acs 3907 e-commerce · ©bowen hui, beyond the cube consulting services ltd. 1 acs 3907 e-commerce...

©Bowen Hui, Beyond the Cube Consulting Services Ltd.1

ACS 3907E-Commerce

Lecture 4-1

Instructor: Kerry Augustine

©Bowen Hui, Beyond the Cube Consulting Services Ltd.

© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 2

• Develop clear understanding of your business objectives– What information needs to be conveyed?

– Who are your clients?

– Who are your sponsors/stakeholders?

– Who needs to use the site?

– How will these users use the site?

• Knowing how to choose right technologies to achieve objectives– In-house development, open-source, commercial

– Outsourcing considerations

– E-Commerce technology architecture including hardware, software, database options

Building an E-commerce Site: A Systematic Approach



Imagine Your E-commerce Presence

• What’s the idea?

– Vision

– Mission statement

– Target audience

– Intended market space

– Strategic analysis

– Internet marketing matrix

– Development timeline and preliminary budget

3



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

4




• 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

• Content creation patterns (blogs, Facebook)

• Buyer personas

5




• Characterize the marketplace

– Demographics

– Size, growth, changes

– Structure• Competitors

• Suppliers

• Substitute products

• Where is the content coming from?

– Static or dynamic?

6




• Know your business—SWOT analysis

• Develop an e-commerce presence map

• 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

7


SWOT Analysis

• Figure 4.1, page 189

8


E-commerce Presence Map

• Figure 4.2, page 190




Design Considerations

• Key players – who’s involved?– Owner

– Employees (Hierarchical? Management?)

– Suppliers

– Stakeholders

• High-level processes – how do the key players interact? What kind of information is exchanged between the key players?

• Functionality and applications – what kinds of features are made available by your site, and how are they organized into applications?

• Expected traffic – site/page traffic, seasonal deadlines?



Budget Planning

Operational costs are generally budgeted between 20% - 25% of the entire project.



Example Design Scenarios

• Sell text books using online catalog– Categories of books?

– Pricing options?

– Multiple sellers and buyer interaction?

• Service that connects tutors and students– How is a match initiated?

– Student-to-student or tutor-to-tutor interaction?

– Recommendation or rating system?

• Distributor of dog products to pet stores– Types of products?

– Storage and delivery options?

– Local, regional, national, global distribution?

– Support for expansion to individual customers?



Pieces of the Site-Building Puzzle

• Main areas where you will need to make decisions:



The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

• 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



Web Site Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

• Figure 4.5



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


© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall18

• Table 4.2



Essential Applications and Functions

• Digital catalog – display goods using text, graphics

• Product database – product description, stock number, inventory level

• Customer on-site tracking – site log per customer visit, personalization, common customer paths and destinations

• Shopping cart/payment system – ordering system, secure credit card clearing, other payment options

• Customer database – customer name, address, phone, email

• Sales database – customer ID, product purchased, date, payment, shipment, fulfillment

• Ad server – tracks site behaviour, prospective customers

• Site tracking and reporting system – monitors unique visitors, page visits, products purchased

• Inventory management system – manages product inventory levels, supplier ID and contact, order quantity data by product



Additional Application Examples

• Invoice system – internal accounting

• Security – user authentication, secure protocols, encryption

• Customer relationship management – customer feedback, reminder system, case management

• Supply chain and inventory management – supply and demand analysis, inventory forecasting

• Human resource management – time logs, workload analysis, scheduling, resource allocation

• Financial planning system – basic accounting, cash flow analysis, forecasting



Systems Design: Logical and Physical

• System design specification: – Description of main components of a system and their

relationship to one another

• Two components of system design:– Logical design = description of flow of information and

major processes and relationships involved

• E.g., major system components and data flow

– Physical design = mapping of logical design to physical components

• E.g. actual servers to purchase



Logical Design for a Simple Web Site

• Figure 4.6 (a), Page 197



Physical Design for a Simple Web Site

• Figure 4.6 (b), Page 197



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



Choices in Building and Hosting

Figure 4.7 Page 198



Building Own vs. Outsourcing

• Build from scratch– Long development time (requires skilled staff)

– Risk of reinventing the wheel

– Highly customized solution possible

• Use pre-built packages + customize– Easy to start

– Could get costly to change/upgrade/maintain

– Limited in functionality and design

• Outsourcing + design requirements/input– Need to be clear on what you want

– Don’t have to think about design and technical details

– Costs may involve development costs, management costs, ongoing support costs, your input time



Testing, Implementation, and Maintenance

• Testing

– Unit testing

– System testing

– Acceptance testing

• Implementation and maintenance:

– Maintenance is ongoing

– Maintenance costs: Similar to development costs

– Benchmarking



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 the customer

• Cookies

– Primary method to achieve personalization



The Information Policy Set

• Privacy policy

– Set of public statements declaring how site will treat customers’ personal information that is gathered by site

• Accessibility rules

– Set of design objectives that ensure disabled users can affectively access site



Designing Your E-Commerce Solution

• Unified Modeling Language (UML)



Tools for Building Your Design

• Content Management Systems (CMS)



Content Management Systems (CMS)

• CMS = content management system

• Software to create content of websites on-the-fly by users

• No programming knowledge required by users

• No need to download editing software

• Allows multiple users to contribute to the site

• Independence from webmaster

• Fast prototyping – put up framework and plug in content later



How CMS Works

• Additional functionality available via plugins

(requires more technical knowledge)

• Plugin = self-contained software component that can be added to create larger, integrated application

• Design follows the same template format as rest of site

• Separation of content from functionality and design

• Can function as intranet management system

(non-website)



Example Features

• Text, graphics, menus, links, etc.

• User accounts and access control levels

• Variety of professional design templates available

• Plugins:– Gallery/album

– Scheduling tool (calendar, appointment requests)

– Feedback/contact forms

– Shopping cart

– Credit card authentication

• Web statistics (http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html)

• Standards compliant (http://validator.w3.org/)

http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html

http://validator.w3.org/



CMS Example – Word Press

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OhG7Wx1CY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OhG7Wx1CY



http://www.web.com/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAFu_452pME



Exercises

• Purpose:– Getting used to vague specifications

– Multiple implementations to satisfy the same business objective

• Constraints:– 2-3Teams

– 15 minutes of discussion and decision making

– Everyone focus on one of the previous scenarios

• Outcomes:– 5 minute presentation and rough e-commerce presence map

– Identification of major system functional requirements and application components

– Description of one user interaction scenario



Team Exercises

Round 1 Team Exercise (3)

Round 2 Team Exercise (3)

acs 3907 e-commerce · ©bowen hui, beyond the cube consulting services ltd. 1 acs 3907 e-commerce...

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