Introduction to Ecommerce

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Introduction toE-commerce
? Dr. Eshaa M. Alkhalifa
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What is e-commerce?

• E-commerce is the activity that takes place when
  a commercial process takes place on the Internet.
• A commercial process is a series of steps in an
  exchange that may have money as one of the things
  traded or exchanged.

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What are the different types?

• B2C This is the well known Business to
  Customer type of e-commerce when you go to a site
  and select something then pay for it with your
  credit card. You then either gain the right to
  download a program that you bought or wait until
  the items are sent through mail.
• B2B Here the exchanges occur between companies.
  A factory that makes aluminium car tyre rings,
  must buy aluminium from a factory that buys
  aluminium alloy and converts it to ductile
  aluminium. The amount of money that is exchanged
  in this type of exchange is much higher than that
  spent by individual buyers on the Internet.

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B2C We will concentrate on this during this
course.

• What you need?
• A site where you can place your store, and this
  requires
• i. A domain name
• ii. A host
• A shopping cart
• A merchant account
• A payment gateway

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Domain Name

• A domain name is the name you will give to your
  site. You have to pay an amount to register it
  in your name and this can be done in two ways
• 1. You can register it independently like at a
  name registration site e.g. register.com
• 2. The host you choose can register it for you.
  This is usually cheaper but it means that you may
  have a problem if you choose to change your host.

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Registration Steps

• Search to check if the name you want is
  available.
• Select how long you wish to register it
• Pay
• The name is yours so you can direct it to your
  host by setting the DNS entries.

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Hosts

• When you wish to reserve space for your files on
  the Internet, you have several options.
• 1. You turn a server into a host. This means you
  need your own IP address and you install server
  software onto that system.
• 2. You book server space in Bahrain through
  Batelco or any host provider.
• 3. You book server space internationally.

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How to check hosts

• There are sites, like http//www.tophosts.com/
  that list the top hosts according to the type of
  site that you wish to make. When starting, you
  can reserve the space for as short a period as
  possible, and then renew if you feel that the
  hosting service you are using is reliable.

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Security on the host

• Under some of the plans, you may get your own
  server with whatever set up you wish on it.
• On such servers, you can either have the security
  supervision provided by the host, or you
  supervise it yourself.
• Make your decisionan informed one

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Shopping Cart

• Shopping carts are used to select the items from
  your site, and adding them to a cart which can be
  accessed during checkout to make the payment for
  the items in the cart.
• You can choose one of many different options of
  shopping carts that are available. Either in asp
  or php.
• Some ecommerce hosts offer shopping carts as part
  of their hosting service.

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• Now you are ready to start your Practice sessions

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Merchant Account

• Obtained from a Bank where you go and fill out a
  number of forms and get a copy of software to
  place on your site, or you link your shopping
  cart to a site the bank deals with.
• To do this you need copies of your financial
  statements for a number of years.

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Payment Gateway

• The software that will ask for the credit card
  number, address, etc. and then contact the bank
  electronically in order to allow the seller to
  debit the card.
• This is similar to the machines at stores that
  vendors used to swipe credit cards and get
  approval for the withdrawal.

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SSL Secure Socket Layer

• This is set up when you contact a certificate
  authority like Verisign and ask them to give you
  a certificate that will validate your site.
• They will issue a certificate with a unique
  identifier for your site and you will install it
  on your site so that anyone, who starts a secure
  connection with your site, it is set up and
  validated with that certificate.
• Verisign will then keep the records of your site
  there and you need to renew the certificate
  whenever it has expired.