PART-3 : WEB-ENABLED COMMERCE

8. THE WEB-ENABLED ENTERPRISE

K RAJESHWAR
 WEB TECHNOLOGIES: A REVIEW
 HTTP - A secure version of the protocol for confidential transactions is HTTPS (HTTP Secure). Under these protocols, each web
server is designated a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is a unique address for a website.
 The address is the IP address assigned to the site, but in most cases the site also has a domain name made up from letters. The term
“URL” also refers to the domain name.
 Domain names are used for convenience, because it is easier to remember domain names than IP addresses. Each webpage has its
own URL, which contains the IP address or domain name of the site.
 HTML and XML - is the most common programming language for creating webpages and other information viewable in a web
browser.
 It determines the look and location of text, pictures, animations, and other elements on a webpage.
 Extensible Markup Language (XML) enables the creation of various types of data.
 It is most often used not for determining the appearance of visual elements on a webpage but to convey the meaning or content of
the data.
 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organization responsible for web standards, combined the two markup languages
HTML and XML into a standard called Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML).
 HTML5 is the newest version of HTML/XML. HTML5 includes support for the latest multimedia and mobile devices, and is
rapidly becoming the standard for webpage development. The W3C is expected to publish the final HTML5 standard in 2014.
HTML AND XML CODE: XML PROVIDES A METHOD FOR
DESCRIBING OR CLASSIFYING DATA IN A WEBPAGE
FILE TRANSFER

 File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a common way of transmitting files from one computer to another. Every time you
download a file from a website or attach files to email, you are using an FTP application.
 The file transmitted can be of any type: text, graphics, animation, or sound. FTP is embedded in browsers and
therefore is “transparent” to the users. You can also use a separate FTP utility, with many available as shareware, to
manage transmitting files.
 Businesses use FTP to place files on a server for sharing among professionals. FTP is also useful for placing files on
a server that hosts a website. It’s also convenient for retrieving large files that might exceed an email system’s size
limits.
 For example, authors can place large chapter and figure files in a folder on a server maintained by their publisher.
Manufacturers often place full assembly and maintenance manuals or videos at their website so customers can
download them any time.
 New methods have replaced FTP sites such as cloud drives, online backup tools (such as Carbonite), and groupware
productivity products (such as Wiggio).
 However, FTP sites still remain popular due to the inexpensive and simple nature of file transfers.
BLOGS
 A blog (a contraction of “web log”) is a webpage that invites surfers to post opinions and artistic work as well as links to sites of
interest.
 Blog sites focus on a topic or a set of related topics, and provide an easy way to post webpages or update existing ones.
 Most blogs contain commentaries and humorous content. Users can simply click a button to open a window in which they type
text, and click another button to post it.
 The text is added to the webpage either automatically or after a review by the blog’s operators. Some blog sites simply let
“bloggers” add comments on a topic, with the most recent comment appearing at the top.
 Many companies have established blogs, and invite employees to use them for self-expression.
 Trackback software notifies bloggers when their posts have been mentioned elsewhere on the web, so they and their readers can
extend the discussion beyond the original blog.
 Below each post there is a TrackBack button or similar option. When it is clicked, a new window pops up listing the sites
mentioning the post.
 The commercial potential of blogs has not escaped businesspeople.
 The importance of blogs to commercial organizations is primarily to find out what blog participants think and say about the
organizations.
 Many organizations use special software that combs blogs for postings that mention the organizations’ names
WIKIS

 A wiki (from Hawaiian: quick) is a web application that enables users to add to and edit the content of webpages.
 The term also refers to software that enables collaborative software used to create and revise websites. All the
software required to edit the pages is embedded in the pages.
 Visitors do not need any software of their own, and do not need to upload saved pages. The additions and revisions
are performed on the page, using tool icons that are provided at the site.
 The popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, as shown in the screenshot, demonstrates the concept well.
 Popular wiki applications include the free MediaWiki, Corendal Wiki, Wikiversity, and XWiki.
 The WikiMedia Foundation (www.wikimedia.org) provides information and links to sites that teach how to install
and use wikis.
 The features of wiki technology make it a popular ingredient in groupware, software that helps groups collaborate on
projects.
PODCASTING

 While blogging is publishing text and other visual material, podcasting is publishing sound and video. To podcast is
to make a digital audio recording, usually of voice, and post the file on the web so that people can download it and
listen to it.
 RSS software called an aggregator or feed reader automatically checks for new content and downloads files from a
designated site in the same way as is done for text files from online newspapers.
 Users can subscribe to a podcast site to receive the latest audio files. The files are usually in MP3 format, which can
be played on any portable player or smartphone, including the Apple iPod, from which the word “podcast” was born.

