Pe s e w a Pr e s e n t a t i o n s
Website Development for E-Commerce
Management Issues
• Two most important management challenges in building a successful
e-commerce site are:
 Developing a clear understanding of business objectives
 Knowing how to choose the right technology to achieve those objectives
NEED FOR A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH
 NOTE: The Business Objectives and Strategy dominate the IT issues.
 One reason for the “dot.bomb” phenomenon was that the process were
technology-led rather than business-led
Process Components
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Main areas where you will need to make decisions in building a site include:
 Human resources and organizational capabilities
– creating a team that has the skill set to build and manage
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a successful site
 Site design
 Software
 Hardware
 Telecommunications
Information Management & e-biz
• Some issues in Web Design and e-business
STAGES OF WEBSITE COMPLEXITY
Initial Question: What is the purpose of the Website?
Communication: Advertising; marketing communication; notification
1-way: To provide information to potential customers: Very Simple Often called
“Brochureware” (a term of abuse!)
2-way: Simple interactivity: Data capture - build Customer database
e-commerce transactions: take orders online and fulfil these
(either online or offline) - requires a dynamic website / web pages
e-business transformation: full integration of suppliers’ and customers
databases, supply-chains and processes (the objective of much B2B)
[Can be extremely complex]
Initial Considerations
• Turnkey Systems vs.. Component Solutions
similar to purchase of hi-fi system
• Key Issue: Interoperability: Will all the bits of a component Website
solution work together ;
• turnkey systems ought to operate smoothly (in theory)
• Component solutions: offer best in class for individual
components
• Selective Upgrade: can change one component at a
time to take advantage of technical progress
• Accountability Issues: If something goes wrong, who is
responsible?
Second Consideration
• Outsourcing vs. In-house Development
(similar to any make-buy decision)
• Outsourcing:
• Advantages
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Time-saving (maybe)
No fixed costs
No continuing Labour Costs (hopefully)
No maintenance costs (again, hopefully)
• Disadvantages:
– Loss of control
– Expense - usually more expensive to pay someone else to
do work rather than do it yourself, but ... opportunity cost
arguments apply
In-House Development
• In-House:
• Disadvantages:
– High Fixed Costs (up-front investment in equipment, software,
training)
– Maintenance (not to be under-estimated - often the largest cost
factor)
– Time Loss:
– (1) Learning Curve effects;
– (2) may be a better use of time for employees than doing
Website development (Opportunity Costs argument again)
– Might be preferable to use ASP (Application Service Provider)
Systems Development Life Cycle
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Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a methodology for understanding
the business objectives of a system and designing an appropriate solution
Five major steps in the SDLC are:
 Systems analysis/planning
 Systems design
 Building the system
 Testing
 Implementation
Website SDLC
Systems Planning, etc.
• System Analysis/Planning: Identifying Business Objectives, System
Functionality, and Information Requirements
• Business objectives: a list of capabilities you want your site to have
• System functionalities: a list of the types of information system
capabilities you will need to achieve your business objectives
• Information requirements: the information elements that the system
must produce in order to achieve the business objectives
Typical Requirements
Systems Design
• Hardware and Software Platforms System Design
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System design specification: a description of the main components of a
system and their relationship to one another.
