General Terms
E-Commerce
Digital buying and selling of goods and services through online platforms and marketplaces.
Definition
E-commerce encompasses all commercial transactions conducted electronically over the internet, including retail sales, digital products, services, and B2B transactions. It integrates multiple systems including product catalogs, shopping carts, payment processing, inventory management, and order fulfillment to create seamless online shopping experiences.
Examples
Online retail stores with integrated payment processing
Subscription-based digital service platforms
Multi-channel retail operations combining online and offline sales
Social shopping experiences with instant checkout
Best Practices
- ✓Optimize product discovery and search functionality
- ✓Implement secure payment processing
- ✓Streamline checkout process to reduce abandonment
- ✓Maintain accurate inventory synchronization
- ✓Provide clear shipping and return policies
- ✓Ensure mobile-first shopping experiences
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about E-Commerce, answered.
What is e-commerce?
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services over the internet — from online stores and marketplaces to digital products and subscriptions. It spans the full transaction online: discovery, browsing, payment, and fulfillment. For marketers, e-commerce is the context for most direct-response advertising, where ads drive measurable online purchases tracked end to end.
What are the main e-commerce models?
Common ones include B2C (business to consumer), B2B (business to business), D2C/DTC (brands selling direct to consumers, bypassing retailers), marketplace (platforms hosting many sellers), and subscription/recurring commerce. There's also social commerce (selling within social platforms) and dropshipping. The model shapes the marketing approach, margins, and metrics that matter.
What metrics matter most in e-commerce?
Conversion rate, average order value (AOV), customer acquisition cost (CAC), return on ad spend (ROAS), customer lifetime value (LTV), repeat-purchase and retention rates, and cart-abandonment rate. The health of an e-commerce business comes from the relationship between what it costs to acquire a customer (CAC) and what that customer is worth over time (LTV), with AOV and conversion rate as key levers.
How does advertising drive e-commerce sales?
Through the full funnel: awareness ads build demand, consideration content and retargeting nurture intent, and conversion ads (shopping, dynamic product, retargeting cart abandoners) drive purchases. E-commerce advertising is highly measurable — conversions, revenue, and ROAS track directly to ads — and leans heavily on strong product creative, social proof, offers, and frictionless paths to checkout.
What's the role of product feeds in e-commerce advertising?
Product feeds power dynamic and shopping ads — a structured file of your catalog (titles, prices, images, availability) that platforms use to automatically generate and personalize product ads at scale, including retargeting shoppers with the exact items they viewed. A clean, complete, up-to-date feed is foundational to e-commerce advertising; feed quality directly affects which products show, how they're matched, and how well dynamic campaigns perform.
