Matthew Moss
BUS381
3-14-2012
1. (10 points) Describe the eight unique features of e-commerce. Describe the principal e-commerce business
models and revenue models.
The eight unique features of e-commerce is Ubiquity (availible Everywhere), it has a
global reach (Spans all over the world via the Internet), Universal Standards (meaning the
way e-commerce is conducted), Richness (The Complexity and content of a message),
Interactivity (2-way communications between customer and seller), Information Density
(The quality of the information sent to all market participants), Personalization
(Merchants can target their merchandise to certain individuals) and finally by Social
Technology (Use of social networking sites to advertise, share and produce contect for a
company).
The First principal ecommerce business model is a Portal, which are search engines that
crawl websites and display ads for companies. E-tailers are another business model and
come in all shapes and sizes. An example would be Amazon which buy and sell products
across the Internet. A Content Provider is a firm that provides videos. music, or any
digital good on the internet either for free or for sale. A Transaction Broker model is
used for sites that process transactions for consumers. Market Creators build digital
environments where buyers and sellers can come to meet to buy and sell. Service
Providers provide service such as online backup storage. And finally the last Business
model, Community Providers are sites that provide a digital online environment such as
Facebook or Twitter provide community building tools for its users.
2. (12 points) Achieving Operational Excellence: Evaluating e-commerce hosting services.
This exercise helps develop your Internet skills in commercial services for hosting an e-commerce site for a
small start-up company.
You would like to set up a Web site to sell towels, linens, pottery, and tableware from Portugal and are
examining services for hosting small business Internet storefronts. Your Web site should be able to take
secure credit card payments and to calculate shipping costs and taxes. Initially, you would like to display
photos and descriptions of 40 different products. Visit Yahoo!Small Business, GoDaddy, and Volusion and
compare the range of e-commerce hosting services they offer to small businesses, their capabilities, and
costs. Also compare the tools they provide for creating an e-commerce site. Determine which you would
use if you were actually establishing a Web store. Explain the reasons for your choice.
Yahoo Small business!
Store Design
Inventory Management
50,000 Products
Payment Processing
Requires merchant account
Shipping
Order Management
Site Statistics
Marketing
Customer Support
Dependable Hosting
$25.46 mo
GoDaddy
100-product Catalog
5-images per Product
10GB Disk Space
500GB Bandwidth
FREE Hosting!
$29.99 mo
Credit Cards + $69.99 yr
Volusion
100-Products
1GB Transfer
Free Transaction
Templates
Social MEdia Tools
Fraud Score
Live Chat
Adwords Credit
Social Store
$19.99 mo
Matthew Moss
BUS381
3-14-2012
Based on the information I researched on Yahoo Small Business, GoDaddy, and Volusion, I would have to
go with Volusion. The lower price per month and the ability to upload the pictures of my products and their
info as well as being able to process payments for free is great. With Godaddy I would have to pay an extra
$69.99 a year to process credit card orders securely and on Yahoo I would require a merchants account
which can be pricy.
(13 points) Understanding E-commerce
Go to the Internet and investigate the following e-commerce supporting technology:

Electronic Payment Systems (give definition and describe popular instruments)
Electronic Payment systems allow merchants to process credit cards as a form of payment instead
of cash. A popular instrument is Electronic Payment Systems (www.eps-na.com) which ofers such
services to merchants of all sizes.

Web Marketing (give definition and describe tools and techniques)
Web marketing is the marketing of products over the internet. A tool for web marketing is Google
Adsense which allows merchants and companies to advertise their service or product on the
popular search engine Google.com as potential customers within a predetermined region resides or
if that person recently searched for a similar product or service, google will then display it as an
ad.

Search Engine Optimization (give definition, explain purpose, and describe techniques)
SEO is the ability to place a product or company at a higher ranking within a search engine to
help market to people searching on a search engine. A Tool would the Search Engine Optimization
(www.seo.com) which takes a business or a product and improves the search engine ranking for it
across several search engines.
Upload your work (one Word file) by the midnight of the due date.