B2B

Business to Business. Electronic commerce conducted between companies rather than between companies and consumers.

B2C

Business to Consumer. Electronic commerce aimed at selling to consumers rather than other companies.

Bandwidth

A measure of how much information a site can exchange with the Internet. Usually measured in bits-per-second.

Check out

Process of finalising an order for the items in the Shopping Cart, suppling delivery information and paying for the goods.

Cross Promotion

Promoting a website through other channels. These include advertising in traditional media, inclusion of web address in all company materials, e-zines, etc.

Cross-Selling

Showing an e-commerce customer other goods related to those already chosen. For example, someone who has chosen a laptop computer could be shown cases and other accessories relevant to that model. This is a merchandising technique supported by EDO Retail

Desination site

A website or online service containing so much information that users spend substantial periods of time on it. www.online.ie and IrishAbroad.com are destination sites. See also Portal.

E-commerce

Electronic Commerce. Doing business electronically to lower the cost of transactions, gain extra customers and increase the turnover of existing customers.

Encryption

Scrambling of information such as credit card information to protect it from unauthorised access.

E-zine

Electronic Magazine or email newsletter. Publishing a good e-zine can be a key technique for retaining customers, informing them of special offers and promoting a website.

Feed

Stream of information supplied by an organisation such as a news agency for use on a website. EDO Publish has a sophisticated system for managing news feeds.

Fulfilment

Processing payments, packing, despatching and delivering goods to fulfil orders that have been placed electronically.

Full service

EDO Software Services offers a full service for selling and publishing online, including design, implementation, site creation, hosting and management. Most e-business companies offer only some of these services.

Hit

Every file sent across the Internet from a web server is recorded as a "hit" by the server. Most web pages contain many files for graphics and pictures so reading a single page results in multiple hits. A more useful statistic for web traffic is "page impressions".

Hosting

Storing the information for a website or online store on a computer connected to the Internet. The hosting function includes making backup and security arrangements to protect the information and monitoring the web server.

Inventory control

System to monitor stock levels on an e-commerce site. When stocks run low the item can be removed from sale or an alert raised for the merchant to re-order.

ISP

Internet Service Provider. A company that provides access to the Internet.

Merchandising

Maximising sales by intelligent presentation of information. This is important in traditional retailing but e-commerce offers a range of extra techniques for doing so, including Promotional pricing, Upselling and Cross-selling. EDO Retail provides easy tools for merchandising.

Offline Transaction Processing

Capture of order and credit card information for later authorisation and processing through a card swipe terminal or a computer.

Order Management System

Software that cA system that accepts orders and initiates a process that results in the outbound shipment of a finished good.

Page Impressions

The number of full pages viewed on a web site. Site traffic is generally measured in page impressions per month.

PIPM

Page impressions per month. See Page Impressions

Portal

Large website that endeavours to become the main point of entry to the Internet for as many users as possible.

Real Time Credit Card Processing

Authorisation of a credit card payment immediately after a purchaser has entered the information. This is particularly important for soft goods such as music or software that can be downloaded immediately from a website.

Registration

Process by which users of a website or online store register as members. Registered members usually receive extra benefits

Scalable

A system that can grow to meet changing business needs without requiring major modification. EDO Publish, for example, can be used for sites ranging from tens of page up to tens of thousands of pages.

Secure Connection

System for protecting information in transit across the Internet by encrypting it.

Security

This is a major concern for people shopping online. E-commerce providers deal with these concerns through a range of measures including Secure Connections for sensitive data, protecting credit card information and putting measures in place to protect websites against unauthorised access.

Standards-based

Computer systems that use widely recognised standards for information storage and processing. Such systems technology, Standards-based technologies refers to any end-user application which is based on universally excepted technologies such as HTTP, TCP/IP,

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