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The online market is expanding; in this month alone UK shoppers spent more than £1 billion online. The four weeks leading up to Christmas were exceptionally busy, with the mail companies being over stretched and over worked to ensure delivery of those online purchases. However, there was a time when shopping online was looked down upon and thought as a “bad” idea. So how has it come to this?
Well to start with the Internet was relatively insecure. People would be hacked and it was generally and unsafe place to be. There are a lot of horror stories from the early Internet days. Not many sites existed yet the people who used it, mostly businesses, were constantly under attack. So shopping was a relatively bad idea with all of the problems addresses could have slipped out and credit card details sent across the Internet.
It did not help the online business when banks started to introduce online services. This caused major news stories due to the mass amount of people that would bring up other peoples details as they tried to log on to their own account. Huge national stories scared people from giving out details online and therefore slowed down the growth of the online era.
These problems were rapidly fixed, with the banks taking a lot of flak. So this caused Internet security to be massively restructured. Firewalls were used more often to avoid hackers and Virus checkers were made more commercial to avoid unnecessary damage to people computers. Also, a lot of Internet shopping sites were given certificates to clarify security. These would last a year and would only be given if that shop was a secure place to shop. Another feature was that more and more shops were running on secured servers.
Today we have a huge security measures and thousands of online shops to chose from. Now the only problem is finding the cheapest price. Sites like kelkoo.com help you to find the cheapest place, but they do not have all the web shops in their database so it is still a hard task. You can use search engines for items, but if you do not know the site URL it is hard to find that site, unless it is a huge shop like Special Reserve or Amazon.
Although in a way this is a good thing, because sites will be competing to be the cheapest. Some sites do second hand items too. This is great, site such as ebay.com are used as a bidding site for people all over the world to get rid of those unwanted items they have. This will get the consumer a cheap item and one that they wanted. However, there is still one problem. If the seller is not a reliable one, then u might get a dodgy item and then that person might have gone away with your money. At least with a shop you have somewhere to complain to.
The big online shops are also advertising a lot on other sites. A good example of this is Special Reserve having an advert on the Electronic Arts web page. This would attract lots of business and is very convenient for the shopper who wants to find a place to buy a certain item. Unfortunately, some adverts have a down side. An example of this would be the BT Broadband advert, it would show a download going ad then how it would speed up with their broadband. Unfortunately, this gave some people the idea that a virus was being downloaded into their system and this caused annoyance. Pop-up adverts are also a terrible thing. They cause great annoyance and are a plain nuisance, for they are only closed and are rarely actually read.
Now though, it is exceptionally easy to order online, sometimes more convenient as well. Getting an item through the post means that you will not have to leave your house, which for some people is a good thing. However, the post can go wrong. Items can get lost or “misplaced” and sometimes damaged. Although, not serious (replacements can be acquired) it is still an annoyance to say the least. Getting faulty items is also annoying, because you will have to go through a lot of palaver to get a replacement and to send back your faulty item.
The online market has come a hellishly long way over the past decade. Yet, it is still expanding now.
Thank you for reading
Parr
I bid you all a Happy New Year
Submit your pictures of cheese.
Oh yes.
It's cheaper, quite often, and a lot easier. You don't even have to get up off your backside to go outside.
Luxury.
Sure, some stuff is faulty, but it still rocks anyway. :-D
Nicely written.
The online market is expanding; in this month alone UK shoppers spent more than £1 billion online. The four weeks leading up to Christmas were exceptionally busy, with the mail companies being over stretched and over worked to ensure delivery of those online purchases. However, there was a time when shopping online was looked down upon and thought as a “bad” idea. So how has it come to this?
Well to start with the Internet was relatively insecure. People would be hacked and it was generally and unsafe place to be. There are a lot of horror stories from the early Internet days. Not many sites existed yet the people who used it, mostly businesses, were constantly under attack. So shopping was a relatively bad idea with all of the problems addresses could have slipped out and credit card details sent across the Internet.
It did not help the online business when banks started to introduce online services. This caused major news stories due to the mass amount of people that would bring up other peoples details as they tried to log on to their own account. Huge national stories scared people from giving out details online and therefore slowed down the growth of the online era.
These problems were rapidly fixed, with the banks taking a lot of flak. So this caused Internet security to be massively restructured. Firewalls were used more often to avoid hackers and Virus checkers were made more commercial to avoid unnecessary damage to people computers. Also, a lot of Internet shopping sites were given certificates to clarify security. These would last a year and would only be given if that shop was a secure place to shop. Another feature was that more and more shops were running on secured servers.
Today we have a huge security measures and thousands of online shops to chose from. Now the only problem is finding the cheapest price. Sites like kelkoo.com help you to find the cheapest place, but they do not have all the web shops in their database so it is still a hard task. You can use search engines for items, but if you do not know the site URL it is hard to find that site, unless it is a huge shop like Special Reserve or Amazon.
Although in a way this is a good thing, because sites will be competing to be the cheapest. Some sites do second hand items too. This is great, site such as ebay.com are used as a bidding site for people all over the world to get rid of those unwanted items they have. This will get the consumer a cheap item and one that they wanted. However, there is still one problem. If the seller is not a reliable one, then u might get a dodgy item and then that person might have gone away with your money. At least with a shop you have somewhere to complain to.
The big online shops are also advertising a lot on other sites. A good example of this is Special Reserve having an advert on the Electronic Arts web page. This would attract lots of business and is very convenient for the shopper who wants to find a place to buy a certain item. Unfortunately, some adverts have a down side. An example of this would be the BT Broadband advert, it would show a download going ad then how it would speed up with their broadband. Unfortunately, this gave some people the idea that a virus was being downloaded into their system and this caused annoyance. Pop-up adverts are also a terrible thing. They cause great annoyance and are a plain nuisance, for they are only closed and are rarely actually read.
Now though, it is exceptionally easy to order online, sometimes more convenient as well. Getting an item through the post means that you will not have to leave your house, which for some people is a good thing. However, the post can go wrong. Items can get lost or “misplaced” and sometimes damaged. Although, not serious (replacements can be acquired) it is still an annoyance to say the least. Getting faulty items is also annoying, because you will have to go through a lot of palaver to get a replacement and to send back your faulty item.
The online market has come a hellishly long way over the past decade. Yet, it is still expanding now.
Thank you for reading
Parr
I bid you all a Happy New Year