Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Online shopping


 The market size of the online shopping is expanding steadily and further technological innovation can help expand online shopping more and more in the future. Online shopping does not require having a brick and mortar shop, so there is no complicated procedure and can be opening without investing a lot of cost. Furthermore, an online shop does not spend as much money on expenses; so as a result, the buyer is able to buy products at a reasonable price.
 One of my favorite online companies is called Zappos .com, which is mainly selling shoes and clothing. The founder of Zappos.com is Nick Swinmum who was looking for his pair of athletic shoes in a mall and could not find shoes. This was his inspiration and an opportunity to opening his online store. [1]

Zappo.com founded in 1999, the company has grown rapidly in short time.  Advertising costs were minimal, and the company grew mostly by word of mouth.  In 2008, Zappos hit $1 billion in annual sales, two years earlier than expected (one year later, they fulfilled their other long-term goal, debuting at No. 23 on Fortune’s Top 100 Companies to Work For)[2]  The company provide excellent  customer service and  also shipping and handling is very fast.  Zappo.com has unique company policy. I watched company demonstration clip on you tube and looks very fun and creative work environment. This is one of the successful online businesses.  

 Online shopping is very convenient but buyers always have to be careful about Identity thefts. There is a lot of information about safety tips on web. Buyer has to choose a store with good reviews. That is very helpful to select a shop. Don’t judge the business by its website. Make sure the site has a physical address and a working phone number.[3] When a customer enters personal information and credit card number, they have to always check whether the website is encrypted or not.

Last year, I bought some products from a well-known company but debited from an unknown shop for 2 months. The amount was only $39.99 and did not realize it even I usually review a credit card bill. I called a credit company and explained about the strange unknown shop. They said this company was scam and located in somewhere in Caribbean. My personal information was stolen.
 I always careful when I do online shopping and apply safety tips. However, in addition to these safety tips, users can install web browsers. There is security web browser such as Internet Explorer 9. Tracking Protection in Internet Explorer 9 helps to protect your privacy from third-party online trackers.  Helps protect against cross-site scripting attacks. Cybercriminals look for vulnerabilities in website code so that they can insert malicious scripts which gather private information about site visitors. [4]   Firefox5, Google chrome 12, Opera 11, RockMelt, these are also safety web browsers.  Most websites describe product’s pros and cons. Users can research products and choose a suitable web browser. I see many products are able to download from web sites with no cost.

 In my conclusion, technology is keep evolving and improving. Most large online corporations are inventing new ways to make fraud more difficult. [5] In future, more people will be used advanced technology easily and effectively. I believe that number of online shopping sites and users will increased and get more popular; it will keep growing.

 

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/04/smallbusiness/zappos-swinmurn.fortune/index.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zappos.com

 [3] http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2005/november/online_shoptips112805


[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shopping#Fraud_and_security_concernsincreased.

 

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