e-commerce
... provides connectivity to other systems. It is important for information sharing. If the company wants to replace the system of a particular functional area instead of changing the whole system, the new system should provide connectivity with the legacy system to share the information. For example, in e-marketplace, the businesses share and provide information-based services. In this case, the software they use must be able to provide connectivity to the systems of their counterparts. • Documentation: It includes ‘all documentation for users, operation, maintenance, and modifications’ (Borovits 1984, p. 75). It should include the source code of the software which requires for future maintenance. Users use documentation as tutorials to gain a better understanding of the system. It is a key evaluation and selection criteria. (Borovits 1984) The nature of E-commerce and E-commerce software E-commerce E-commerce has developed and evolved over last two decades at a rapid pace, taking most of the business over the Internet. It is a part of e-business. Schneider (2002) has defined e-commerce as the ‘business activities conducted using electronic data transmission technologies such as those used in the Internet and the World Wide Web.’ Characteristics of E-commerce The key characteristics of e-commerce are: Global: E-commerce has no physical borders and the degree of market penetration is unlimited. It can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Availability: Unlike traditional business hours, which have time constraints, e-commerce is available 24 hours a day and provides immediate access. Interaction: The business stakeholders interact on non face-to-face basis, the interaction is anonymous and they are no longer required to know each other. Virtual: If the company wants to make their presence in another country, then opening the website on the server in that country can even fulfill the purpose, and the company ay not required to have the physical store in that country. This makes the nature of the business virtual. Multimedia: To overcome the drawback of non-face to face interaction, e-commerce embeds multimedia that provides design, entertainment with high degree of interactivity and networking. (Timmers 2000) Advantages Cost effective: E-commerce serves customers in national as well as international markets. Organizations do not need to open separate stores in different countries, rather they can open a central store in one country and cater customers internationally. It cuts down their costs by saving capital, administrative costs and overheads. Moreover, the information is kept in the electronic format, which saves paper work as well as the cost of storing, processing and retrieving paper-based information. Customer Relationship Management (CRM): E-commerce ‘enables companies to interact more closely with customers, even if through intermediaries. This promotes better CRM and increases customer loyalty’ (Turban et al. 2002, p. 26). Competitive advantage: E-commerce provides customers with economical customization of the products and services, and thus provides competitive advantage over other organizations. Dell Computer has gained competitive advantage over the period of time by providing customization to its online customers. Anywhere-anytime: Customers can perform online shopping and transactions 24 hours a day throughout the year and from any place in the world, since it operates on the Internet. Faster: Customers can retrieve product or service information within a second, which is otherwise time-consuming in traditional commerce where they have to stand in a queue. (Turban et al. 2002) Disadvantages Security and privacy: Security and privacy of customers’ information is the crucial issue. Security of the credit card numbers provided by customers and online banking transactions have been the key areas of the security. Sometimes the personal information provided by customers online is misused, which in turn distract them from using e-commerce. Trust: It is hard for customers to trust online sellers and counterparts without seeing them. Moreover, customers who are very much habituated of traditional commerce prefer to see the seller, touch the product before buying. Integration: ‘[i]t is difficult to integrate the Internet and EC software with some existing applications and databases’ (Turban et al. 2002, p. 27). Human relationships: Since all the e-commerce activities are carried out over the Internet, it reduces face-to-face interaction, which is essential for developing human relationship. (Turban et al. 2002) E-commerce software Authoring tools: These tools are the applications that help developers to build accessible user interface. These applications provide drag-n-drop tools to develop the web (in this context) or similar contents. The authoring tools used for this project are: Macromedia Dream weaver MX 2004: It is used to build the user interface that is all the web pages in this project. It is professional website development application, which provides world-class designer and code editor in one. It allows developers to develop sophisticated and standards-based HTML, XHTML, asp.NET, and ColdFusion websites with CSS support using this application. It has integrated Macromedia Flash and Fireworks application that allow users to make even smaller changes to the graphics without leaving the website. Moreover, it provides pre-built templates to be used by beginner and intermediaries to build professional web site. Further it has incorporated XML Namespace support, ASP.NET, SQL and PHP Server behavior to build web-based application. (Macromedia 2004) Coding tools: Macromedia Dream weaver MX 2004: It is used to write ASP.NET code. It