MIS 6134

E-Commerce

Chapter 4:
Building an E-Commerce Presence: Websites,
Mobile Sites, and Apps
Normilah Hj Mohd Noh
School of Business and Management

1
 Topic Learning Outcomes
• Understand the questions you must ask and answer, and the steps
you should take, in developing an e-commerce presence.

• Explain the process that should be followed in building an e-

commerce presence.

• Identify and understand the major considerations involved in

choosing web server and e-commerce merchant server software.

• Understand the issues involved in choosing the most appropriate

hardware for an e-commerce site.

• Identify additional tools that can improve website performance.

• Understand the important considerations involved in developing a

mobile website and building mobile applications.
 The Wall Street Journal:
Redesigning for the Today’s
Platforms
■ Class Discussion
– What were W S J’s objectives in redesigning its e-
commerce presence?
– What considerations unique to the newspaper
business were involved?
– What did W S J do to meet the needs of mobile device
users?
 Imagine Your E-Commerce
Presence (1 of 3)
■ What’s the idea? The vision includes:
–Mission statement
–identification of Target audience
–Characterization of the Intended market space
–Strategic analysis
–an Internet Marketing matrix
–Development timeline
–Preliminary budget
 Imagine Your E-Commerce
Presence (2 of 3)
■ Where’s the money?
–Business model(s)
–Revenue model(s)
■ Who and where is the target audience?
–Demographics, lifestyle, consumption patterns, etc.
■ What is the ballpark? Characterize the marketplace
–Size, growth, demographics, structure
 Imagine Your E-Commerce
Presence (3 of 3)
■ Where’s the content coming from?
■ Know yourself—S W OT analysis
■ Develop an e-commerce presence map
■ Develop a timeline: Milestones
■ How much will this cost?
– Simple website: up to $5000
– Small startup: $25,000 to $50,000
– Large corporate website: $100,000+ to millions
Figure 4.1 S W O T Analysis
Figure 4.2 E-Commerce Presence
Map
 Imagine Your E-Commerce
Presence (3 of 3)
■ Develop a timeline: Milestones
❖ Where would you like to be a year from now?
❖ break down your project into a small number of
phases that could be completed within a specified
time
■ How much will this cost?
❖ How much you spend on a Web site depends on
what you want it to do
– Simple website: up to $5000
– Small startup: $25,000 to $50,000
– Large corporate website: $100,000+ to millions
 Building an E-Commerce Site: A
Systematic Approach
■ 2 Most important management challenges:
1. Developing a clear understanding of business objectives
Need to build a plan for developing firm’s presence

2. Knowing how to choose the right technology to achieve those

objectives
Requires understanding of some of the basic elements of e-commerce
infrastructure
■ Even if the decision is to outsource the development effort and operation
to a service provider, a development plan and some understanding of the
basic e-commerce infrastructure issues such as cost, capability, and
constraints need to be develop. Without a plan and a knowledge base,
the management may refuse the decisions about e-commerce presence
within the firm.
 Building an E-Commerce Site: A
Systematic Approach
■ Main factors to consider
– Management
– Hardware architecture
– Software
– Design
– Telecommunications
– Human resources
 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
Figure 4.5 Website Systems
Development Life Cycle
 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
Table 4.2 System Analysis, Business
Objectives, System Functionalities, and
Information Requirements for a Typical E-
Commerce Site (1 of 2)

Business Objective System Functionality Information Requirements

Display goods Digital Catalog Dynamic text and graphics catalog
Provide product Product database Product description, stocking numbers, inventory
information levels
Personalize/customize Customer on-site tracking Site log for every customer visit; data mining
product capability to identify common customer paths and
appropriate responses
Engage customers in On-site blog; user forums Software with blogging and community forum
conversations functionality
Execute a transaction Shopping cart/payment Secure credit card clearing; multiple payment
system options
Accumulate customer Customer database Name, address, phone, and e-mail for all customers;
information online customer registration
Table 4.2 System Analysis, Business
Objectives, System Functionalities, and
Information Requirements for a Typical E-
Commerce Site (2 of 2)

