"Ecommerce offers the amazing benefit of making buying and selling products and services of the internet. And Ecommerce portals act as a gateway for people across the globe to make these transactions at the click of a button. For more details please visit - http://www.pixint.com"

1. Ecommerce Portals
Ecommerce offers the amazing benefit of making buying and selling products and
services of the internet. And Ecommerce portals act as a gateway for people across the
globe to make these transactions at the click of a button.
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

2. 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.
External Links:
Custom Web Application Development
Electronic Commerce
Source: USA Web Design
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