The selling aspect of e-commerce doesn’t only involve selling tangible goods but also using internet technologies to market services.
Transactional websites enable you to purchase services or products online. The websites main contribution to this service is through the sale of the product and providing the corresponding information to facilitate the sale, on-line or off line. This is the most popular embodiment of the selling side of e-commerce and the most commonly associated with ‘e-commerce’ Most transactional websites these days are business to consumer sites, but there are a growing number of business to business suppliers on-line as the e-commerce world grows.
Relationship based websites provide information to stimulate purchases and build customer relationships. You will see this type of site more often in the business to business e-commerce and in the services industry. Products are not usually purchased on-line as this type of website is more of a sales tool. The website is built to provide information as to encourage off line sales and to generate leads from potential customers.
Websites can also purely provide information or news about a range of products. These websites have an array of options for generating revenue though affiliation, advertising, commission based sales or sales of customer data. Blogs can often cross over into this field as a targeted revenue stream though affiliations to appropriate products and services based on the general theme of the blog.
Some websites are built purely for branding purposes. The main focus of such a site is to support and strengthen the brand expanding its reach and influence among its target consumer. Again, you usually can not purchase online but sometimes the on-line interactivity of the brand. For example New Look Clothing. You can not purchase online but you can view the products and find your nearest store. This site makes sure the brand is correctly represented on the web.
These different classes of website all fall under the e-commerce banner with respect to selling.
