Chapter 2
Building an E-commerce Presence: Web Sites, Mobile
Sites, and Apps
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
What’s the idea?
Vision includes:
Mission statement
Target audience
Intended market space
Strategic analysis (SWOT)
Internet marketing matrix
Development timeline and preliminary budget
See ecommerce presence timeline (table 4-1)
Slide 4-2
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence (cont.)
Where’s the $$money?
Business model(s):
Portal, e-tailer, content provider, transaction broker,
market creator, service provider, community
provider
Revenue model(s):
Advertising, subscriptions, transaction fees, sales,
and affiliate revenue
Slide 4-3
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence (cont.)
Who and where is the target audience?
Describing your audience
Demographics
Age, gender, income, location
Behavior patterns (lifestyle)
Consumption patterns (purchasing habits)
Digital usage patterns (consumer actions on the web)
Content creation patterns (blogs, Facebook)
Buyers’ personas and characteristics
Slide 4-4
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence (cont.)
Characterize the marketplace
Demographics
Size, growth, changes
Structure
Competitors
Suppliers
Substitute products
Where is the content coming from?
Static or dynamic web pages?
Slide 4-5
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence (cont.)
Know yourself—SWOT analysis
Develop an e-commerce presence map (Fig 4-2)
Develop a timeline: Milestones
How much will this cost?
Simple Web sites: up to $5000
Small Web start-up: $25,000 to $50,000
Large corporate site: $100,000+ to millions
Slide 4-6
SWOT Analysis
Slide 4-7
E-commerce Presence Map
Figure 4.2, page 190
Slide 4-8
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
Slide 4-9
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
Slide 4-10
Planning : The Systems Development
Life Cycle
Methodology for understanding business
objectives of a system and designing an
appropriate solution
Five major steps:
Systems analysis/planning
Systems design
Building the system
Testing
Implementation
Slide 4-11
Web Site Systems Development Life Cycle
Slide 4-12
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 the system must produce
in order to achieve business objectives
Slide 4-13
Slide 4-14
Systems 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, and so on
Slide 4-15
Logical Design for a Simple Web Site
Slide 4-16
Physical Design for a Simple Web Site
Figure 4.6 (b), Page 197
Slide 4-17
Build/Host Your Own vs. Outsourcing
Outsourcing: Hiring vendors to provide
services involved in building site
Build own vs. outsourcing:
Build your own requires team with diverse skill set; choice of
software tools; both risks and possible benefits
Host own vs. outsourcing
Hosting: Hosting company responsible for ensuring site is
accessible 24/7, for monthly fee
Co-location: Firm purchases or leases Web server (with control
over its operation), but server is located at vendor’s facility
Slide 4-18
Choices in Building and Hosting
Figure 4.7 Page 198
Slide 4-19
Testing, Implementation, and
Maintenance
Testing
Unit testing
System testing
Acceptance testing
Implementation and maintenance:
Maintenance is ongoing
Maintenance costs: Similar to development costs
Benchmarking
Slide 4-20
Factors in Web Site Optimization
Figure 4.10, Page 205
Slide 4-21
CHOOSING SOFTWARE
Slide 4-22
Simple vs. Multi-tiered
Web Site Architecture
System architecture
Arrangement of software, hardware, and tasks in an
information system needed to achieve a specific
functionality
Two-tier
Web server and database server
Multi-tier
Web application and other servers
Backend, legacy databases
Slide 4-23
Two-Tier E-commerce Architecture
Figure 4.11(a), Page 207
Slide 4-24
Multi-Tier E-commerce Architecture
Figure 4.11(b), Page 207
Slide 4-25
Web Server Software
Apache
Leading Web server software (47% of market)
Works with UNIX, Linux operating systems
Comes loaded on IBM systems
Microsoft’s Internet Information Server
(IIS)
Second major Web server software (20% of
market)
Windows-based
Slide 4-26
Table 4.4, Page 208
Slide 4-27
Site Management Tools
Basic tools
Included in all Web servers
Verify that links on pages are still valid
Identify orphan files
Third-party software for advanced
management
Monitor customer purchases, marketing
campaign effectiveness, and so on
Slide 4-28
Dynamic Page Generation Tools
Dynamic page generation:
Page contents stored in databases as objects rather than being hard coded in HTML and
fetched when needed
Lowers menu cost (cost of changing the price of goods/services)
Enables market segmentation
Common tools to retrieve objects from database:
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) (offers a standard protocol for web servers to execute
programs)
Active server pages (ASP) (Microsoft's server-side script engine that enables dynamically-
generated web pages)
Java Server Pages (JSP) (same purpose as above)
Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC), a std DB access method allows connections to any DB
Advantages
Lowers menu costs
Permits easy online market segmentation
Enables cost-free price discrimination
Enables content management system (CMS)
Slide 4-29
Application Servers
Web application servers:
The basic idea is to isolate the business applications
from details of displaying web pages to users
Is a server program in a distributed network that
provides the business logic or functionality required by
a website. Often viewed as a 3 tier application.
It divides the application into
1ST tier: front end – web browser GUI
2nd middle tier: business logic
3rd tier: back end – DB and transaction server
Slide 4-30
E-commerce Merchant Server Software
Provides basic functionality for online sales
Online catalog
List of products available on Web site
Online shopping cart
Allows shoppers to set aside, review, edit selections,
and then make purchase
Credit card processing
Typically works in conjunction with shopping cart
Verifies card and puts through credit to company’s
account at checkout
Slide 4-31
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 the factors that
affect speed, capacity, and scalability of a
site
Slide 4-32
Right-Sizing Your Hardware Platform:
The Demand Side
Customer demand:
Most important factor affecting speed of site
Factors in overall demand:
Number of simultaneous users in peak periods
Nature of customer requests (user profile)
Type of content (dynamic vs. static Web pages)
Required security
Number of items in inventory
Number of page requests (Google has 40,000 per sec)
Speed of legacy applications
SEE TABLE 4.7 PG 217: FACTORS IN RIGHT-SIZING E-COMMERCE
PLATFORM
Slide 4-33
Right-Sizing Your Hardware Platform:
The Supply Side
Scalability:
Ability of site to increase in size as demand warrants
Ways to scale hardware:
Vertically
Increase processing power of individual components
– e.g., using multiple processers, faster chips
Horizontally
Employ multiple computers to share workload
Improve processing architecture
Slide 4-34
Table 4.8, Page 219
Slide 4-35
Table 4.9, Page 220
Slide 4-36
Other E-commerce Site Tools
Web site design: Basic business considerations
Enabling customers to find and buy what they need
Slide 4-37
Table 4.11, Page 222
Slide 4-38
Other E-commerce Site Tools
Tools for Web site optimization
Search engine placement
Metatags and titles, help search engines find you
Identify market niches, and tailor site to them
Offer expertise such as white papers, industry
analysis etc. to attract customers
Get linked up: Encourage links from other sites to
yours
Buy Search engine keywords and ads
Local e-commerce: Use key words to suggest the
location of your establishment
Slide 4-39
Tools for Interactivity and Active Content
CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
ASP (Active Server Pages)/ASP.NET
Java, JSP, and JavaScript (Sun)
ActiveX and VBScript (Microsoft)
ActiveX are technologies for content downloaded from a network,
particularly from the World Wide Web.
ColdFusion (Adobe) rapid web application development platform
Web 2.0 design elements:
Widgets (small pieces of programming code)
mashups (functionality and data from one program used in
another)
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