The Rise in Online Shopping – From Videotex to Smart Phones

The Rise in Online Shopping – From Videotex to Smart Phones

In these modern times, online shopping has become something that most of us rely on. A fast and convenient modern service that is able to bring the things that we want directly to our doorstep, has prompted our fast-paced modern culture to develop – companies like this same day courier Bracknell based https://uk-tdl.com/ can get the good to us quickly and easily at the click of a button.

This digital shopping revolution was already becoming increasingly popular in the last decade, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, online sales boomed as people were asked to stay at home and most shops on the high street were closed for months. The popularity of online shopping soared, to the point that many websites, such as B and Q, were operating a queuing system simply to be able to access the site, such was the demand to order goods online.

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Although we see this way of shopping as a very recent development, it is actually something that goes back to the late 1970s, and the story of online shopping begins with the inventor Michael Aldrich.

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He came up with a system that linked a home television set to a computer via a telephone line. This new invention was named Videotex, and he hoped that it would enable businesses and consumers to be able to easily sell and access goods from home. This was also something that he hoped would help people who struggled to get out to the shops, such as the elderly and those with disabilities to be able to do their shopping from their own home.

In 1984, the first online shop was done by a 72 year old lady named Mrs Snowball. From her living room in Gateshead, she used her remote control and her television to successfully order some groceries from her local supermarket. The supermarket received the order that came in via the telephone line, and the goods were then delivered to her door – something that today we take for granted, but back then was a revolutionary new way to shop.

Despite this happening in the 1980s, this was not technology that was readily available, or even something that most members of the public were aware of. It would be another decade before online shopping started to become more mainstream. Companies that were just starting to sit up and take notice of this new digital revolution started to come up with new ideas and initiatives that allowed customers to shop online. In the mid- 90s Amazon was set up, an online bookshop that was little known at the time!

As computers advanced, and the internet went from dial up to broadband, more and more people started to have access to the internet from their homes, and more and more companies started to realise that this was the way that shopping was going. In the last ten years, the power of smartphones has made online shopping even more popular and accessible, as consumers can shop from anywhere – as long as they have their phone!

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