Chapter 9 Electronic Commerce Software

Electronic Commerce Software Basics Dependent on : –The expected size of the enterprise and its projected traffic and sales –Budget Decide : –Your target commerce audience. –Use a full-service ISP or host the electronic commerce site in-house.

Electronic Commerce Software Components 4 components : –Catalog display –Shopping cart capabilities –Transaction processing –Tools to populate the store catalog to maintain the catalog to create and edit other site content

Catalog Display A small commerce site can have a simple catalog, which is a static listing of goods and services. Larger catalogs have photos of items, descriptions, and a search feature. For example, “MP3.com” is a large commerce site and “Women in Music” is a small site.

Shopping Cart Online forms were used for online shopping. A new way of online shopping is by using shopping carts. SalesCart is one company that makes this type of shopping cart software.

Forms-Based Method

Electronic Shopping Cart

Transaction Processing Transaction processing occurs when the shopper proceeds to the virtual checkout counter. Software needs to calculate price, volume discounts, sales tax, and shipping costs. Some electronic commerce software - provides connections to accounting software so that Web sales can be entered simultaneously - handled by a separate type of software called middleware – eg. Of vendors include BEA Systems, Broadvision, Digital River, and IBM Tivoli Systems.

Electronic Commerce Tools Web hosts – provide infrastructure, computer networks, routers, switches and high speed Intrenet connection – for a monthly fee Inexpensive storefronts are offered by established portals, such as Yahoo! Advantage of Web host over self hosting – reliabel server, reasonable costs, great functionality, full-time technical support

Questions Q. What are the four key components of electronic commerce software? Q. What does a shopping cart do? Q. What are the four types of Web hosting services?

Commerce Hosting Services The total cost of setting up your own in-house Web commerce site is expensive. Web hosting services allow businesses to start electronic commerce inexpensively. Web hosting services provide all the services that an ISP does.

Basic Electronic Commerce Software Packages Basic packages - free or low-cost electronic commerce software supplied by the Web host for building electronic commerce sites that will be kept on the host’s server. Services in this category usually cost less than a few hundred US dollars per month, and the software is available on the host site, allowing companies to immediately begin building and storing a storefront on the host’s server.

Basic Host Services Hosting services in this class offer adequate space for a Web store and for forms-based shopping Do not provide shopping carts. Do not include transaction-processing. Examples of hosts are BizLand.com and HyperMart. Customer purchase transactions are handled by e- mail in this host service. Too many banner advertisements.

Shared Mall-Style Hosting Shared hosting sites provide online stores with good services, good Web creation tools, and little or not banner advertising clutter. Charge a monthly fee, a setup fee, and charge a percentage for fixed amount for each customer transaction. Mall-style hosts provide shopping cart software or the ability to use another vendor’s shopping cart software. Mall-style hosting also offers transaction-processing through one of a few merchant services. Allow customers to choose to purchase their goods and services with a credit card, electronic cash, or other form of payment. Examples of Web hosts - Bigstep, Yahoo! Store, FedEx eCommerce Builder, and eBay Stores.

Midrange Packages Midrange packages allow the merchant to have explicit control over merchandising choices, site layout, internal architecture, and remote and local management options. Midrange software - connectivity with database systems and the store’s catalog information. Examples : INTERSHOP enfinity, WebSphere, and Commerce Server 2000.

Solutions for Large Firms Enterprise-level commerce software = e-business software. E-business software interacts with a wide variety of existing back office systems, including database, accounting, and ERP systems. An enterprise-scale solution requires: a Domain Name Server (DNS) an SMTP system to handle an HTTP server an FTP server for upload and download capabilities a database server Examples of e-business systems - IBM’s WebSphere Commerce Suite, Pro Edition, Netscape’s Netscape CommerceXpert, Oracle’s iStore, Pandesic Web Business solution (Intel and SAP)

Typical Large e-Business System Architecture

Latihan Pilih mana-mana laman Web e-dagang tempatan & lihat sama ada ianya mempunyai 4 komponen perisian e- dagang yang sepatutnya. Komen.