<div align="justify">The internet was the first technology to create an entire business sector from nothing - before the web,

the word 'ecommerce' was unheard of.<p> Today, ecommerce is a multibillion pound global concern for every organisation, but the number one brand is still one of the pioneers - Amazon. </p><p>'Amazon as a company couldn't exist without technology,' says Greg Hart, director of media products at Amazon UK. </p><p>'The fact that we've grown in leaps and bounds has been almost wholly due to technology. We wouldn't have been able to open our doors without it, let alone grow at the rate we have.</p><p>' The online retailer, based in Seattle, is the largest ecommerce company in the world. It launched in the summer of 1995 at the start of the dot com boom and went public in May 1997, opening offices around the world, including Amazon.co.uk in October 1998.</p><p>Since its creation, the organisation has invested $1bn (£600m) in technology and, unlike many ecommerce rivals that chose to rely on outsourced IT, it has developed most of its software internally. </p><p>'Technology is an incredible focus for us. It has been our largest single investment and will continue to be so.</p><p> That was part of the original business plan,' says Hart.The company wanted to keep paper-based systems to a minimum and run operations as efficiently as possible - although Hart says an entirely paperless office is impossible.</p><p>'If we were trying to duplicate the same systems with paper, we couldn't operate on the scale we do,' he says. </p><p>'For example, we rely on email for a large proportion of our communications, especially globally, while we use our intranet to disseminate information, so there isn't a need for copious memos.'But there are other reasons why the company has built almost all of its key systems in-house.</p><p>'We were originally trying to do something that hadn't been done before, so the systems literally weren't available to buy. And we wanted to control the customer experience and ensure it matched the standards we'd set,' says Hart.</p><p>'Technology and customer focus are our twin mantras - it's about using technology to make the customer experience a better one.</p><p>'Examples include personalisation technology to recommend potential purchases based on past or current buying patterns, or the site's one-click ordering process to make buying goods less laborious.One of the advantages of being an internet-based business is that the high levels of automation involved make it easy to see how customers respond to individual product lines without spending a lot of time analysing statistical reports, says Hart.</p><p>'In a physical store, if you're trying to decide whether to showcase fiction or biography, it would take a while to establish buying patterns.</p><p> And the results would only be valid for the people who were purchasing in that particular store,' he says. </p><p>'But for us, there are enough people walking through our online doors on a countrywide basis to see what we should be promoting and test that quickly.'Another benefit of the online model is the low-cost structure. For example, operating a centralised distribution centre eliminates the need for expensive deliveries to scattered retail outlets. </p><p>'Physical stores have to pay for increasing amounts of real estate as they expand, which means the costs go up. </p><p>Over time, however, technology gets cheaper, which means growth comes at a lower cost,' says Hart.The more customers an online provider has, the lower the price tag of launching new technology. The cost of developing a new feature remains the same, whether it is used by 30 million customers or three million.'As more customers come, it becomes cheaper on a per-customer basis to improve the shopping experience, and if we can improve the shopping experience more people will come,' says Hart. </p><p>'This, in turn, fuels the ability to offer lower prices without investing large amounts of fixed capital which, in turn, fuels further growth.' One major inhibitor to growth in ecommerce is the simple fact that many people still do not use the internet.</p><p>According to Jupiter Research, 25.8 million people in the UK went online last year - less than half the population - and only 41 per cent of those made a purchase.The answer lies in more widespread adoption of broadband and other new technologies, says Hart. 'People's first experience of the internet is often via a dial-up modem, but as many sites are already geared up for broadband, it often puts them off because it's a slow and frustrating experience.</p><p>' Amazon attempts 'to run at the pace of the slowest runner', says Hart. However, it has added broadband-oriented functionality to its US web site, where the uptake of high-speed, always-on connections is higher than in the UK.Another boost to the sector is likely to be the adoption of mobile phones and portable devices with internet access. </p><p>'In five years, we'll all be much more familiar with using wireless devices, which will increase accessibility,' says Hart.</p><p> 'This, combined with fast connections to the internet, will lead to an increase in use, whether that means news, games or online shopping, and this is bound to benefit all internet businesses, Amazon included.'Amazon is still in 'the very early days of the internet as a shopping medium', he says. But as wireless and broadband take off, increasing the speed of connections and 'enabling companies to do more with the browsing experience', the ecommerce market will explode.</p></div>