System design can be broken down into two parts:
 Logical design includes:
 Dataflow diagram (DFD) that describes the flow of information at the
site, processing functions that must be performed, and databases
that will be used
 Description of the security and emergency backup systems, and
controls that will be used
 Physical design: translate the logical design into physical components
Logical Design: Simple Web
Physical Design
Choices in Building and Hosting
Range of Tools for Site Building
Testing, Implementation and
Maintenance
• Testing:
 Includes unit testing, system testing and acceptance testing
• Implementation and maintenance:
 Maintenance is ongoing, with 20% of time devoted to debugging code
and responding to emergency situations, 20% with changing reports,
data files and links to backend databases; and 60% to general
administration and making changes and enhancements to system
 Benchmarking: process by which site is compared to those of
competitors in terms of response speed, quality of layout and design
Typical Cost Components
Software Tools for Websites
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Issues:
Organisational Standards: Significant determinant of choice of tool
Websites need constant maintenance - staff turnover means regular
training and updating; costs contained by adopting “standard”
Changing Standard means new learning curve (“lock-in” effect)
Nature of Task: determines choice of software tool(s)
Available Bandwidth:
– dial-up tools (low connection speed; low bandwidth)
– DSL and Cable modems: high-speed connection and more bandwidth
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Installed Base of media players: Flash; RealPlayer; QuickTime (some browsers
bundle media players or provide them as plug-ins)
Ease of Use: Some software tools make content development easier than others.
– Example: Java vs. JavaScript - most developers use JavaScript for special effects
HTML Forms
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Forms:
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Text Boxes
Check Boxes
Drop-down lists
Scrolling Boxes
etc
Creating Forms is easy:
Processing the Information gathered on Website is more difficult - usually
performed by a separate program, commonly running CGI (common gateway
interface) scripts or Active Server Pages (ASP)
CGI and ASP both quite difficult to master - need programmers
CGI: Unix based (mainly)
ASP: Windows NT or Windows 2000 based
Java
• General-purpose programming language
developed by Sun Microsystems
• Used for developing interactive Websites
• Java is bundled with Netscape and Internet
Explorer
• FAST (compiled code)
• Flexible: supports animation, streaming media,
3D visualisation, etc
• SAFE (runs in protected memory space, so
cannot infect any other
DHTML
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Enhanced version of HTML
Intended to be highly interactive
Better Multimedia Support
Better (more professional) page layout tools
– CSS (Cascading Style Sheets
– JavaScript
– ActiveX
• an ad hoc collection of tools supported to varying
degrees by different browsers
JavaScript
• THIS HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO
WITH Java
• JavaScript was developed by Netscape and
seems to have become an industry “standard”
[an ad hoc standard]
• Mainly used to create fancy effects on screen
(buttons and rollover effects)
• Modern Web Development Tools (e.g.
DreamWeaver) create these effects directly
and automatically
• Scripts for special effects can be downloaded
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
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CSS allow precise text and graphics formatting on Web page
CSS allow relatively easy site-wide updating
(before CSS every page had to be separately formatted - led to major problems in
editing and correcting pages
How? Select names for each page component
– E.g. Heading 1; Heading 2; Body Text; Table, etc
– Define a Style for each.
– Any subsequent change in Style is automatically updated in EACH component
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CSS Separates Document CONTENT from its PRESENTATION
– Only need to be updated in ONE place : change is GLOBAL
– Easy to impose “house style” (uniform graphic standards)
– Many advantages for Web Owner (problem: earlier browser versions)
Architecture Issues
• System architecture: refers to the
arrangement of software, machinery, and
tasks in an information system needed to
achieve a specific functionality
• Two-tier architecture: Web server responds
to requests for Web pages and a database
server provides backend data storage
• Multi-tier architecture: Web server is linked
to a middle-tier layer that typically includes
a series of application servers that perform
2-Tier e-commerce Architecture
Laudon & Traver, Chapter 4
Multi-Tier Architecture
Web Server Software
• All e-commerce sites require basic Web server software to answer
HTTP requests from customers
• Apache the leading Web server software; works only with UNIX
operating systems
• Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) the second major Web
server software
What do Web Servers Do?
Site Management Tools: Server
Logs
WebTrends (2)
WebTrends (3)
WebTrends (4)
Dynamic Page Generation Tools
• Dynamic page generation: contents of Web page are stored as objects
in a database rather than being hard-coded in HTML, and are fetched
when needed from database
• Tools include CGI (Common Gateway Interface), ASP (Active Server
Pages), JSP (Java Server Pages), etc.
