E-Commerce is way of doing business transactions electronically. The first wave of doing business was exchange of information. The word electronically here in this context means that in E-Commerce business transactions gets completed via electronic medium. This electronic medium mostly uses computers on Internet. The transaction may also be done through mobile that is mobile then it is mobile commerce. Mobile commerce is a subset of E-Commerce.

Several simple example of E-Commerce includes:

An individual purchases a book on Internet

An individual withdraws funds from ATM

A retailer orders merchandise using an EDI network or suppliers extranet

An individual or business calls a toll free number and orders the requirements using the seller's interactive telephone system.

A manager orders office supplies for his office using Internet on a commercial website to seller.

An employee reserves a ticket for airline or railways or if he reserves a room in a hotel using the Internet by surfing the related website using a few clicks of mouse.

Complex example may include:

A student visits the website of a bookstore on Internet and makes inquiries about the availability of an out of stock book. The bookstore employee downloads the digital copy of book and prints it along with cover. Until and unless agreement to purchase on this computer mediated network does not occur there is no E-Commerce transaction.

Factors which mainly affect E-Commerce transactions are:

Capital Availability: There should be sufficient source of capital available with Internet based companies so that the can handle their business transactions in a comfortable manner without doing any delay for payments.

Technology: The technology being used by the Internet based companies affects the business. Companies doing E-Commerce transactions should armed themselves with latest and largely acceptable technologies because outdated technologies can bring unpredictable, disastrous and hazardous results and can ruin their businesses. Example:

If a person is doing electronic transactions but the antivirus that he is using is of older version which is neither able to detect nor stop the entry of newest viruses. Now as a result of which it is possible that some virus may creep into local file system of operating system without user knowledge and permission and will look for important account information like username of soma accounts and password etc and then can pass this vital information to the virus creator. This will enable these virus creators to enter into users account without his knowledge and permission and commit thefts like cases. So it is advised to every user involved in electronic transaction to use the latest released versions of antivirus and antivirus should be a reputed one in market like Norton and PC Cillin etc.

Language: Many E-Commerce innovations originate in US and thus language mostly used is English. So people who are not very fluent in English and do not possess good communication skills will not be able to complete E-Commerce transactions comfortably.

Attitude: To facilitate E-Commerce requires possessing of an attitude that is open to change, innovation etc. People should be able to accept E-Commerce transactions over manual handling of transactions.