E-Commerce

BUILDING AN E-COMMERCE PRESENCE

 Imagine your E-commerce Presence

What’s Idea?
 Vision
 Mission Statement
 Target Audience
 Intended Market Space
 Strategic Analysis
 Internet marketing Matrix
 Development timeline and preliminary budget
 Imagine your E-commerce Presence cont..

Where’s the money?

 Business Model
 Portal, E-tailer, content provider, transaction broker, market
creator, service provider, community provider
 Revenue model
 Advertising , subscriptions, transactions fees, sales and affiliate
revenue
 Imagine your E-commerce Presence cont..

Who and where is the target audience?

 Describing your audience
 Demographics
 Age, gender, income, location

 Behavior patterns ( life style)

 Consumptions patterns ( Purchasing habits)
 Digital usage patterns
 Content creation patterns ( blogs, Facebook)
 Buyer persons
 Imagine your E-commerce Presence cont..

Characterize the market place

 Demographic
 Size, growth, changes
 Structure
 Competitors
 Suppliers
 Substitute products
Where is the content coming from?
 Static
 dynamic
 Imagine your E-commerce Presence cont..

SWOT analysis
Develop and E-commerce presence map
Develop a timeline: Milestones
How much will this cost
 SWOT analysis

Strengths
 Current sites don’t address market needs
 Unique approach
 Easy navigation
 Better personalization
 Customer base growing
 High value market segment
 Superior social strategy
 SWOT Analysis cont.….

Weaknesses
 Limited financial resources
 No prior online experience
 No existing user base
 No media attention
 No web designer expertise
 No computer background
 SWOT analysis (cont..)

Opportunities
 Ability to meet large market with unmet needs
 Potential to capture significant share of this market
 Potential to develop related sites
 SWOT Analysis ( Cont.…)

Approach could be copied by competitor

Advertiser may not to try a new site
Rapid pace of technological development
Low market entry costs
E-Commerce presence map
E-Commerce Presence Timeline
Components of a Website Development
 Building an E-commerce Site
A systematic Approach

Most important management challenges

 Developing a clear understanding of business objectives
 Knowing how to choose the right technology to achieve those
objectives
 Pieces of the site-building puzzle

Main areas where you will need to make decisions

 Human resources and organizational capabilities
 Creating team with skill set needed to build and manage a
successful site
 Hardware / Software
 Telecommunications
 Site design
 The system development life cycle

Methodology for understanding business objectives

of a system and designing an appropriate solution
Five major steps
 Systems analysis / Planning
 System design
 Building the system
 Testing
 Implementation
 System Analysis / Planning

Business objectives
 List of capabilities you want your site to have
System functionalities
 List of information system capabilities needed to achieve
business objectives
Information requirements
 Information elements that system must produce in order to
achieve business objectives
 System Design
Hardware and Software Platforms

System design specification

 Description of main components of a system and their
relationship to one another
Two components of system design
 Logical design
 Data flow diagrams, processing, functions, databases,
 Physical design
 Specifies actual physical, software components, models
 Build / Host your own vs outsourcing

Outsourcing
 Hiring vendors to provide service involved in building site
Build own vs out sourcing
 Build your own requires team with diverse skills set ; choice of
software tools; both risk and possible benefits
Host own vs outsourcing
 Hosting
 Company responsible for ensuring site is accessible 24/7 for monthly
fee
 Co-location
 Firms purchases or leases web server, but server is located at
vendor’s facility
Choice in Building and Hosting
 Testing , Implementation and Maintenance

Testing
 Unit testing
 Components testing one by one
 System testing
 Overall testing
 Acceptance testing
 Run the website and view the objectives
Implementation and maintenance
 Maintenance is ongoing
 Maintenance cost : similar to development cost
 Benchmarking
 How many user will be entertain by the website
 Factors in website optimization

Optimization
 How to get maximum output
Page content
Page delivery
Page Generation
 Simple vs Multi-tiered
Website Architecture
System Architecture
 Arrangements of S/W , Machinery and tasks in an information
system needed to achieve a specific functionality
Two- tier
 Web server and database server
 Database changes impact on website
Multi-tier
 Web application server
 legacy database
 Protocols , information
 Backend
 Devices, database
 Web Server Software

