If you have been online long enough, then you are well aware of Amazon.com. This is the first online book store that was launched back in 1995, when the internet was in its younger years. By 2006, Amazon was selling millions of books and its success story cannot be emphasized any further. Yes, online book stores have been here for a long time and many more have come up over the years. While the innovation and the legend of Amazon is at times controversial, online book stores are one example of e-commerce websites that have used technology expand sales and reach or target new clients.
Usually online book stores operate in more or less the same way that other retailer stores do business. Online book stores however have the advantage of stocking much more and a range of products than would otherwise have been done or permitted on a store down the block. These stores have the advantage of flashing special offers and featured products right on their visitors faces on the home page. In addition, the websites are designed to offer some recommendations based on the preferences of their visitors. Some sites will even know their visitors names and try to offer personal shopper help making the whole online experience as real as it can get.
The use of cookies to track visitors is one of the successes of online book stores. This allows for personalization of user experiences that offer recommendations based on past purchases, review lists and guides and extra information about other buyers who purchased the products being recommended. All of this is done without the annoying pop ups or adverts. In seamless cleverly put adverts, visitors get to enjoy the personalized experience of shopping on an online book store.
In order to contain the large amount of information and products to run an online store, these websites require a lot of space to run both the programs needed as well as the memory capacities to host their products. One website has servers that have capacities in the terabytes range while handling millions of back-end operations needed to keep the e-commerce site running day in and day out. Security is another major concern when it comes to online book stores. Since purchases will need to be done online, credit card information and the checkout processes have to be encrypted and well-monitored to minimize fraud. With the way things are going, the future of online book stores is getting brighter.