Many people imagine eCommerce is limited to buying and selling physical items online,
but eCommerce is actually an electronic means of conducting many types of transactions.
It has expanded exponentially to include the online purchase of many types of tangible
and non-tangible items, like subscriptions to online services, downloadable white
papers, or registration for events. eCommerce can even include inventory management,
supply chain management, internet marketing, or the transfer of funds electronically.
It can be a transaction between a business and customer, or between two businesses.
More importantly, conducting business online can be every bit as complex as conducting
it face-to-face. So the systems involved in eCommerce today usually require professional
application development teams, or at a minimum, outsourced development specialists.
You can read more about eCommerce here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecommerce.