E-Commerce implementation

1. What is the SDLC approach to building an e-commerce site?

2. What are the functionalities that an e-commerce site should deliver?

3. What are the decisions to be made when building an e-commerce site?

4. What are the software needed to operate an e-commerce site?

5. What are the factors affecting the performance of an e-commerce site?

6. What are the factors in successful website design?

Site-building using SDLC

Phases	Considerations
Project identification	· Identify strategic objectives · Choose a business model
Planning & requirements analysis	· Identify business objectives (what can your site do?) · Identify information requirements (what should your systems produce to achieve your business objectives?)
Systems analysis	· Identify system functionalities (what should your systems do to achieve your business objectives?)
Logical design	· Develop a logical system design specification
Physical design	· Develop a physical system design specification
Implementation	· Consider site-building alternatives (Figure 4-3) · Perform unit, system, and acceptance testing
Evaluation	· Perform system maintenance · Conduct benchmarking

E-Commerce site functionalities (Table 4.1)

1. Display goods: digital catalog with text and graphics

2. Provide product information: product description, price, and inventory level from product database

3. Provide product customization: customer on-site tracking using data mining

4. Execute a transaction: online order processing with shopping cart and electronic payment system

5. Accumulate customer information: name, address, phone number, and e-mail address

6. Provide after-sale customer support: customer ID, product purchased, date, payment, and shipment information from sales database

7. Coordinate marketing program: site behavior tracking with ad server

8. Understand marketing effectiveness: monitor number of visitors, pages visited, and product purchased from site tracking data

9. Provide production and supplier links: facilitate order replenishment and inventory management

Site-building decisions (Figure 4.1)

1. Software

2. Hardware

3. Telecommunication

4. Site design

5. Human resources

6. Organizational capabilities

Software for e-commerce site

1. Web server software (Figure 4.7)

2. Site management tools: site statistics, dead link detection

3. Dynamic page generation tools: CGI, ASP, JSP

4. Application server software (Table 4.4)

5. B2C server software: online catalog, shopping cart, and credit card processing

6. Site development tools (Figure 4.4)

Site-performance factors

1. Speed: load factor (Table 4.6)

· Number of concurrent users (Figure 4.8)

· Nature of user requests and behavior (Table 4.7)

· Nature of site content: CPU-intensive operations

· Bandwidth limitations

2. Capacity: I/O limitations and telecommunications connection (Figure 4.9)

3. Scalability: a site’s ability to increase in size as demand grows (Table 4.8)

· Vertical scaling: adding additional CPU to a single server

· Horizontal scaling: adding additional single CPU servers

· Processing architecture improvement (Table 4.9)

Requirements of a successful website

1. Sell

2. Interactive

3. Personal

4. Respect users’ privacy, accessibility, and security

Factors in successful website design (Table 4.10)

1. Functional

2. Informational

3. Ease of use

4. Ease to navigate

5. Ease of purchase

6. Multi-browser compatible

7. Simple

8. Legible