Introduction

The World Wide Web (no to be confused with the Internet) has become an infrastructure for a multi-billion dollar economy and is growing very rapidly. To make a quick analogy, the Internet is the infrastructure on which the World Wide Web runs on, it is the network of roads that links cities together and the World Wide Web is the malls, shops, museums and schools.

A few years ago, only a few businesses sold products or services on the web, most companies only had a couple of web pages that described their products and services. If you had to buy anything, you still had to call or visit their stores.

Today most large companies can sell you products ranging from a dishwasher to an LCD or Plasma flat panel to a mobile telephone telephone without the need to ever visit their stores or listen to a boring and aggressive salesperson. This is a welcomed convenience since it saves time and often quite a bit of money. You can compare prices with a few mouse clicks instead having to drive across town, fight for parking and try to beat the rush.

We can attribute this convenience to a revolution called E-Commerce.

E-Commerce (short for Electronic Commerce) by definition is commerce or trade conducted over an electronic medium such as the Internet's World Wide Web.