E-Commerce and the Internet
The evolution of Business Systems included a reference to
the World Wide Web and the Internet
And, in particular, Electronic Commerce
In this lecture, we will be looking at some aspects of Web
development and design
Notices
Wednesday 5th May. Last day for lodging disputed ‘HECS
liability notice’, ‘PEL notice’ or ‘BOTPLS Notice’ for
Semester 1.
E-Commerce and the Internet
Computing and Communications are the driving forces
behind the extraordinary capabilities offered by the Internet,
and these techniques are being rapidly developed for
– intrastate
– interstate
– national
– international
developments and applications in commerce.
This lecture we will look at some of the aspects of this topic.
The World Wide Web and the Internet
A bit of history:
The Internet started as an experiment. It was based on a
requirement of a ‘no fail’ message collection and transmitting
facility. (1969).
The reason was that the United States Department of Defence
was concerned that the ability to send and receive must be
available at all times.
One of the main objectives was to create a system which could
provide alternative pathing of messages, even if part of the
network was disabled.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency sponsored this
development - AARPANET
The Internet
Academics developed message switching systems and
protocols (standards and rules) and also message-packeting
systems (better resource usage).
Standard routing information features were also established.
However, wider use led to an (unintended) increase in
message traffic - bulletin boards and discussions groups
Universities and other users developed their own local area
networks.
The Internet
By 1980, the Internet had evolved to provide
communications on a wide range of topics.
It was ‘difficult’ to use - And, it was ‘slow’
Users had to use program commands, there were no
Graphics User Interfaces
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee (CERN laboratory, Europe)
proposed the concept of a World Wide Web
(Conseil Européen pour la Researche Nucléaire)
The Internet
This was directed at
– organising Internet information into pages
– these pages would be linked by graphics which could be
selected by individual users
Microsoft 3.0 arrived, and provided a Graphics User Interface.
(GUI)
Web browsers appeared - ‘surfing’ the Web became popular
The Web is part of the Internet - not all is organised into the
GUI accessible form.
The Internet
• Government and Business in America began to consider the
building of a national information superhighway
• This would link
– homes
– businesses
– schools
– libraries
– hospitals
with high speed and easy access to
– electronic books
– magazines
– research materials
The Internet
Growth:
In 1993 there were approx. 150 webservers distributed Web
pages on the Internet.
In 2000, there was estimated to be close to 500,000 web
servers - not all are permanently attached.
Users from approx. 200 countries access the Internet
January 1997 - 100,000,000 users
January 1998 - 270,000,000 users
January 2001 - 390,000,000 users
January 2003 - 640,000,000 users
2.5 billion documents on the Internet, growing at 7.5 million
per day
The Internet
Question:
How do we (I) get access to the Web ?
Answer:
You acquire these friendly, cost-effective, fast and reliable
services from an ISP
So, what is, or are, an ISP ?
The Internet
What are ISP’s ?
They are Internet Service Providers
They are organisations which provide Internet connections
• They provide a ‘window’ for subscribers
Fees ?
• Set up
• and monthly (or other time base) for use
What are Content Providers ?
• Organisations which provide the material available
Internet Service Providers
• About 900 + providers (June 2001) 1800 in 2003 (est)
• Wide ‘cost’ bandwidth
• Charge bases:
– set rate per hour, cheaper during ‘off peak’ times
– fixed rate per month - set number of hours with bulk
buying opportunity
– flat fee
• Some ‘hidden’ extras
– Possibility of STD call charges
– extent or restriction on local call access
– support
– speed (56Kb is a good target but watch the ISP speed)
Internet Service Providers
• Some ISP’s offer poor modem-to-user ratios (poor pickup)
• Some ISP’s use the Telstra link to gain access to national
and international services
• Some ‘bigger’ ISP’s have their own private network
• Some ISP’s
– Telstra Big Pond
– Compuserve pacific
– Dragon Net
– Internet Service Providers Pty.Ltd
– OzEmail
– IBM Global Network
Internet Service Providers
Check List
1. How is the ISP connected to the Internet - Australian public
Internet backbone or does it operate on its own
2. What Access speeds are offered
3. Is there an upgrade capability if/as demand grows
4. What access software does the ISP offer
5. What is the current reliability rate (busy, slow, dropouts ?)
6. History of the ISP - how long, how many customers
7. What customer support is offered - when and how is it
available
8. Is there a choice of pricing plans
9. Can the present plan be changed if required
The Internet
Any others ?
