What is E-Commerce?

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, is a type of industry where buying and selling of product or service is conducted over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce,electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the transaction's life-cycle, although it may encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices social media, and telephones as well. Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of business transactions.

There are a number of different types of E-commerce. Five types of e-commerce: B2B-Business to business It is the largest form of E-commerce. It is also known as E-biz or sometimes E-tailing. B2B is the type of E-commerce between Businesses. Buyer and Seller are two entities. For example: Dell computer corporation. B2C-Business to consumers Indirect trade between the company and consumers. Direct selling through online. For example: Home shop 18,Star CJ etc.

 C2B Consumer to business: Customer requests a specific service from business. For example: : online advertisement by AMAZON and GOOGLE B2E-Business to employee: It is also known as INTRANET. Accessible within the organizations network. Access is restricted by sign in id and password. For example: Century link Business telecommunications,US. M-commerce-Mobile commerce: Transactions are carried out through mobile phone. Involves the changes of rights and goods to utilize goods and related services. For example: Money transfer services provided by AIRTEL. C2C consumer to cunsumer: Direct dealing of goods or services amongst people. Auction sites are mostly used in c2c. Some consumer lists the item for sale with site. Other consumers access the site and place bids on the items. For example: OLX.in

Advantages and Disadvantages of E-commerce

Advantages of E-commerce: Lower transaction costs-automization reduces the transaction costs Global location-online store can be accessed from any corner of the world. Business hours 24/7-onine store remains open 24/7 Easy shelves arrangement-all products are available to users. Convenient shopping facility for the customers. More customer interactions. Cross sales feature increases number of purchases per transactions.

Disadvantages of E-commerce: Lack of personal touch. Delays in goods-takes longer to deliever goods Many goods cannot be purchased online e.g. perishable and odd-sized Doesnt allow trial of products before purchase. Insecure to make payments because you need to provide credit card details and mailing information.

About olx One of the worlds biggest free online classified! Its a unique platform for people to buy or sell items from an array of products & services like cars, electronics, real estate,jobs & more. The company was co-founded in March 2006 by Internet entrepreneurs Fabrica Grinda and Alec Oxenford. As of January 2013, OLX is available in 105 countries and 45 languages. OLX (on line exchange) offers a new generation of classified and auction service providing a more local service on a global level. OLX includes classified listings for jobs, housing, goods and services, personals, events and community, plus a wide variety of discussion forums. OLX is based in New York and has offices in Buenos Aires. OLX is a privately held company. OLX launch its web site in India back in 2006 with tag line SAB KUCH BIKTA HAI OLX using three step procedures for posting advertisement of product. Step 1st click on post a free ad

Step 2nd select a category

Step 3rd fill details about product and post it

SWOT ANALYSIS OF OLX SWOT analysis is a method for analysing a business, its resources, and its environment. STRENGTH : Easily available products that the customer need at good cost . Easily design rich colorful listings with pictures and videos. View OLX in your local language. Display your listings on your social networking profile (Facebook, Myspace, ...) Access the site from your mobile phone Control your selling, buying, and community activity in My OLX. Product can be sell or buy in quick time so time consuming than traditional way is slow.

WEAKNESSES : No assurance of quality. Fraud is possible. Cyber crime is possible while payment of money. Unskilled work force. Stock problems. Transportation is slow.

OPPORTUNITY : THREATS : So many compnies are there in this field like, eBay.in, Quikr.com, Sulekha.com, etc This competetors has good brand equity. People who want to buy can buy the produts that they exactly need. Sellers gets millions of buyers so they can sell products easily & gets good benifit. Jobs can also available. Real estate property can also available where customer required at good price.

Traffic goes to websites

clickindia.in sulekha.com ebay.in quikr.com olx.in 0 10 20 30

Comparison of OLX and QUIKR

The fight for supremacy in the online classifieds space has intensified recently, with aggressive mass media marketing of the two key players OLX and Quikr. While the former is a Latin American startup with a couple of years launch lead (OLX), the other is an Indian startup. Both companies are well-funded, though. OLX has reportedly raised around $28.5 million till date from a group of Silicon Valley VC firms and the Indian company has raised almost twice that amount. And the two seem to have left Craigslist (otherwise synonymous with the classifieds business globally) trailing despite the latter having an early-mover advantage. Well, relatively, of course, as Sulekha, Clickindia and other local classifieds have also been there for some time. Here, we will take a close look at the two classifieds beyond their marketing taglines OLXs Sab kuch bikta hain (everything sells) and Quikrs Sell anything Quikrrrr.

