As the number of Internet users continues to grow, the success of
online shopping increases along with it. E-commerce is now a
significant niche in the market, with almost anything and everything
available to consumers on the Internet. Products vary greatly from
books, clothes, gadgets, to even food. There are uncountable websites
dedicated to the comfort of shopping at home while simply logged on to
the computer.
But the Internet shopping landscape during its
beginnings did not look like the open and densely populated market we
now know it to be. The first online store was Book Stacks Unlimited,
owned by Charles Stack and launched in 1992. Although the idea was
ingenious and led the way to future online bookstores, unfortunately,
weak implementation eventually led to its failure. Pizza Hut, surprising
to many, was also one of the pioneers of e-commerce, with it providing
an option of online ordering in one of its restaurants in California.
However, it did take several years before the test run expanded into a
fixed option for the company. In a nutshell, the early years of Internet
shopping were full of hits-and-misses, risks, some pay-offs but even
more loses.