• Software and hardware companies
• Browser and e-mail software suppliers
• Routers, server computers, server software, Web-page
publishing tools
The Internet
Anything else ?
• Influence on the Internet and its users:
– Governments - laws and regulations limit content and
access
– The Internet Society - provide technical development and
guidelines for direction.
Decides on protocol support and Internet addressing
– InterNIC (Internet Networking Information Centre National Science Foundation) - ensures uniqueness of
addresses
– Universities and colleges - Internet research
IntraNets ?
• Normally an Internet look alike network which is ‘private’ and
internal to a Company
•
•
•
•
•
Monash
Ford Motor Company
Coles Myer
Broken Hill / Billington
Any others ?
• There was an outline of an Intranet and Internet in Lecture 2
The World Wide Web
• Is essentially a retrieval system
• It is based on page organisation of information - these pages
are commonly called Web pages (documents)
• The pages connect via hyperlinks
• What is a Web site ?
– A web page (or pages) which relate to a specific topic or
business
– A Web server is the host for one or more Web pages
– A Web site may contain many Web pages
– Normally a Web site has a home page -it’s a directory of
the Web site offerings
– Navigation is by hyperlinks to other pages
The World Wide Web
Other facilities:
•
•
•
•
•
URL - Universal Resource Locator - http://monash.edu.au
Mailing lists
Newsgroups
Chat
On Line shopping - Electronic catalogues
Navigation Aids
• World Wide Web
• E-Mail
• Telnet (a simple, strong protocol)
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• Archie - an FTP catalogue - http://archie.emnet.co.uk/
• E-mail discussion groups
• Usenet news - a global electronic bulletin board
---- subscribe, and pay !!!
The World Wide Web
Browsers:
Software which provides the capability of:Display of Web pages
Navigation of the Web and other parts of the Internet
Searching facilities based on key words
examples: Netscape Navigator
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Spyglass Mosaic
HotJava (Sun Electronics)
also ‘plug-ins’ to update a user’s browser
The World Wide Web
Search Engines (used by Browsers)
Software which minimises search times for specific
information over the Web.
Uses tables of contents and indexes
Yahoo, Alta-Vista, Excite, Google
Meta-search engines use more than one search engine in
the search process
Proxy Servers
Are servers which act as an intermediary between a
workstation user and the Internet so that the enterprise can
ensure security, administrative control and caching services
Web Site Development for Commerce
Not a bad title ?
What does it mean ?
It is an area of information systems
It includes
– Requirements analysis
– Design
– Implementation
– Maintenance - which means keeping up to date
with techniques, software, hardware and
communications
– AND, people skills
Web Site Development for Commerce
Web systems are those developed for the web environment
They have unique characteristics (as you probably gathered
from the previous material).
These are mostly caused by the nature of the Web - access
–
–
–
–
Provision of information to users or customers
Developing relationships with customers
Enabling customers to perform transactions
Documentation of management systems for internal users
(intranets)
Web Addresses
Web sites have a unique address - the Uniform Resource
Locator (URL)
The address contains
– the protocol (http = hypertext transfer protocol)
– the server address (www.thisisit.com.au)
» .com = commercial, .edu = education,
» .gov = government, .net = networks
» .au = Australia .uk = United Kingdom
» .nz = New Zealand .jp = Japan
» .ca = Canada
The USA does not have a country abbreviation
Web Site Development for Commerce
It is normal for Web access response to cross many
‘departmental’ boundaries such as
– Sales
– Marketing
– Customer service
– Information systems
Web Site Development for Commerce
It is normal for teams of different business representatives to
be involved with the development of web applications
Some problems :– Members not speaking the same business or technical
language
– Different goals
– Different expectations
– Need to have a business focus
– The Team Leader needs to have Technical, Marketing
and Business expertise
Web Site Development for Commerce
Team members:
– project leader - coordinates the team and the project
– systems analysts - develop requirements for the web site
– web designers
– graphics designers ( designs of logos and icons)
– content providers - site information content
– technical developers
– web editors - correct content, working and accurate links
– web marketing specialists - build the marketing tools into
the site
– Users/Customers - System Acceptable - Meets
requirements
Web Site Development
Who are the ‘Stakeholders’ ? What is a ‘Stakeholder’?
They can be people who are
– inside the organisation
– outside the organisation
You are part of the stakeholders of the Monash web site
Internal stakeholders may be specialised groups of staff
members
External stakeholders may be Global - local, interstate,
overseas
There probably will be different cultural and linguistic
backgrounds to consider and include
Project Complexity and Scope
Some aspects to consider :
– The project scope - customer enquiries, or customer
service
– The project size - Functions, sites, data volume
– Number and variety of users - complexity increases with
the number and variety of users
– The geographic distribution of the users - time zones
– The types of functionality required (static, dynamic, fully
interactive
– The number of interfaces with other systems
– The strategic or critical nature of the project
– Expertise available
Web Site Development
Some Terms:
1. Hyperlinks - These provide the means of navigating the
Web.
A hyperlink can be
» a word - generally underlined terms in colour
such as
Would you like to see your exam results ?
Or Click here for the weather forecast
» an image, icon or picture
» an area in a page
Web Site Development
2. HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Web communications protocol
It handles the transfer over the Internet
A connection to a web server is sent in the HTTP header
contains a command (get data, input data …..)
The server sends a message to the client. This message
contains the format of the data being transferred.
The browser interprets this message and displays different
types of ‘data’ - text, images, HTML
Web Site Development
3. Web site
These are computers on the Internet which contain
(host) a number of pages of accessible information
Monash University has a large number of such pages as you have seen when you used your portal
And you have used it, haven’t you ?
Web Page Development
Some thoughts on Web Design
• Users like colourful, interesting, intuitive sites
• Site content should change - refresh with new material
Most users like give-aways - free literature sites, location of
some site running a current competition …….
Web Page Development
Web Publishing
• Development of pages for the Web - user Web site
• Developer need not ‘own’ a server or modems
• Files are stored on the service provider’s devices
• Advantages:
– Open to anybody
– Style can be ‘individual’
– Can introduce hyperlinks to access other sites/materials
– Cost is less than for other forms of publishing - much
‘free’ material at sites
Web Page Development
• Some Disadvantages
– Requires some skills
– Pages must be kept up to date
– Page may alter disposition on another user’s computer
– Possible cost levied by ISP for update and traffic
generated
– Market an unknown factor
– Others may use your ‘brilliant’ ideas and designs
– Is it the best alternative to attract an audience for your
interest ?
– May be in competition with another site
– May not generate any business
Web Page Authoring Tools
Web page authoring tools.
Software : 1. HTML (hypertext markup language)
used to minimise line capacity
HTML programs can be developed using Notepad
It describes web pages to web browsers
Developers often use
Macromedia Dreamweaver (a licenced product)
Microsoft’s Frontpage
HTML is based on SGML - standard generalised markup
language (a set of rules for the way documents are
‘processed’)
Some Web Basics
There are some limitations with HTML
– Content, structure and page formatting are mixed
together
– This leads to difficulties in searching for Web pages,
display Web pages in different formats for different
devices, and standardisation of Web page content
Therefore to support the rapid growth of the Web, the
ability to search, display and standardise Web pages
must improve
Some Web Basics
Enter from left with alarums (Shakespeare)
1. XML (eXtensible Markup Language and
2. XSL (eXtensible Style Language)
XML provides a clean separation between structure and
content of a document
The Document Type Declaration section of an XML
document provides field names, field properties, and also
the structure of the fields
Some Web Basics
XSL supports the transformation of XML Documents into
HTML and other display languages
Both languages are extensible.
They support the development of industry-specific standards
for document content, structure and display
Web Page Request Cycle
5. Browser displays
file
1. User clicks hyperlink
2. Browser sends request
to Web server
4. Web server sends
file
3. Web server locates
page
XML and XSL Server/Browser
In the previous diagram, the server and/or the browser may
be able to process XML and XSL in addition to HTML.
If the browser has XML and XSL processors, the server can
send XML and XSL to the browser instead of HTML
The browser can then transform the XML and XSL into
HTML and then display the HTML
If the browser does not contain XML and XSL, the server can
process the XML and XSL and send HTML to the browser
Common Gateway Interface
This allows a Web server to communicate with an external
program, and to pass parameters to it (much like Segments
and packages in PL/SQL).
The external program then uses the passed parameters to
produce output which is sent back to the browser. The
external program can be written in a compiled language such
as C, or an interpreted language such as Perl
The output normally contains HTML so that it can be
displayed properly by the browser
CGI is portable across most Web servers. The external
program may not be portable.
Web Authoring Tools
2. Web Client Programming Languages
VBScript, Jscript, JavaScript
Provides capability of activity or dynamism to a
Web page (small Java based programs are
known as applets)
Handy for ‘form filling’, calculations (e.g. home
loan repayments).
Normally the applet is downloaded to the user’s
terminal and the calculations are done there
One major advantage is to reduce the web server
processing load
Web Authoring Tools
Java was developed by Sun Microsystems
It is
– architecture-neutral
– simple
– object-oriented
– distributed
– high-performance
– portable
– multi-threaded
– dynamic
Web Page Development
Microsoft’s ActiveX is used to provide object linking and
embedding (OLE).
It provides the capability of linking a spreadsheet, word
processing and database.
ActiveX provides support for many types of objects
– Java applet
– C++ program
– Animation
– PowerPoint Presentation (have you successfully copied
this subject’s overheads from the Web ?)
Web Page Development
3. Scripting Languages
Main objective is to reduce the effort in developing
embedded code in a web page
Microsoft VBScript and Netscape JavaScript
Authoring tools (HTML editors)
Wizards
Converters
Web Page Development
There are some interesting publishing issues
1. Copyright - the fear of many publishers of material (books,
audio, films and video) is that the web may be used to set up
distribution of these by others - massive lost revenue
Copyright laws are not uniform across different countries
2. Censorship - offensive materials vs right to know/show
Blocking software ?
Identification and rating system for Web sites ?
Can also result in loss of ‘customers’
Web Page Development
Security aspects
Transmission errors
Unauthorised use
Feasibility ?
This is necessary before much time , money and effort is
committed and / or expended
Some thoughts:
– Financially quantifiable benefits should exceed the costs
of development and running of the system
– A 5 year time span is an appropriate time base for
assessing viability (or is it ?)
– Costs include people (staff) time, hired skills, equipment,
programming time, testing time, maintenance
– Benefits include increased orders, a lower transaction
cost, better quality information, increases staff
satisfaction, better customer satisfaction.
Feasibility ?
A cost benefit analysis cannot be done until full details of the
system are known
A feasibility assessment must be done at the start of the
planning and strategy development stages - and further
assessments should be made as the project advances
Some web commerce developments are seen as an
‘investment for the future’ - would you invest on this basis ?
This is seen as providing scope and choice for future
business directions - the long range plan.
The World Wide Web Consortium
This Consortium is known as W3C
It was developed in 1994, and has 5050+ member
organisations globally
Its mission is to promote interoperability and an open forum
on issues related to the Web’s development
It has 3 long term goals :
1. Universal access
2. Semantic Web - a software environment which helps
users make the best use of Web available resources
3. Web of trust - to assist in guiding Web development from
legal, social and commercial aspects
A Few Final Comments
Marketing and Attraction Techniques
– a clear strategy and objective
– a clear and easy-to-use design
– creative and remembered features
– relevance, and up to date content
– be able to used current and modern search engines
(involves registration)
– off line promotion - perhaps TV, radio, MMS,
– an easy to remember domain name
– on line events - chat with a celebrity perhaps ?
Some Down to Earth Comments
Measurement of Web Site effectiveness
– Often overlooked - possibly due to the high effort level
involved with analysis and development
– Possibly no energy left for evaluation because of the
above
– The site may ‘still be evolving’ - is there ever a ‘most
suitable’ time ?
– The site IS an investment of the resources of an
organisation
– It should be treated as are other resources
– Reviews should be held at 3 and 6 months after the ‘on
line’ date - then every 6 months
– what action should be taken if the results are adverse ?
Some Down to Earth Comments
Are there details of
– the number of hits on the site
– the number of active hits (interaction with the site)
– the number of purchases
– the number of customers who repeat their connection and
make purchases (or contribute to the Web site)
– Are there ‘seasonal’ or periodic trends ?
– What analyses and conclusions can be made from this
data ?
And the logical extension ?
• Customer marketing Databases updates by ecommerce
transactions
So, what’s in a Customer database ?
Try this (or these)
Name and address (plus changes)
Lifestyle - clothing, food, travel, housing, income level
Patterns - sports, recreations
Medical - illness, operations, treatments
Educational - level, degree, studies, interests
Books, Magazines - Type, frequency, changes
Motor Vehicle - Type, age, price, service, replacement
Did you ?
• Leave your email, or internet address with any web site you
have visited recently ?
• Did you receive a message regarding insecure
transmission?
• Is it possible that your identification (login account, machine
number, network, campus) could have been ‘trapped’ by the
host device or devices ?
E-Commerce - the Extension
All of which should highlight the situation that there is much
more to come in the use of
Computing hardware
Software
Communications
Skills
and in
Survival organisation positioning
Success organisation positioning