The early internet network was developed by a consortium of individuals, government entities, universities, and private corporations in the 1960s and 1970s. “Online shopping” was introduced in the U.K. in 1979 by connecting television and phone lines to facilitate at home purchases. After more research and planning Tim Berners-Lee proposed a project that would eventually be called the World Wide Web (W3) in 1989. This eventually let to the creation of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and the first web browser created by Berners-Lee called WorldWideWeb. Later, in 1993 a graphical web browser called Mosaic was introduced. In 1994 SSL (secure sockets layer) was created which allows information to be exchanged between web browsers and web servers securely. It was at this point that many of the household names we know today entered E-Commerce (1995: Amazon & eBay formed).
It was at this time when domain names started selling faster. Then in the late 90s domain registrars started dropping prices and by early 2000s domains and web hosting were cheap enough for nearly everyone to own. With the further development of web hosting control panels like cPanel, Plesk, and Ensim users were able to start installing shopping cart software with ease and merchant accounts became cheaper and easier to setup. So now, it takes less than a day to get an entire eCommerce website up and running.
If you're interested in eCommerce tools and selling your products online you'll need the following:
- Domain Name
- Web Hosting Package
- SSL Certificate
- Shopping Cart Software
- Internet Merchant Account
- Products to Sell
- Advertising Plan
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