Business Objective System Functionality Information Requirements

Provide after-sale Sales database Customer I D, product, date, payment, shipment date
customer support
Coordinate marketing/ Ad server, e-mail server, e- Site behavior log of prospects and customers linked
advertising mail, campaign manager, ad to e-mail and banner ad campaigns
banner
manager
Understand marketing Site tracking and reporting Number of unique visitors, pages visited, products
effectiveness system purchased, identified by marketing campaign
Provide production and Inventory management Product and inventory levels, supplier I D and
supplier links system contact, order quantity data by product
 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
Includes a DFD - describes the flow of information at
▪

your e-commerce site, a processing functions that

must be performed, && databases that will be used
– Physical design (translates the logical design into
physical components)
Specifies actual physical, software components,
▪

models, and so on
Figure 4.6(a) Logical Design for a
Simple Website

(a) Simple Data Flow Diagram

This data flow diagram describes the flow of information requests and
responses for a sample Web site
Figure 4.6(b) Physical Design for a
Simple Website
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Outsourcing: Hiring vendors to provide services involved in
building site
■ BUILD OWN V S. OUTSOURCING:
ERSU

– Build your own own site, there are a range of options. Unless
you are fairly skilled, you should use a pre-built template to
create the Web site. For example, Yahoo Merchant Solutions,
Amazon Stores, and eBay all provide templates that merely
require you to input text, graphics, and other data, as well as
the infrastructure to run the Web site once it has been created.
– If your Web site is not a sales-oriented site requiring a
shopping cart, one of the least expensive and most widely
used site building tools is WordPress
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Build own :
– the least costly sources of a Web presence, but limited to the
“look and feel” and functionality provided by the template and
infrastructure supplied by these vendors.
– If decided to build the site yourself “from scratch.”, a broad
variety of tools, ranging from those that help you build
everything truly “from scratch,” such as Adobe Dreamweaver
and Microsoft Expression, to top-of-the-line prepackaged site-
building tools that can create sophisticated sites customized to
your needs
THE SPECTRUM OF TOOLS FOR BUILDING YOUR OWN
E-COMMERCE SITE

Slide 1-22
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Risks of Build own from Scratch :
❖ the costs involved are high - complexity of features such
as shopping carts, credit card authentication and
processing, inventory management, and order
processing.
❖ your staff may face a long, difficult learning curve,
delaying your entry to market
■ Advantages of Build own from Scratch :
– able to build a site that does exactly what you want.
– allow you to change the site rapidly if necessary due to a
changing business environment
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Build own using more expensive site-building packages:
❖ you will be purchasing state-of-the art software that is
well tested.
❖ You could get to market sooner.
❖ However, to make a sound decision, you will have to :
■ evaluate many different packages, and this can take a long time.
■ You may have to modify the packages to fit your business needs
■ and perhaps hire additional outside vendors to do the
modifications. Costs rise rapidly as modifications mount.
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Build own using Prebuilt template:
❖ you will be limited to the functionality already built into
the templates,
❖ and you will not be able to add to the functionality or
change it.
■ HOST OWN V S. OUTSOURCING
ERSU

– Host own
o host (operate) the site on your firm’s own servers
– Outsourcing Host
o outsource the hosting to a Web host provider
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Host outsourcing
❖ Hosting: Hosting company responsible for ensuring site is
accessible 24/7, for monthly fee
o need not concern itself with many of the technical aspects of setting
up a Web server and maintaining it, telecommunications links, nor
with staffing needs

