienced people to use them. Developing the website is also a hard task especially where the required codes are hard to obtain. The issue of internet security has brought a lot of concern where people hack into organizations websites and steal from them. Still on this security issue, customers end up being conned by people who use a company’s name to rob people. The third disadvantage concerns data protection. Computer viruses are known to destroy all the available data in a computer system, and this makes organizations lose some of their important documents. In addition, viruses lead to unnecessary delays, problems with storage, and failure of backup files. Finally, e-commerce has a problem when it comes to products that customers cannot purchase online. A company investing in sales of furniture and home furnishing will have difficulties in selling their products online. Purchase of some material like a sofa requires the customer’s presence to look at its quality and fill it before purchasing. Selling such material through the internet would be more costly (Manjeetss, 2012).
Who uses e-commerce when did it start, where is it going; the future of e-commerce
E-commerce finds use in business organizations, institutions, corporate companies, and individual business transactions. E-commerce started back in 1980 in U.S.A when individual business people could exchange emails concerning their businesses’ new strategies. During this period, Electronic malls were introduced whereby customers could purchase products online (Roos, 2012). With the internet use being the current lifestyle in every business e-commerce is likely to grow with a very high rate in the coming years. In years to come all transactions involving exchange of goods and services will be through the internet. According to According to Search Engine Journal (2012), e-commerce will continue its application and people business people should learn to adapt into new technologies.
Dansum Dutch Technologies. (2011). E-Commerce: What is Electronic Commerce. Retrieved
http://www.dutchtechnologies.com/content.php?id=e-commerce
Efellemedia. (2011). Online Ordering Websites for Restaurants. Retrieved from:
http://www.efellemedia.com/service/ecommerce-web-design/online-ordering-websites-for-restaurants
Manjeetss. (2012). Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Commerce. Retrieved from:
http://www.manjeetss.com/articles/advantagesdisadvantagesecommerce.html
Revolutionunlimited. (2012). 5 Benefits of an E-Commerce Restaurant Website. Retrieved from:
http://www.revolutionunlimited.com/news-and-articles/ecommerce/2010-11-09/5-benefits-of-an-e-commerce-restaurant-website/
Roos, D. (2012). History of E-commerce. Retrieved from:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/history-e-commerce1.htm`
SearchEngine Journal. (2012). The Future of E-Commerce and Online Business. Retrieved from:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-future-of-e-commerce-and-online-business/27002/
