CIS 451: eCommerce Application Development

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CIS 451 eCommerce Application Development

• Dr. Ralph D. Westfall
• January, 2009

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CIS 451

• primarily a technical course
• ASP.NET
• also HTML, JavaScript, SQL, XML
• but also covers eCommerce issues
• web site design for eCommerce
• web site usability and accessibility
• marketing issues
• role of eCommerce in world economy

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eCommerce Overview

• what is eCommerce?
• why do techies need to learn business aspects
  of eCommerce?
• eCommerce business issues
• eCommerce tools
• eCommerce applications
• shopping carts
• shopping cart exercises

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What is eCommerce?

• what do you think it is?
• what do businesses do?
• eCommerce definition
• value chain

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Pre-Internet eCommerce

• airline reservation systems
• EFT (electronic funds transfer)
• ATMs (automated teller cash machines)
• EDI (electronic data interchange)

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Advantages of Internet

• very easy to use
• web browser interface
• compatible with all kinds of hardware
• global
• low cost delivery of content to large numbers of
  users
• like radio in the 1920s
• multimedia capabilities

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Web-Based eCommerce

• business to consumer (shopping)
• Amazon
• consumer to consumer (auction sites)
• eBay
• business to business
• EDI on the web

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Business Aspects of eCommerce for Technologists

• field is continuing to develop
• technical employees in large organizations
• need to communicate with business people
• small businesses/consultants
• less technical vs. non-technical specialization
• E-business (EBZ) major at Cal Poly

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eCommerce Sequential Stages

• Publish static web pages
• Interact content updated regularly, customers
  follow links, search site, etc.
• Transact orders, payments, shipping
• Integrate part of way business is done
• Transform organization restructured
• from Informatics-Review, Vol. 3, No. 7

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Benefits of eCommerce

• customers (top line)
• reach new customers (Hot!Hot!Hot!)
• serve existing customers better
• customer relationship management (vendor of CRM
  services)
• costs (bottom line)
• potentially lower throughout value chain
  (intranet/extranet)

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International eCommerce

• potentially huge markets
• need to deal with major difficulties
• high shipping costs (postal codes scroll)
• legal issues tariffs, documentation
• translation
• currency exchange
• fraud
• Norwegian base for E-C in Europe

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eCommerce Business Issues

• relation to business strategy?
• low cost (high volume)
• product differentiation
• niche (specialized product or limited region)
• competitive implications?
• within outside industry
• short vs. long-term profitability?
• Amazon just had first profit ever in 2002

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eCommerce Issues - 2

• timing? (first mover advantage)
• costs? (how much to spend)
• evaluation? (how measure success)
• impact on existing relationships?
• suppliers, partners, distributors, customers

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eCommerce Tools - 1

• tutorials for frequently used programming
  technologies
• HTML (3.2, 4.0)
• JavaScript
• JSP (Java Server Pages)
• SQL
• ASP.NET replacing Perl?
• PHP

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eCommerce Tools - 2

• multimedia free trial downloads
• image tools (e.g. Adobe PhotoShop, etc.)
• sound tools (e.g. Adobe Audition formerly Cool
  Edit)
• video ( audio) tools (e.g. Flash)
• shareware and totally free software
• Audacity (sound)
• free multimedia Google search

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Shopping Cart Applications

• reviews
• how to choose
• order problems (75 abandoned)
• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Starter
• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Standard
• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Professional

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Exercise

• from a customer perspective, evaluate one of the
  Yahoo! Merchant Solutions carts
• try the "tour" of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions
• advantages, disadvantages, questions
• understandability of instructions
• ease of use to create site(?)
• 2 students per 3-person team need to submit the
  above international shipment findings (slide
  11) for Exercise 3