1. A system, comprising: an electronic commerce computer system comprising a plurality of computing devices, the computer system including: a first user interface, generated on a first computing device of the computer system, through which buyers place orders over a network with a merchant and view the status of such orders, the first interface including: a first portion for displaying at least a subset of the negotiated terms between a buyer and the merchant for an accepted order, and a second portion including: a message field for a buyer to generate and submit to the merchant messages that are linked to particular orders, and a display of at least a subset of a record of at least one message previously exchanged between the buyer and the merchant linked to the accepted order, wherein the at least one message is separate from the negotiated terms between the buyer and the merchant for an accepted order; and a second user interface, generated on a second computing device of the computer system, through which the merchant views accepted orders, order-specific messages from buyers, and status information of accepted orders, the second interface including a message field for the merchant to generate and submit messages to the buyers that are linked to specific accepted orders.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first user interface is provided by a customer application and the second interface is provided by a merchant application, wherein the customer and merchant applications access a common order database that stores information about the orders.