 Podcasting has several potential uses. It already serves as “time-shifted” broadcast of radio stations that post their
programs for later listening.
 Podcasting creates opportunities for businesses to communicate and promote their business, products, and services.
 Education and training have been transformed by
 podcasting. Recently, podcasting has evolved into a new concept distributed via the web called a massive open
online course (MOOC).
INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
 People communicate in various ways.
 Several years ago, instant messaging (IM) offered users real-time online interactivity. It might be thought of as
“real-time email,” because, unlike email, it is synchronous.
 IM allows a user to detect whether another person who uses the service is currently online, and the user can then
exchange information with an entire group (referred to as a “chat room”), or with only one other “chatter” in
privacy.
 Some IM applications include two-way video, which turns the chat into a video conference, and most also include
FTP to allow sending and receiving files.
 Many software applications provide text, video, and audio-based methods to communicate with other participants.
Products such as Skype, ooVoo, and Wiggio provide a portfolio of tools to communicate with other people.
COOKIES
 If you have surfed the web, your computer probably contains cookies.
 A cookie is a small file that a website places on a visitor’s hard disk so that the website can remember something about the surfer
later. Typically, a cookie records the surfer’s ID or some other unique identifier.
 Combined with data collected from previous visits, the site can figure out the visitor’s preferences. The user can opt to allow
cookies; the option is exercised by checking a box in the browser’s configuration window.
 Cookies have an important function in web-based commerce, especially between businesses and consumers.
 They provide convenience to consumers; if the cookie contains your username and password for accessing a certain resource at
the site (e.g., your bank account), you do not have to reenter the information.
 Cookies often help ensure that a user does not receive the same unsolicited information multiple times.
 Some cookies are temporary; they are installed only for one session, and are removed when the user leaves the site. Others are
persistent and stay on the hard disk unless the user deletes them.
 Many cookies are installed to serve only first parties, which are the businesses with which the user interacts directly.
 Software designed to trace and report your online behavior without your knowledge is called spyware. It includes cookies and
other, more sophisticated applications that are installed on your computer unbeknownst to you and transmit information about you
while you are online.
PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGIES

 A proprietary technology is the intellectual property of its developer and is not free for all to use. These software
packages include local search engines for finding information about specific items;
 shopping cart applications for purchase, including selection of items to place in a virtual cart and credit-card
charging;
 wish lists, which allow shoppers to create lists of items they would like others to purchase for them;
 video streaming tools; and a host of software packages that are invisible to visitors but help the site owner to
analyze and predict visitor behavior, especially shopper behavior.
 The latter technologies might not be considered web technologies per se, but they analyze data that is collected
from visitors accessing websites.
WEB-ENABLED BUSINESS

 Web-enabled business is often classified by the parties involved in the interaction: business-to- business (B2B),
business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-government (B2G).
 Some people also add government-to-consumer and government-to-business. Auction sites are sometimes referred
to as consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sites.
 B2B TRADING
 Business-to-business (B2B) trading takes place only between businesses. Consumers of the final goods and services
are not involved.
 Advertising - Online advertising is done mainly in two ways: through search engines and through banners. Although
advertising on the web is not aimed just at consumers, most of it is directed to them.
 Search advertising, which is any form of advertising through an online search site, is regarded by businesses as
highly effective.
 Shoppers have discovered that the fastest way to find a business that can sell them the product or service they need
is by looking up the product or service on the web, and the most effective searches are through the best-known
services and those that identify the largest number of webpages: Google, Yahoo!, and Bing
 Banners are images placed on a website that link to the site of the company selling the product or service.
 How does a potential advertiser know how much traffic a site attracts? The most basic metric that can be measured at
a site is the number of impressions.
 An impression occurs whenever a browser downloads the page containing the banner. More useful metrics are
provided by several companies that rate website visits similar to rating television viewing.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

 The popularity and use of online search engines by consumers and businesses has created a competitive environment for
online advertising; an online “capture the flag” battlefield.
 It is imperative for businesses to gain a competitive advantage by displaying their advertising entry as close to the top of a
search engine results page.
 Search engine optimization (SEO) implements a series of tactics to allow a business to gain a high-ranking placement of
their online entry in the search results page. Using these techniques will optimize your website to influence the major
search engines to rank your search entry higher.
 The higher the entry in the results list will increase the likelihood of generating a greater volume of qualified online
traffic to your website.
 An effective search engine optimization effort can directly lead to increased traffic to a website including visits to
websites and improved returning visitors.
 As traffic and the popularity of the website expand, the increase of sales and profits also follows the same path.
EXCHANGES AND AUCTIONS

