Online shopping is a wide phenomenon today but it is relatively a very young market. The internet itself is only about fourteen years old and online shopping was a real market only in the last 10 years or so. In the early days there were many barriers to allowing consumers to buy products online. Security issues prevented the easy usage of credit cards online and without an easy payment method buying was impossible. Slow Internet connections and text based or simple graphic based web site prevented consumers from easily browsing large product catalogs and evaluating what they are buying.

Today the Internet is completely different. Bandwidth is wide and cheap and consumers can look browse large catalogs of products. Almost any product that you can think of is available for online purchase. Consumers can see product catalog read about products see many photos and close ups and even watch videos when relevant. Consumers can also read other consumers reviews about the product and educate themselves before buying.

Shopping online started as a copy cat experience of the brick and mortar stores. In the early days only a few types of products were available for online purchase. These were products that were easy to choose like books or DVD movies. Users did not need to spend much time evaluating the product as it was easy to know what you were buying. The online stores were simply an online version of brick and mortar stores organized in the same way and including the same information. In fact many online shopping web sites were simply online versions of the company brick and mortar store.

As the Internet evolved more and more online only shopping web sites started to appear. The biggest and most well known is of course Amazon but there are thousands or more small online stores specializing in specific niche products. The Internet also allowed for new kinds of stores a very good and known example is eBay which created a whole new category of online shopping where consumers do not buy from a company but buy new or used products from other consumers like them. Using the Internet medium eBay was able to connect consumers that would otherwise would have never been able to commerce.

There is no doubt that the best feature of online Shopping is the variety of products and the low prices. The Internet allows shopping from the comfort of your home which is very efficient in time. From your living room you can browse a practically infinite number of products from many suppliers read reviews and easy compare the products features and prices. When ready to buy you can complete the transaction in a safe and secure way in a few seconds and then simply wait for the product to be delivered to your doorstep within just a few days.