• Lowers menu costs, permits easy online market segmentation, and
enables cost-free price discrimination
Application Servers
e-commerce Merchant Server S/W
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Provides the basic functionality needed for online sales, including:
Online catalogues (shop front)
Shopping cart
Credit card processing (secure communication with
Banks and credit card companies, using Data Encryption over SSL
(Secure Socket Layer), or SET (Secure Electronic Transaction)
Software: e-commerce Suites
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Offer integrated environment that provides functionality and capabilities needed
to develop sophisticated, customer-centric site
Key factors to consider in choosing include:
 Functionality
 Support for different business models
 Business process modeling tools
 Visual site management tools and reporting
 Performance and scalability
 Connectivity to existing business systems
 Compliance with standards set by different countries worldwide
 Global and multicultural capability
 Local sales tax and shipping rules
How Much Can it Cost?
Laudon and Traver , Chapter 4
How do We Make Sure we can do
it?
Use Simulation Software: e.g IBM WebSphere -
Right-sizing an e-commerce Effort
Right-sizing: Hardware Issues
• Scalability: refers to the ability of a site to increase in size as demand
warrants
• Ways to scale hardware:
 Vertically: increase the processing power of individual
components
 Horizontally: employ multiple computers to share the workload
 Improve processing architecture
Common Techniques
Website Design Issues
• Basic Business Considerations
• To achieve basic business functionality of a Web site,
one needs to be aware of design guidelines and software tools that
can build active content and functionality
• Poorly designed Web sites drive customers away
• Avoid garish colours
• Avoid processor-intensive graphics
• Allow people to by-pass start-up graphics / video clips
• See: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
• Do a Google Search for Good Practice in Website Design
Annoying Website Features
Most Important Design Aspects
Interactivity Tools
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CGI (Common Gateway Interface): Set of standards for communication between a browser
and a program running on a server that allows for interaction between the user and the
server
ASP (Active Server Pages): Enables programmers using Microsoft’s IIS package to build
dynamic pages
Java: Allows programmers to create interactivity and active content on the client computer
JSP (Java Server Pages): Similar to CGI and ASP; allows developers to use
a combination of HTML, JSP scripts and Java to dynamically generate Web pages in response
to user requests
JavaScript: Programming language invented by Netscape that is used to control objects on a
Web page and handle interactions with browser
ActiveX: Programming language invented by Microsoft to compete with Java
VBScript: Programming language invented by Microsoft to compete with JavaScript
ColdFusion: An integrated server-side environment for developing interactive Web
applications
Plug-ins
• Small applications designed to add additional
functionality to browsers and other
communications software
• Often used to allow multimedia content to be
played on the client machine
• Common plug-ins:
– Flash: Macromedia, Inc (plays animations) [vector
graphics]
– QuickTime (and QuickTime for Windows): Apple
Computer
(audio and video player; Virtual Reality browser,
image manipulation)
Website Creation
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Needs to be a GROUP Activity
Need some or all of the following:
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Graphic Designer (ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL)
Content Expert / Content Editor
Communications Specialist (i.e. someone who can write accurately)
Information Architect (someone with web tools expertise)
Marketing Expertise / Marketing Manager
Technology Manager (NOT the Team Leader!)
May also need:
– Legal Input
– Finance Manager
… PROJECT MANAGER [ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!]
Development Process Summary
• Plan Site:
– Objectives
– Target Stakeholders
– Design Issues
– Content
– Budget …
• Gather Materials (Only RELEVANT materials to
be included)
• Create the Site (with Care)
• Check Content (Legal, Decent, Honest,
Truthful, etc)
Website Marketing Plan
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Situation Analysis: (marketing audit)
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Target Stakeholders
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Macro environmental factors
Competitive Analysis
SWOT
Market Analysis
Customers (by Target segment) - Customer Profiles
Suppliers - Supplier Profiles
Potential New Customers and Suppliers
Strategic Partners and Allies
Website Objectives
Strategies
Action Plan
Budget
Evaluation Plan … to be developed during Course