 An intranet is a network used only by the employees of an organization. An extranet limits site access to the
employees of particular organizations, usually business partners.
 An extranet might be viewed as connecting intranets of business partners. An exchange is an extranet for
organizations that offer for sale and bid on products and services of a particular type.
 Unlike a public auction site, such as eBay or uBid, access is usually limited to subscribers who often pay a
periodic fee to the site’s operator.
 Auction sites whose purpose is to serve as a meeting place of buyers and sellers in a particular industry are
sometimes operated by an industrial association.
ONLINE BUSINESS ALLIANCES

 Companies in the same industry—competitors—often collaborate in establishing a website for one or \

several purposes.
 One major purpose might be to create buying power by consolidating purchases.
 Another might be to create a single place for customers, assuming that expanded choice will benefit the
group the purpose of an alliance site is the same as an auction site operated by a single company, but the
operator is a business that works for the allied companies.
 The purpose of such a site is to set the prices of purchased products and services.
 Big players in an industry, such as airlines or automakers, establish a shared company that operates the
site. Suppliers are invited to sell through the site and compete among themselves.
B2C TRADING

 Although business-to-business trading on the Internet is much larger in volume, online business-to-consumer
(B2C) trading is more visible to the general public.
 Online consumer shopping and buying has become a daily activity for many consumers. In addition to e-retailing,
also known as “e-tailing”
ONLINE SHOPPING BENEFITS
 The purpose of consumer profiling is to know the consumers better so the business can serve them better, while also
streamlining its marketing and sales operations.
 Affiliate Programs Many online businesses offer affiliate programs to website owners. The affiliate, the website
owner, places a link, usually a banner, to the e-tailer at the site.
 Affiliates are compensated in one of several ways: pay per sale, in which only if a visitor ended up purchasing
something is the affiliate paid a fee; pay per click, in which the affiliate is paid a small fee (usually a few cents)
whenever a visitor clicks the banner; or pay per lead, whereby a lead means that the visitor clicked through to the
advertiser’s site and filled out a registration form to receive periodic information.
 Coopetition Amazon.com has taken a step beyond affiliate programs to cooperate with competitors, a model we may
call “coopetition”: Amazon includes its competitors on its own site.
 When you use the search engine at the company’s site for a certain item, it brings up the product description and price
from Amazon.com’s database and also the same type of information from other companies’ databases.
MOBILE ADVERTISING

 Smartphone and tablet screens are the frontier of advertising. The mobile advertising industry is rapidly growing,
mostly due to smartphone and network adoption.
 Many applications on smartphones allow users to download a free version or purchase an ad-free version.

Auctions and Reverse Auctions

 Similar to auctions among companies, some websites serve as auction hubs for individuals. The most prominent
of the sites is eBay, but there are many other smaller and independent online auction sites such as uBid.
 The business model is simple: sellers list information about the items or services they offer for sale, and if a sale
is executed, the site owner collects a fee.
 Because the sites provide only a platform for a transaction that eventually takes place between two consumers,
some people like to call online auctions consumer-to-consumer e-business.
 The ability of websites to serve as prompt exchanges of information has supported another popular business
model, the reverse auction or name-your-own-price auction.
CONTENT PROVIDERS

 On the web, content means information, such as news, research results, statistics, and other useful information as
well as artistic works such as music, pictures, and video clips.
 Some place this category within classified ads, including job postings and online dating services.
 Content revenues also have grown since companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Walmart started selling individual
songs and books online.
 The high volume of traffic translates into dollars through advertisements, as the site owners provide the content
free of charge.
 While many YouTube users are individuals, YouTube has also become an integral component of the marketing
strategy for business organizations for advertising, promotions, and contests.
BILL PRESENTMENT AND PAYMENT

 Electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) saves utility companies and financial institutions that bill
customers regularly—mainly for loan payments—millions of dollars.
 The bills are presented automatically, directly from the companies’ information systems to payers’ email
addresses, and therefore save labor, paper, and postage.
 Direct charge to a bank account saves the labor involved in receiving and depositing checks.
 Most people still prefer to pay their bills by check and through the mail, partly because fraud on the Internet has
increased in recent years, especially through a practice called phishing
EXTRA-ORGANIZATIONAL WORKFORCE

 The web enables companies to purchase labor from many more people than their own employees.
 Crowdsourcing is a process for outsourcing a variety of tasks to a distributed group of people, both online or
offline.
 Different than traditional outsourcing, crowdsourcing is a task or problem that is outsourced to the public rather
than a specific company contracted for a defined purpose.
MOBILE COMMERCE