Apache
 Leading webserver software ( 52 % of market)
 Works with Linux, UNIX operating systems\
Microsoft’s internet information server (IIS)
 Second major web server ( 20 % of market)
 Windows based
Basic Functionalities Provided by Web servers
 Site Management Tools

Information how user found your website

Basic Tools
 Include in all web servers
 verify that link on pages are still valid
 Identify orphan files
Third party S/W for advance Management
 Monitor customer purchases , marketing , campaign
effectiveness and so on
 Web trends analytics 10
 Dynamic Pages Generation Tools

Dynamic page generation

 Contents stored in database and fetched when needed
Common tools
 CGI, ASP, JSP, OBDC
Advantages
 Lower menu costs
 Permits easy online market segmentation
 Enables cost free price discrimination
 Enables content management system
 E-Commerce Merchant Server Software

Provide basic functionality for sales

 Online catalog
 List of products available on websites
 Shopping cart
 Allows shoppers to set aside, review, edit selections and then
market purchase
 Credit card processing
 Typically works in conjunctions with shopping cart
 Verifies card and puts through credit to company’s account at
checkout
 Merchant Server Software Packages

Integrated environment that includes most of

functionality needed
Key factors in selecting a package
 Functionality
 Support for different business models
 Business process modeling tools
 Visual site management and reporting
 Performance and scalability
 Connectivity to existing business systems
 Compliance with standards
 Global and multicultural capability
 Local sales tax and shipping rules
 Web Services and Open Source Options

Options for small firms

 Hosted e-commerce sites
 Offer site buildings tools and templates
 Example: Yahoo’s Merchant Solutions
 Open source merchant server software
 Enables you to build truly custom sites
 Requires programmer with expertise , time
 The Hardware Platform

Hardware Platform
 Underlying computing equipment needed for e-commerce
functionality
Objective:
 Enough platform capacity to meet peak demand without
wasting money
Important to understand that factors the effect speed
, capacity and scalability of site
 Right-Sizing your Hardware Platform
The Demand Side

Customer Demand
 Most Important factors affecting speed of your site
Factors in overall demand:
 Number of simultaneous users in peak periods
 Nature of customer request ( User Profile)
 Type of content ( Dynamic vs static Web Page)
 Required Security
 Number of items in inventory
 Number of page requests
 Speed of legacy applicatons
 Right-Sizing your Hardware Platform
The Supply Side

Scalability
 Ability of site to increase in size as demand warrants
Ways to scale H/W
 Vertically
 Increase processing power of individual components
 Horizontally
 Employ multiple computers to share workload
 Improve Processing architecture
 E-Commerce Site Tools

Web site design: Basic Business considerations

 Enabling customer to find and buy what they need
Tools for web site optimization
 Search engine placement
 Metatags, titles, content
 Identify market places, localize site
 Offer expertise
 Links
 Search engine ads
 Local e- commerce
E-commerce web sites features that annoy customers
The eight most important factors in successful
e-commerce site design
 Personalization Tools

Personalization
 Ability to treat people based on personal qualities and prior
history with site
Customization
 Ability to change the product to better fit the needs of
customer
Cookies
 Primary method to achieve personalization
 The information policy set

Privacy policy
 Set of public statements declaring how site will treat
customer’s personal information that is gathered by site
Accessibility rules
 Set of design objectives that ensures disabled user can
affectively access site
 Developing a mobile website and building mobile
applications

Three types of m-commerce software

 Mobile web site
 Responsive web design
 Mobile Web App
 Native App
Planning and building mobile Presence
 user system analysis / design to identify unique and specific
objectives
Unique features that must be considered when
designing a mobile web presence
 Developing A Mobile Web Presence

Design considerations
 Platform constraints: Smartphones / Tablets
Performance & Cost
 Mobile Website
 Least expensive
 Mobile App
 Can utilize browser API
 Native App
 Most expensive ; Requires more programming