provides single click coding tool. Most of the controls are put using drag-n-drop utility whereas coding tool is used to make the customization. Apart from that, it provides snippets; the pre-written code samples that can be included in the current web-based application and thus saves the time. (Macromedia 2004) ASP.NET Web Matrix: It is a freeware tool provided by Microsoft especially for development of web-based application using ASP.NET technology. This tool is similar to that of Macromedia Dreamweaver. Additionally, it has provided ‘Class Browser’ sub-application, which gives thorough and comprehensive knowledge of all the classes and methods used in ASP.NET technology, which is consequently very useful for developers. (Microsoft ASP.NET 2003) Graphical design tools: SWiSH Lite v1.52: This graphical design tool is used to create the ad banners for the website. It is powerful, easy-to-use and drag-n-drop tool to create professional animations including text, audio and images. (Swishzone.com 2003) Adobe PhotoShop CS2 : It is professional image-editing software tool provided by Adobe Systems Incorporated. This tool is used to create the website’s banner, page headings and buttons used on all the pages. (Nakashima & Garrett 1998) Moreover, in this project it is used to create the prototype image of the website to get layout approval from the client. Server technologies: ASP.NET: It is a next version of Active Server Pages (ASP). It is a web development platform, which provides easy programming models and services to the developers to build enterprise-class Web applications using Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Web server. It is built on .NET Framework technology. Web application based on ASP.NET technology can be written in any language such as Visual Basic .NET, C++ and Jscript .NET. ASP.NET is structured and object-oriented language. It provides non-ODBC based connection to the database. (msdn 2004) Framework for evaluating E-commerce software Following is the list of factors included in the framework for evaluation. Usability: It depicts the structure of the application, availability of quick feedback, help, meaning icons, use of colors, language and shortcuts. User is distracted with the use of solid colors like red, pink and pink. Use of soft color is always recommended. (Borovits 1984) Robustness: It includes heftiness of I/O operations performed by the system as well as error handling, level of undo/redo operations it provides, drag and drop utility, useful tips and auto correct facility. (Borovits 1984) Reusability: It comprises of the factors such as code’s reusability, whether system allows third-party add-ins, degree of flexibility in terms of expandability, hardware requirements, and interoperability. (Borovits 1984) Cost: Cost includes acquisition, installation, training, upgradation and maintenance cost. Cost is generally compared with benefits can be accrued. Cost of off-the-shelf software package must be less than that of in-house developed package to attract the companies. (Borovits 1984) Upgradeability: It states whether the system is upgradeable and new versions will be available. (Borovits 1984) Stability: Stability depicts efficiency that includes the rate of system breakdown and possibility of recovery. (Borovits 1984) Reliability: Rate of error occurrence and system response time come under the head of reliability. More reliable system gives smooth operations, which is most important in e-broker and e-marketplace web-based applications. (Borovits 1984) These factors are measured using scoring system (rating), which has 1 to 5 points scale, where 1 is ‘poor’, 2 is ‘not bad’, 3 is ‘average’, 4 is ‘good‘ and 5 is ‘excellent’. The factors are prioritized and rated. For instance, if the usability of ASP.Net is rated as 1, it means it has poor usability. Please refer Appendix A for the detailed framework. Here are the steps to be considered in software evaluation. • Software to be evaluated. • Hardware configuration where those software reside. • Environment in which those software packages are evaluated. • Number of people evaluated the software package. • Which method is used for evaluation? • Total time spent for it. Evaluation of the software required for developing e-commerce website. It might seem that in order to build an average low cost e-commerce website Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop are one of the best options on the market and Cold Fusion server scripting language. But if more robust and secure website is required ASP.Net package should be considered as it provides more security and operability. Cold fusion MX with Dream weaver MX ColdFusion is an advanced website program that runs on servers. ColdFusion works in conjunction with a database of information that it draws from. It can be used to create dynamic web pages that display a variety of data, depending on what the viewer clicks on. Advantages Easy to integrate Site search functionality/ability Easily integrate information from multiple data sources and increase query performance by querying result sets in memory. Ensure a more seamless experience by building applications that automatically trap and handle error messages. Increase productivity with a powerful Web application scripting language (CFML) that handles low-level programming tasks automatically. Automatically generate client-side validation logic, quickly process incoming HTML forms, and use rich Java form controls including an enhanced grid control. Disadvantages Slow .CFM pages Expensive package Achieving highest possible performance and scalability with ColdFusion MX applications is a complex combination of many different factors Factors Affecting Performance • Hardware and soft...