 Wireless technologies enable what some people call mobile commerce, sometimes referred to as m-commerce.
Mobile devices already let users log on to the Internet, but they can also provide an additional benefit to businesses:
a device can be located with an accuracy of several feet, much like locating a cellular phone.
 As soon as you come within a few blocks of a store, your handheld computer or phone could beep and display a
promotional message on its monitor.
 Mobile commerce allows people to use their mobile devices to experience an event and react immediately.
 Mobile devices might be equipped with RFID readers so their owners can use a product’s electronic product code
(EPC) to download information about it from the web.
 Smart mobile devices might be helpful in salesforce automation. Traveling salespeople are able to access data
through the mobile device almost anywhere.
 They are able to access corporate databases through their company’s intranet. Both traveling salespeople and
consumers already practice mobile commerce whenever they transact while using a hotspot or a web capable cell
phone.
SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE WEB

 Social media have had a widespread influence on consumers and business organizations alike in recent years. More
than 900 million people check their Facebook accounts on a monthly basis (Aquino, 2012).
 The adoption and use of social media is also generating advertising revenue.
 The challenges associated with social media mirror the challenges of any business strategy.
 An effective social media strategy must be well-organized and coordinated, focusing on objectives to communicate,
promote, and market to an organization’s customers and stakeholders.
 Social media also influences the dialogue with stakeholders outside of the products organizations sell. Sodexho
implemented a recruitment campaign using Twitter.
SUPPLY CHAINS ON THE WEB

 Supply chains extend from commercial organizations to both suppliers and buyers.
 Organizations connect their supply chain management (SCM) systems to their suppliers at one end, and to their
buyers at the other end.
 Thus, an organization might be a participant among other buyers in an extranet managed by one of its suppliers, and
a participant among several sellers in an extranet of a buyer.
 In the years before the Internet opened to commercial activities, many companies invested in Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI) systems to exchange documents electronically with business partners.
 EDI consists of certain standards for formatting documents such as orders and invoices, software that translates the
data properly, and the networks through which the information flows between subscribing organizations.
 The networks are owned and managed by value-added network (VAN) companies, telecommunications companies
that manage the traffic of EDI between the business partners.
 Subscribers pay for this service. However, EDI can also be executed on the Internet.
 OPTIONS IN ESTABLISHING A WEBSITE
 A website is, practically speaking, the webpages that make up the information and links to web technologies that the site
provides.
 To establish a web business, an organization must have access to an Internet server and the ability to control its content.
 Recall that an Internet server is a computer that is connected to the Internet backbone. Businesses have two options when
establishing a website: installing and maintaining their own servers, or contracting with a web hosting service.
 Owning and Maintaining a Server
 Installing and maintaining a server at the business’s own facility is a costly option, but it gives the business the greatest
degree of control.
 Setting up a server requires expertise, which may or may not be available within the business. The business must obtain a
high-speed physical link to the Internet backbone.
 It must also employ specialists to maintain the server or many servers on which the website resides.
 A site crashes when too many people try to log on and the software stops responding to anyone. Load balancing transfers
visitor inquiries from a busy server to a less busy server for identical information and services.
 Thus, the specialists often must connect mirror servers—servers on which the same content and applications are duplicated—
to speed up and back up the process.
USING A HOSTING SERVICE

 A majority of organizations that have a commercial presence online either do not own servers or own servers but
let someone else manage at least some aspect of the site.
 These organizations use web hosting services. Web hosting companies specialize in one or several types of web
hosting: shared hosting, virtual private server hosting, dedicated hosting, or co-location.
 In shared hosting, the client’s website is stored on the host’s same physical server along with the sites of other
clients.
 The hosting company owns the server and the server management software. It offers space on the servers for
hosting websites. This is a relatively inexpensive option.
 The client can use templates provided by the hosts for building pages, or, for an extra fee, have the host’s designer
design the website.
 Small businesses with a limited number of products to sell can select a host such as aplus.net for shared hosting.
 The purpose of a virtual private server is to create the impression that the client maintains its own server.
 Virtual private server technology enables one server to be virtually split into many addressable servers, each for a
different client and with its own domain name.
 This option is usually less expensive than renting a dedicated server, while enjoying the same benefits, including
full control of the content of the virtual server.
 Some companies might want to use entire physical servers all for themselves, and therefore opt for dedicated
hosting.
 In dedicated hosting, the host dedicates a server to the client, and the client can fully control the content on the
server’s disks.
 The host is responsible for network management.
CONSIDERATIONS IN SELECTING A WEB HOST

Factors to consider when

evaluating a web hosting
service
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

 Business chooses to run its website,

several elements must be present to
conduct business,
RULES FOR SUCCESSFUL WEB-BASED BUSINESS

 Target the Right Customers

 Capture the Customer’s Total Experience
 Personalize the Service
 Shorten the Business Cycle
 Let Customers Help Themselves
 Be Proactive and De-Commoditize
 E-Commerce Is Every Commerce
 Thank you