■ Co-location:
❖ Firm purchases or leases Web server (with control over
its operation), but server is located at vendor’s physical
facility. The vendor maintains the facility,
communications lines, and the machinery
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Cloud services are rapidly replacing co-location because
❖ they are less expensive, and
❖ arguably more reliable
❖ offer a standardized infrastructure, virtualization technology,
and usually employ a pay-as-you-go billing system
■ Hosting, co-location, and cloud services have become a
commodity and a utility: costs are driven by very large
providers (such as IBM) who can achieve large
economies of scale by establishing huge “server farms”
located strategically around the country and the globe
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Disadvantages of Host outsourcing
❖ To ensure the vendor has the capability to grow with you
❖ need to know what kinds of security provisions are in
place for backup copies of your site, internal monitoring
of activity, and security track record
❖ Is there a public record of a security breach at the
vendor?
 Building the System: In-House
Versus Outsourcing
■ Risks to hosting your own site (if you are a small
business.)
❖ Your costs will be higher than if you had used a large
outsourcing firm because you don’t have the market
power to obtain low-cost hardware and
telecommunications.
❖ You will have to purchase hardware and software, have a
physical facility, lease communications lines, hire a staff,
and build security and backup capabilities yourself.
Figure 4.7 Choices in Building and
Hosting
 Insight on Business: Weebly
Makes Creating Websites Easy
■ Class Discussion
– What value does Weebly offer to small businesses?
– Are there any drawbacks to using Weebly to create
an e-commerce presence?
– How are service providers like Weebly changing the
nature of e-commerce?
 Testing the System
■ Testing (whether the system is outsourced or built in-house)
–Unit testing - testing the site’s program modules one at a time
–System testing - testing the site as a whole, in the same way a
typical user would when using the site
– Acceptance testing - requires that the firm’s key personnel and
managers in marketing, production, sales, and general management
actually use the system as installed on a test Internet or intranet
server
– A/B testing (split testing) -
– Multivariate testing
 Implementation and
■ Systems breakMaintenance
down unpredictably need continual
checking, testing, and repair
■ Maintenance is ongoing
■ Maintenance costs: Similar to development costs
– A $40K e-commerce site may require $40K annually to
upkeep
– e-commerce sites are always in a process of change,
improvement, and correction
– 20% of the time ~ debugging code and responding to
emergency situations
– 20% of the time ~ changes in reports, data files, and links to
backend databases
– 60% of maintenance time ~ general administration
■ Benchmarking
Figure 4.10 Factors in Website
Optimization
 Simple v s. Multi-Tiered
ersu

Website Architecture
■ System architecture
– Arrangement of software, machinery, and tasks in an
information system needed to achieve a specific
functionality
■ Two-tier
– Web server and database server
■ Multi-tier
– Web application servers
– Backend, legacy databases
Figure 4.11(a) Two-Tier E-
Commerce Architecture
Figure 4.11(b) Multi-Tier E-
Commerce Architecture
 Web Server Software
■ Apache
– Leading web server software (52% of the market)
– Works with U N IX, Linux operating systems
– Reliable, stable, part of open software community
■ Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (I IS) (20% of the
market)
– Second major web server software
– Windows-based
– Microsoft suite of development tools - Integrated,
powerful, & easy-to-use
 Table 4.4 Basic Functionality
Provided by Web Servers
Functionality Description
Processing of H T T P requests Receive and respond to client requests for H T M L pages
Security services (Secure Verify username and password; process certificates and
Sockets Layer)/ Transport Layer private/public key information required for credit card
Security processing and other secure information
File Transfer Protocol Permits transfer of very large files from server to server
Search engine Indexing of site content; keyword search capability
Data capture Log file of all visits, time, duration, and referral source
E-mail Ability to send, receive, and store e-mail messages
Site management tools Calculate and display key site statistics, such as unique
visitors, page requests, and origin of requests; check links
on pages
 Site Management Tools
■ Basic tools included in all web servers
– Verify that links on pages are still valid
– Identify orphan files
– Report on potential problems and errors that users
may encounter
■ Third-party software for advanced management
– Monitor customer purchases
– Marketing campaign effectiveness
– Keep track of hit counts and other statistics
– E.g. Webtrends Analytics 10
 Dynamic Page Generation
■

Tools
Dynamic page generation:
– Contents stored as objects (rather than being hard-
coded in HTML ) in database and fetched when needed
■ Common tools to retrieve dynamic page generation:
– C GI, A S P, J S P, O D B C, J D B C
■ Advantages of Dynamic page generation
– Lowers menu costs (the costs incurred by merchants for
changing product descriptions and prices)
– Permits easy online market segmentation (the ability to sell
the same product to different markets)
– Enables cost-free price discrimination (the ability to sell the
same product to different customers at different prices)
– Enables content management system (C M S) - used to
create and manage Web content
 Application Servers
■ Web application servers:
–Provide specific business functionality required for a
website
–Type of middleware
Isolate business applications from Web servers
▪

and databases
–Single-function applications being replaced by
integrated software tools that combine all
functionality needed for e-commerce site
 E-Commerce Merchant Server
Software
■ Provides basic functionality for online sales
– Online catalog
▪List of products available on website
– Order taking via an onlineShopping cart
▪Allows shoppers to set aside, review, edit selections,
and then make purchase
– Online Credit card processing
▪Typically works in conjunction with shopping cart
▪Verifies card and puts through credit to company’s
account at checkout
 Merchant Server Software
Packages (1 of 2)
■ Integrated environment that includes most of
functionality needed
– Shopping cart
– Merchandise display
– Order management
– clear credit card transactions
■ Two main options
– E-commerce merchant service sites (e.g. Yahoo
Aabaco Small Business)
– Open-source merchant server software
 Merchant Server Software
■
Packages
Key factors in selecting a package
(2 of 2)

