Chapter 4

Building an E-commerce Presence: Web

Sites, Mobile Sites, and Apps
 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
 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
 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
■ Content creation patterns (blogs, Facebook)
■ Buyer personas (This is not a real customer, but a fictional
person who embodies the characteristics of your best potential
customers.)
 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?
SWOT Analysis
E-commerce Presence Map
 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 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
Web Site 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
 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
Logical Design for a Simple Web Site
Physical Design for a Simple Web Site
 Testing, Implementation, and
Maintenance
■ Testing
❖ Unit testing
❖ System testing
❖ Acceptance testing

■ Implementation and maintenance:

❖ Maintenance is ongoing
❖ Maintenance costs: Similar to development costs
❖ Benchmarking
 Simple vs. Multi-tiered
Web Site 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
Two-Tier E-commerce Architecture
Multi-Tier E-commerce Architecture
E-commerce Merchant Server Software
■ Provides basic functionality for sales
❖ Online catalog
■ List of products available on Web site
❖ 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
 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 building 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 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 vs. static Web pages)
❖ 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
❖ Horizontally
■ Employ multiple computers to share workload
❖ Improve processing architecture
 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
 Developing a Mobile Web Site 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

❖ Use systems analysis/design to identify unique
and specific business objectives
 Developing a Mobile Web Presence
■ Design considerations
❖ Platform constraints: Smartphone/tablet

■ Performance and cost

❖ Mobile Web site:
■ Least expensive
❖ Mobile app:
■ Can utilize browser API
❖ Native app:
■ Most expensive; requires more programming
 Building a Mobile Presence
■ What are the key differences between user
experience on a Web site and on a mobile
device?
■ Why would a mobile Web site or app from
the same merchant need different content or
functionality?
■ In which cases would a merchant want to
develop a mobile app over a mobile Web
site?