It feels like a new form of digital commerce is born every week at the moment, this post contains a comprehensive list of every type of commerce running from A – Z. Surprisingly 7 letters haven’t been associated with a particular form of commerce (yet), to accompany these letters I’ve highlighted great products and services from digital commerce related businesses. Read the whole article to find out who correctly identified all 25 Digital Brands in the collage above…
A – Agile Commerce- Optimising customer touchpoints, not channels. Read the Welcome to the Era of Agile Commerce – Forrester Whitepaper and watch the accompanying Webinar.
B – Blog Commerce – The art of using high quality editorial content to sell products.
C – Convergent Commerce – The coming together of mobile, e-commerce, catalogue and in-store channels to create a new customer engagement paradigm. Read more in the Digby whitepaper.
D – Digital Commerce – A form of e-commerce from companies that sell news, documents, subscriptions or any other content that can be delivered digitally.
E – Electronic Commerce – The buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet. Full definition and history on Wikipedia.
F – Facebook Commerce – Simply the selling on or through Facebook. The social media guru’s at Mashable explore the Four Types of F-Commerce.
G – Google Commerce Search – A powerful search solution, designed specifically for online and multi-channel retailers – Find out more about Google Commerce Search.
H – Hacker Commerce – The business of making money through the illegal use of technology to compromise personal and business data. Six part documentary, sponsored by McAfee – Stop H*Commerce.
I – Internet Commerce - An umbrella term that describes any form of revenue generated via use of the Internet. It is spelled with a capital “I” because that stands for Internet commerce, and Internet is capitalized.
J – Jigoshop – A newcomer to the world of WordPress eCommerce plug-ins, but one that looks superb and also offers a great feature set - Visit the Jigoshop site for an overview.
K - Knowledge Commerce is the trading of knowledge in a variety of forms using electronic networks. Although knowledge is already packaged and traded, as in the case of licenses for patent exploitation, the use of the Internet creates many for opportunities for profiting from investment in knowledge development. Find out more about K-Commerce.
L – Location-based Commerce is the practice of using technologies which provide location information, such as GPS, for business purposes.
M – Mobile Commerce represents a fundamental shift in the way consumers are discovering, buying and interacting with retailers. The mobile “tide” is moving fast, and retailers need to think strategically to ensure that their mobile channel is a long-term success and to capitalize on this unique opportunity to build lasting relationships with their customers. Take a look at the Digby whitepaper detailing the 7 steps to ensure your mobile channel is a long term success.
N – North Commerce – A street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin…Apologies, really struggled with N…
O – osCommerce – Powering over 12,500 stores online, this free open source e-commerce solution has acted as the inspiration for many on the new ‘open source’ ecommerce kids on the block.
P – Practical Ecommerce – A wealth on ecommerce insights for online merchants. This web portal combines detail articles, with opinionated blogs and insightful blogs and podcasts to act as a great source of e-commerce information.
Q – QR codes – Simply described as ‘the bridge between ecommerce and offline advertising’. The Digital Marketing Podcast recently revealled 25 inspirational uses of QR codes that should get your digital juices flowing.
R – Relationship Commerce – ecommerce, but with an emphasis on the relationship between the merchant and the consumer, as opposed to just selling the product. Terry Brock, gives an excellent overview over at Sales HQ.
S - Social Commerce: A subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services. Social Commerce Today offers an insight into every possible aspect of Social Commerce.
T – Tablet Commerce - The interface of a tablet is different than that of a desktop site. On a tablet, one doesn’t track clicks and mouse trails, but instead must focus on “smudges and swipes.” Multitouch functionality should be integrated into the site in appropriate areas, including 360-degree product photography spins and swiping through long product lists. Nice overview of Tablet Commerce from Alex Schmelkin on ECommerce Times.
U – Universal Commerce -is a dynamic convergence of the physical and the digital, the interface of brick-and-mortar commerce with Web-based wireless and other next-generation technologies in ways that will create new levels of convenience and value for buyers and sellers. Read more in this free whitepaper from Visa & Accenture.
V – Video Commerce – The rise of online video! Brands using online video have seen lifts of anywhere from 20 percent – 40 percent in terms of incremental buying. Brightcove (Great video hosts) and Adjust Your Set (Brilliant video agency) put together a idea inspiring Whitepaper – V-Commerce – The rise of online video .
W – WP e-Commerce – Having clocked up over 850,000 downloads this popular WordPress e-commerce plug-in is well worth find out more about: http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/.
X – X.Commerce - is one of the first platforms to enable developers, merchants and service providers to create innovative solutions in the commerce space. Full details will be shared with developers during the X.Commerce Innovate conference on Oct. 12-13 in San Francisco. Until then you can find out more at the X.Commerce website.
Y – Yahoo! Small Business e-Commerce solution is used by more Internet Retailer Top 500 retailers than any other hosted solution. Take a look at their site for the full feature set and pricing: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/ . Whilst your in the world of Yahoo! be sure to take a look at Yahoo! Web Analytics, a superb feature filled analytics solution.
Z – Zmags - CommercePro – Brings together interactive newsletters & brochures with powerful e-commerce functionality. This solution is available from Zmags, find out more on the Zmags site.
We have a winner…
To celebrate this blog post, my 50th one! I ran a competition to win a £50 iTunes voucher. Tom Robertshaw of Meanbee Internet Solutions got all 25 brands correct, after numerous other entrants faultered at the low 20′s mark.
In case you were wondering, here’s the full A-Z:
A – Amazon
B – B & Q
C – Curry’s
D & E – Dell
F – First Choice
G – Game
H – Halfords
I – Ikea
J – John Lewis
K – Kelkoo
L – Lovefilm
M – Miss Selfridge
N – next
O – O2
P – Play
Q – QVC
R – River Island
S – Sainsburys
T – Tesco
U – Urban Outfitters
V – very.co.uk
W – Wiggle
X – Xerox
Y – Yahoo
Z – Zappos