– Functionality
– Support for different business models, including (m-
commerce)
– 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
Slide 1-46
 Choosing Hardware
■ 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
 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 v s. static Web pages)
ersu

– Required security
– Number of items in inventory
– Number of page requests
– Speed of legacy applications
 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 (upgrading the servers from a single

processor to multiple processors)
– Horizontally
▪Employ multiple computers to share workload
(adding multiple single-processor servers to your site and
balancing the load among the servers)
– Improve processing architecture
– Outsource to cloud service, C D N
 Table 4.8 Vertical and
Horizontal Scaling Techniques
Technique Application
Use a faster computer Deploy edge servers, presentation servers, data servers, etc.

Create a cluster of computers Use computers in parallel to balance loads.

Use appliance servers Use special-purpose computers optimized for their task.
Segment workload Segment incoming work to specialized computers.
Batch requests Combine related requests for data into groups, process as
group.
Manage connections Reduce connections between processes and computers to a
minimum.
Aggregate user data Aggregate user data from legacy applications in single
data pools.
Cache Store frequently used data in cache rather than on the disk.
 Table 4.9 Improving the
Processing Architecture of
Your Site
Architecture Improvement Description
Separate static content from Use specialized servers for each type of workload.
dynamic content
Cache static content Increase R A M to the gigabyte range and store
static content in R A M.
Cache database lookup tables Use cache tables used to look up database
records.
Consolidate business logic on Put shopping cart, credit card processing, and
dedicated servers other C P U-intensive activity on dedicated servers.
Optimize A S P code Examine your code to ensure it is operating
efficiently.
Optimize the database schema Examine your database search times and take
steps to reduce access times.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Slide 1-52
 Other E-Commerce Site Tools
■ Website design: Basic business considerations
– Enabling customers to find and buy what they need
■ Additional Software Tools for search engine optimization
– Search engine placement
▪ Metatags, titles, content - Search engines “crawl” your
site & identify keywords as well as title pages & then index
them for use in search arguments
▪ Identify market niches - to attract small, specific groups -
closer to purchasing
▪ Offer expertise - White papers, industry analyses, FAQ
pages, guides, & histories - excellent ways to build
confidence on the part of users & to encourage them to see
your Web site as the place to go for help and guidance
 Other E-Commerce Site Tools
■ Additional Software Tools for search engine optimization
– Search engine placement
▪ Links - Encourage other sites to link to your site; build a
blog that attracts people and who will share your URL with
others and post links in the process. List your site with
Yahoo Directory for $300 a year. Build a Facebook page for
your company, & use Twitter to develop a following or fan
base for your products
▪ Buy ads - Complement your natural search optimization
efforts with paid search engine keywords and ads. Choose
your keywords and purchase direct exposure on Web pages.
▪ Local e-commerce - attractive to local people, or involves
products sold locally, use keywords that connote your
location
 Table 4.10 E-Commerce
Website Features That Annoy
■
Feature
Customers (1 of 2)
Requiring user to view ad or intro page before going to website content
■ Pop-up and pop-under ads and windows
■ Too many clicks to get to the content
■ Links that don’t work
■ Confusing navigation; no search function
■ Requirement to register and log in before viewing content or ordering
■ Slow loading pages
■ Content that is out of date
 Table 4.10 E-Commerce
Website Features That Annoy
■ Customers
Inability to use browser’s Back button (2 of 2)
■ No contact information available (web form only)
■ Unnecessary splash/flash screens, animation, etc.
■ Music or other audio that plays automatically
■ Unprofessional design elements
■ Text not easily legible due to size, color, format
■ Typographical errors
■ No or unclear returns policy
Table 4.11 The Eight Most Important
Factors in Successful E-Commerce Site
Design
Factor Description
Functionality Pages that work, load quickly, and point the customer toward your
product offerings
Informational Links that customers can easily find to discover more about you and
your products
Ease of use Simple foolproof navigation
Redundant navigation Alternative navigation to the same content
Ease of purchase One or two clicks to purchase
Multi-browser Site works with the most popular browsers
functionality
Simple graphics Avoids distracting, obnoxious graphics and sounds that the user
cannot control
Legible text Avoids backgrounds that distort text or make it illegible
 Tools for Interactivity and
Active Content
■ C GI (Common Gateway Interface)
■ A S P (Active Server Pages)/A S P.NET
■ Java, J S P, and JavaScript
■ ActiveX and V B Script
■ ColdFusion
■ P H P, Ruby on Rails, Django
■ Other design elements:
– Widgets, mashups
 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 effectively access site
 Insight on Society: Designing
for Accessibility
■ Class discussion:
– Why might some merchants be reluctant to make
their websites accessible to disabled users?
– How can websites be made more accessible?
– Should all websites be required by law to provide
“equivalent alternatives” for visual and sound
content?
– What additional accessibility problems do mobile
devices pose?
 Developing a Mobile Website
and Building Mobile
■
Applications
Types of m-commerce software
– Mobile website
▪Responsive Web design
– Mobile Web app
– Native app
– Hybrid app
▪Runs inside native container
▪App distribution
▪Based on H T M L5, C S S, JavaScript
 Developing a Mobile Website
and Building Mobile
■ Mobile websiteApplications
❖ Responsive Web design
• Able to design a Web site that automatically adjusts its layout
and display according to the user’s screen resolution,
whether a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
• Responsive design tools include HTML5 and CSS3 and its
three key design principles involve using flexible grid-based
layouts, flexible images and media, and media queries
 Developing a Mobile Website
and Building Mobile
■
Applications
Mobile Web app
❖ are specifically designed for the mobile platform in
terms of screen size, finger navigation, and graphical
simplicity.
❖ Can support complex interactions used in games and
rich media, perform real-time, on-the-fly calculations,
and can be geo-sensitive using the smartphone’s
built-in global positioning system (GPS) function.
❖ Typically operate faster than mobile Web sites but not
as fast as native apps.
 Developing a Mobile Website
and Building Mobile
■ Native app
❖
Applications
an application designed specifically to operate using the
mobile device’s hardware & operating system.
❖ These stand-alone programs can connect to the Internet
to download & upload data, & can operate on this data
even when not connected to the Internet. Download a
book to an app reader, disconnect from the Internet, &
read your book.
❖ Because the various types of smartphones have different
hardware & operating systems, apps are not “one size fits
all” and therefore need to be developed for different mobile
platforms.
❖ Ideal for games, complex interactions, on-the-fly
calculations, graphic manipulations, and rich media
 Planning and Building a
Mobile Presence
■ Identify business objectives, system functionality,
and information requirements
■ Choice:
– Mobile website or mobile Web app
▪ Less expensive
– Native app
▪ Can use device hardware, available offline
Table 4.13 Unique Features That Must be
Taken into Account When Designing a
Mobile Presence

