Chapter 4

Building an E-commerce Web Site

Copyright 2002 Pearson Education, Inc.

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BUILDING AN E-COMMERCE WEB SITE:

The two most important management challenges in building a successful ecommerce site are (1) developing a clear understanding of your business objectives (2) knowing how to choose the right technology to achieve those objectives. Building a successful e-commerce site requires a keen understanding of a systematic approach.
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Pieces of the Site-building Puzzle

you must be aware of the main areas where you will need to make decisions

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Building an E-commerce Web Site: A Systematic Approach

Planning: the systems development life cycle Systems analysis: identify business objectives, system functionality, and information requirements System design: hardware and software platforms Building the system: in-house vs. Outsourcing Testing the system Implementation and maintenance
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Planning:the Systems Development Life Cycle

A methodology for understanding the business objectives of any system and designing an appropriate solution

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Systems Analysis: Identify Business Objectives, System Functionality, and Information Requirements

Business objectives

A list of capabilities you want your site to have

System functionalities

A list of types of capabilities you will need to achieve your business objectives The information elements that the system must produce in order to achieve the business objectives
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Information requirements

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System Design: Hardware and Software Platforms

System design specification

Description of the main components in a system and their relationship to one another
Describes the flow of information at your e-commerce site The processing functions that must be performed The databases that will be used The security and emergency backup procedures that will be instituted

Logical design

Physical design

Translates the logical design into physical components specific model of server to be purchased, software used, size of the telecommunications link

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A Logical and Physical Design for a Simple Web Site

Simple Data Flow Diagram This data flow diagram describes the flow of information requests and responses for a simple Web site

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A Logical and Physical Design for a Simple Web Site

Simple Physical Design A physical design describes the hardware and software needed to realize the logical design

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Building the System: In-house Vs. Outsourcing

Outsourcing

Hiring an outside vendor to provide the services you cannot perform with in-house personnel
When a firm purchases or leases web server (and has total control over its operation) but locates the server in a vendors physical facility The vendor maintains the facility, communications lines, and the machinery
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Co-location

Choice in Building and Hosting

You have a number of alternatives when building and hosting an e-commerce site

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The Spectrum of Tools for Building Your Own E-commerce Site

Page 185, figure 4.4

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Key Players: Hosting/co-location Service

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Testing the System

Unit testing

Involves testing the sites program modules one at a time Involves testing the site as a whole, in a way the typical user will in using the site

System testing

Acceptance testing

Verifies that the business objectives of the system as originally conceived are in fact working
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Implementation and Maintenance

Benchmarking

A process in which the site is compared with those of competitors in terms of response speed, quality of layout, and design 20% devoted to debugging code and responding to emergency situations 20% concerned with changing reports, data files, and links to backend databases 60% devoted to general administration and making changes and enhancements to the system
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Maintenance is on-going

Choosing Server Software

System architecture

Refers to the arrangement of software, machinery, and tasks in an information system needed to achieve a specific functionality A web server responds to requests for web pages and a database server provides backend data storage A web server is linked to a middle-tier layer that typically includes a series of application servers that perform specific tasks, as well as to a backend layer of existing corporate systems
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Two-tier architecture

Multi-tier architecture

Two-tier and Multi-tier E-commerce Architectures

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Web Server Software

All e-commerce sites require basic Web server software to answer requests from customers for HTML and XML pages.

Site management tools

Verify that links on pages are still valid and also identify orphan files

Dynamic page generation tools

The contents of a web page are stored as objects in a database, rather than being hardcoded in HTML
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Key Players in Web Server Software

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Basic Functionality Provided by Web Servers

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Web Application Servers

Software programs that provide the specific business functionality required of a web site Include:

Catalog display Transaction processing Audio/video server Auction server B2B server
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Application Servers and Their Function

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E-commerce Merchant Server Software Functionality

Software that provides the basic functionality need for online sales, including:

An online catalog that list products available on a web site Order taking via an online shopping cart that allows shoppers to set aside desired purchases in preparation for checkout, review what they have selected, edit their selections as necessary, and the actually make the purchase by clicking a button Online credit card processing verifies the shoppers credit card and then puts through the debit to the card

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Merchant Server Software Packages (E-commerce Suites)

Offers an integrated environment that provides most or all of the functionality and capabilities needed to develop a sophisticated, customer-centric site.

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Widely Used Midrange and High-end E-commerce Suites

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Choosing the Hardware for an E-commerce Site

Hardware platform

Refers to all the underlying computing equipment that the system uses to achieve it e-commerce functionality

Important factors in overall demand on a Web site system

The number of simultaneous users in peak periods, the nature of customer requests, the type of content, the required security, the number of items in inventory, the number of page requests, and the speed of legacy applications that may be needed to supply data to the Web pages are all
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Choosing the Hardware for an E-commerce Site

Stateless

A Web session initiated by the typical user is stateless Refers to fact that the server does not have to maintain an ongoing dedicated interaction with the client
Requires input/output operations rather than heavy-duty processing power Operations that require a great deal of processing power refers to the nature of customer requests and customer behavior at a site

I/O intensive

CPU intensive

user profile

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Visitor Profile at Typical E-commerce Sites

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Right-sizing Your Hardware Platform: The Supply Side

Scalability

Refers to the ability of a site to increase in size as demand warrants Scale hardware vertically Scale hardware horizontally Improve processing architecture of the site

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Scaling Your Site to Meet Demand

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Vertically Scaling a System

Page 208, figure 4.12

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Horizontally Scaling a System

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Improving the Processing Architecture of Your Site

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Tools for Interactivity and Active Content

Common gateway interface

A 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 A proprietary software development tool that enables programmers using microsofts IIS package to build dynamic pages

Active server pages

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Tools for Interactivity and Active Content

Java

Is a programming language that allows programmers to create interactivity and active content on the client machine -- thereby saving considerable load on the server Like CGI and ASP, a web page coding standard that allows developers to dynamically generate web pages in response to user requests A programming language invented by netscape that is used to control the objects on an HTML page and handle interactions with a browser

Java server pages (JSP)

Javascript

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Tools for Interactivity and Active Content

Active X

A programming language created by microsoft to compete with java A programming language invented by microsoft to compete with javascript An integrated server-side environment for developing interactive web applications
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Vbscript

Coldfusion

Personalization Tools

Personalization

The ability to treat customers base on their personal qualities and prior history with your site The ability to change the product to better fit the needs of the customer

Customization

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The Information Policy Set

Privacy policy

A set of public statements declaring to your customers how you treat their personal information that you gather on the site
A set of design objectives that ensure disabled users can effectively access your site

Accessibility rules

Financial reporting policies

Statement declaring how you will account for revenues and costs at your site

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