Project Report from the year 2012 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: GPA 3.4 (1,7), University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this project paper is to summarize the ¿key factors for success in e-commerce¿ for anyone who thinks of stepping into the online-business branch. This can be used as a guideline to save time, verify the usefulness and/or the attainability of the desired results. Since the first appearance of the Internet to the public mass in the early 1990s, many enterprises and entrepreneurs tried to use this technology for the advantage of their own business. What was seen as a revolutionary step in business management is now a daily part of managing a business. The use of the Internet has grown significantly in a short period of time, to be more specific in numbers, the number of users from 1995 till 2011 has grown approximately from 16 million to 2.251 million users and is still growing. That is a significant growth of 14068.75%. Since then the web presentation has evolved from a simple text into a much more complex information tool. Users of the Internet are now able to communicate, interact and share information with each other. This development has opened up many opportunities for entrepreneurs. To name a few advantages: gaining new customers, generating contacts, introducing your brand and products and of course increasing your revenue and profit has become fairly easy. This kind of practice could also be defined under the term ¿electronic commerce¿ also known as e-commerce and e-comm. To define it more correctly, the term e-commerce is the buying and selling of products, services and information over electronic systems such as the Internet. Even though this very useful information tool is available to us, the Internet doesn¿t always mean success and profit gains. On the contrary, introducing your company brand, services and or products in an improper and unprofessional way could lead to reputation loss, which also can lead to revenue and profit loss. Sometimes it can even lead into losing your most loyal customers. Furthermore the rivalry between businesses on the Internet is so immense that if your brand is not introduced correctly, visitors may prefer your rivals. Just to name a few bad e-commerce examples: citydeli.com, rzent.co.nr, arngren.net, and lingscars.com.