Feature Implications For Mobile Platform

Hardware Mobile hardware is smaller, and there are more resource
constraints in data storage and processing power.
Connectivity The mobile platform is constrained by slower connection
speeds than desktop websites.
Displays Mobile displays are much smaller and require simplification. Some
screens are not good in sunlight.
Interface Touch-screen technology introduces new interaction
routines different from the traditional mouse and keyboard.
The mobile platform is not a good data entry tool but can
be a good navigational tool.
 Mobile Presence Design
Considerations
■ Platform constraints
– Graphics, file sizes (File sizes should be kept smaller and the
number of files sent to the user reduced)
■ Mobile first design
– Desktop website design after mobile design
■ Responsive web design (R W D)
– C S S site adjusts layout of site according to device screen
resolutions
■ Adaptive web design (A W D)
– Server delivers different templates or versions of site
optimized for device
 Cross-Platform Mobile App
Development Tools
■ Objective C, Java
■ Low cost, open-source alternatives
– Appery.io
– Codiqa
– PhoneGap
– MoSync
– Appcelerator
 Mobile Presence: Performance
and Cost Considerations
■ Mobile first design: Most efficient
■ Mobile website:
– Resizing existing website for mobile access is least
expensive
■ Mobile web app:
– Can utilize browser A P I
■ Native app:
– Most expensive; requires more programming
 Insight on Technology:
Carnival Cruise Ships Go
Class Discussion
Mobile
■

– What influenced Carnival in deciding to create a

mobile app?
– Are there any disadvantages in making a mobile app
a central part of the Carnival Cruise experience?
– How will the Ocean Medallion system add value to
the cruising experience?
 Careers in E-Commerce
■ Position: U X Designer
■ Qualification/Skills
■ Preparing for the Interview
■ Possible Interview Questions