Eshop

An eshop (also known as an e-shop, online store, or online trading) is a web application designed for selling products. In an eshop, you can browse products, view their photos and details. You can then add products to your shopping cart. If you decide to buy the products in the basket, you are asked to enter your details, choose a payment and delivery method and the goods are then sent to you.

The first eshops focused mainly on the simple sale of physical products. Today's eshops can offer almost anything, from physical products, to services, to purely digital commodities (movies, series, music, games, ebooks…).

Some stores even allow you to set up regular shipments of a given item, allowing the user to create a sort of „subscription“ for a particular item (e.g. a toothbrush).

On e-shops, one can often pay in several ways, as well as choose between several methods of delivery of physical content. Cash on delivery is still the predominant method of paying for goods in the Czech Republic, although credit card payments are slowly increasing year on year.

Internet payment systems are also often available. One of the best known is PayPal. When using internet payment systems, the user does not have to enter his credit card number directly, he just has to log in through the payment system and it takes care of the transaction. The popularity of these systems lies mainly in their simplicity and speed of use.

In addition to traditional online shopping, services for streaming or renting content are also emerging, where the user pays only for the ‚rental‘ of the service or product.

The advantages of online shopping are clear: speed, convenience, peace of mind, lots of information and user opinions/reviews/ratings available, wide possibilities to compare products, possibilities to sort content according to different parameters, etc.

Disadvantages include the inability to ‚feel‘ the product, higher likelihood of fraud and security risks, and privacy. Security and privacy issues are not an issue with verified and established online stores.