The companies While the Argentina-based classifieds site OLX was launched in India back in 2006, Quikr, the site run by Quikr Mauritius Holding Pvt Ltd, was started by Pranay Chulet (CEO) and Jiby Thomas (VP, marketing) in 2008. As of now, OLX is present in 96 countries and claims to have more than 100 million unique visitors globally every month. The latest Indian figures are not available but one year ago, the firm claimed 6-8 million unique visitors in the country, having tripled the mark, compared to 2010. It is currently present in 500 cities across India and supports Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi languages, apart from English. On the other hand, Quikr claims to get 24 million visitors each month across 65 or more cities in India, and there are over 20 lakh ads on Quikr. Heres a feature-by-feature comparison of both the sites and their offerings.

The sites Quikr offers classified ads in 12 categories (which are further split into a number of subcategories) including electronics & technology, home & lifestyle, real estate, cars & bikes, jobs, services, entertainment, education & learning, pets & pet care, community, events and matrimonial. OLX offers the ads under 8 categories (again divided into a number of subcategories) which include sale, community, classes, vehicles, real estate, services, jobs and matrimonial. Both sites have a search bar for users to look for the products they require. We have tried searching for a two-wheeler (both motorcycle and scooter) in Mumbai and got 4,132 results for the same on Quikr while OLX has come up with a whopping 11,919 results.

On Quikr, the results appeared as a list which can be further filtered by location, locality, ad type (buy or sell), condition (used or new), brand and individual/dealer posting. In contrast, OLX has shown a similar list but also offers a gallery view. These, too, can be filtered by location, locality, price, make (brand), seller type (individual or business), year of manufacturing, mileage and condition, which means you get more criteria and, therefore, more relevant results. We have also found a new feature on Quikr that enables users to sign up and receive special alerts (for free) that would match their requirements. For instance, if you are looking for a mobile phone, you can enter all the details like category (in this case, electronics and technology), subcategory (mobile phones), city, locality, whether you want to buy or sell, the required brand and your contact details. Once its done, the site will send you all relevant contacts via SMS and email.

Mobile apps Both companies offer mobile apps on a number of platforms. OLX has mobile apps for the iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian and BlackBerry platforms while Quikr apps are available on Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and Java (for feature phones) platforms, but it does not have apps for iOS or BlackBerry. The Quikr app also comes pre-loaded with a number of handsets, such as Nokia C2-03, Micromax A85 and Huawei Sonic. With the OLX app, users can search for ads around them (using their location); view ad descriptions with full screen photos; reply to ads from within the app; sell products and also manage buying, selling and community activities from My OLX (their accounts). One can also take a product snapshot with his/her camera phone, enter description and price, and post the ad instantly.

The Quikr app enables users to get instant alerts about latest jobs, products on sale and happening events (in their locality); allows them to SMS, call or e-mail right from their phones to complete transactions; click pictures and post those with the ads (similar to what OLX offers). Note that even without the apps, both sites can be accessed from the users mobile browsers. We have also compared OLX and Quikr apps statistics on Google Play. As of now, the Quikr Android app has a rating of 3.9 (with 465 reviews) and around 5,00,000 downloads in the past 30 days. The OLX Android app has a rating of 4.2 (with 5,761 reviews) and around 5 million downloads during the same timeframe. But then again, OLXs numbers are not limited to India alone.

What does Google Trends say? There are no easy ways to get the right grip on traffic and search statistics, and different traffic tracking sites seem to throw up very different results. So we have taken a random pick and placed the two sites on Google Trends to see who has an edge as far as search traffic is concerned. As the graph shows, Quikr, which came from behind to surpass OLX soon after its launch, has been overtaken again by OLX over the past one year. Although both have seen growth, OLX seems to have accelerated a bit more.