E-commerce is a method of trading via internet. This came into practice and became popular after the people are aware of the advantages in using internet to shop for their needs. The term e-commerce can be defined as a means of modern technology to sell goods and services through a web portal to deal with the needs of customers and traders to minimize maintenance charges, development cost as well as the delivery to the customers. (Ritendra Goel, 2007). It can also be called as e-marketing and is one of the fastest developing industries in the present world. It is gaining its importance as the shopping is just a click away instead of the traditional way of going to the stores.
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It also contains the exchange of information to make easy about funding and payment options of the business dealings. A major percentage of e-commerce is done electronically for essential things like an access to premium content of companies. Online sellers are called as e-tailers and online retail which is also known as e-tail. Approximately all large retailers contain this e-marketing on internet. E-commerce carried out among businesses is known as Business to Business (B2B). This B2B could be open to various users in the aspects like product exchange or limited to particular products, pre-qualified members, public or private e-markets etc. E-commerce can also be applicable to customers and businesses, moreover it is referred to as Business to Customer (B2C). Amazon.com is one of the leading website of such kind. (Steven N. Kalpan and Luis Garicano, 2006).
Unique characteristics of E-commerce
These days, e-commerce is considered as a buzz word. Many of the users promote websites, affiliate marketing and SEO and other things, however their aim is to gather the clients and sell the online services or products of the corresponding company. Electronic medium is the main tool available to purchase the online products. Following are the considerable characteristics of e-commerce (E-Commerce, 2010):
Ubiquity:
In conventional commerce, the global market is a physical place where all the users visit to transact. For instance, radio and television are normally directed to motivate the consumers to visit the places to purchase the products. E-commerce is ubiquitous since it is present everywhere during all the times. E-commerce releases the marketplace from being constrained to a physical space and allows shopping the users from their desktop or laptops. Hence, the outcome is specified as market space. From the consumer point of view, ubiquity reduces the transactional costs. In order to perform, one does not require spending their money and time travelling to their nearer markets. More clearly, the ubiquity of e-commerce lessens the cognitive energy which is needed to complete a mission.
Global Reach:
Generally e-commerce is a technology which allows the commercial transactions to national and cross cultural boundaries extremely more effectively and conveniently when compared to conventional commerce. Hence, the possible market size of electronic merchants is approximately equal to the world’s online population size.
Universal Standards:
The unseal characteristic of e-commerce technology is the technological standards of Internet and hence the technological standards for carrying out e-commerce are generally the universal standards – these are shared by all worldwide online users.
Interactivity:
Dissimilar to the commercial technologies of the present generation, there are possible ways of interactivity through telephone. Hence the technologies of e-commerce are interactive enabling the two-way communication among the consumers and merchants (E-Commerce, 2010).
Richness and Density of information:
Internet immensely increases the data density. Quality and total amount of data is available to the market participants, merchants and consumers. The technologies of e-commerce lessens the data collection, communication, storage and the handling costs. Simultaneously, these technologies enhance the timeliness and accuracy of data, enabling data more important and useful than ever before. Hence the data becomes cheaper, with higher quality and available in plenty. Richness of data refers to the content and complexity of a message.
Personalization:
The technologies of e-commerce allow personalization. Online merchants can aim their marketing notification to particular individuals by altering the message to an individual’s name, their interests and previous purchases. The e-commerce technology also enables the customization. Online merchants can regulate the service or product based according to the prior behavior or user’s preferences.
With the use of e-commerce technologies, it is easier for the merchants to recognize the online consumers and utilize the data more efficiently than ever before. Merchants can utilize this data to enhance the new data asymmetries, develop their capability to charge premium prices, brand products for high quality services and divide the marketplace into never-ending groups, sub-groups and everyone getting different prices based on their account history (E-Commerce, 2010).
Research on E-Commerce
The online transactions using the e-commerce are very high in the year 2006 with hundred billion dollars in United States of America i.e., ten percent of the year’s total domestic market which shows the increasing trends in online shopping. Almost 33% of the people doing online shopping are relaying on the search engines for their needs. But a characteristic feature of the online shopping trends that people believe in the word of mouth of others when it comes in selecting the best website for online shopping or of the company than the results found through the search engine.
Before starting an e-commerce or business through website, there is a need for the firms to analyze the uses and suitability for their products or service which are being offered to customers. In the present market, the most common items being purchased online are Books, Cloths, perfumes, mobile, some of the grocery and latest technology products. So firms must recognize the areas in which e-commerce can be implemented unlike implying on all segments of business. They must decide before implementing electronic commerce in business dealings. This will enable the firms to adopt appropriate strategies to utilize the existing resources that are available in the company.
While doing the research, it is found that e-commerce business is available for all the small to large businesses based on the brands or products. However, there are very few websites which got integrated with different brands or shops or products but the thing is only integration is with respect to the products like all the super markets shopping at one place or different mobile shops at one place but there was no website which could integrate irrespective of the category. When browsed online, it was noticed that most of them are very slow and didn’t had good look and feel. Also, no security was provided to the customer details or card details. Hence, it resulted in designing the e-commerce website with the title ‘iStore’ sounds like Internet Store. The project is a web application for users to browse and purchase different products from different shops or brands of their choice using the present upcoming technology known as Adobe Flex Builder and also a tool called Xampp which got the different servers and database integrated in one tool. The project is divided into two modules one is for admin side and the other is for user side. The admin side consists of different operations like adding stores, managing store, adding products under different categories with respect to the stores etc., and on the user side we got the features like viewing the products, adding them to the cart, checkout with fully secured features for card payments, login and logout etc.
Mainly inspired by the online shopping business have determined to develop the solution for e-commerce using the latest technology in order to provide rich user interface , user friendly navigation and secured payment options.
Features of e-commerce:
Any Portal with the below features can be a e-shop.
Categories:
Generally the online stores have different categories like Books, Antiques, Baby products, Arts, Industrial and Business, Photo and Camera, Vehicles and Parts, Boats, Cars, PDAs and Mobile Phones, Shoes and Accessories, Clothing, Electronics, Toys, Jewelry, Computers and Networking, Dolls and Bears, Crafts, Movies and DVDs, Beauty and Health, Home and Garden, Music and Instruments, Watches, Pet Supplies, Glass and Pottery, Specialty Services, Real Estates, Sport Memo, Sporting Goods, Tickets, Stamps, Hobbies and Travel, Games, and etc. Online users can browse the above products to view and purchase the products.
Products:
The website enables the user to browse different product based on the categories. Accordingly, the products will be displayed with brief descriptions like price and name along with thumbnail images.
Product Details:
The complete details of the product can be viewed by the users by just clicking the on their desired product to see the product description, bigger image and video of the product and if the customer like the product, the customer can directly add the product to the cart..
Shopping Cart:
E-commerce provides all the solutions for the online users. The e-commerce website generally specializes in business to consumer, business to business, Web Stats, Inventory Management and e-accounting. The websites of e-commerce are totally equipped with IP Fraud checking and ecommerce security. Hence, providing all the shopping cart features like enabling the users to add or remove the products to the shopping cart. The amount to be paid can be viewed by the customer on the cart panel.
Login:
Login page is provided so that user can get his desired products. Once the customer finishes the shopping they needs to login for the payment options which enables the security feature. If the customer is not a registered user, then customer has an option called “New user? Register here” to register himself. Once the registration is finished, he can complete the shopping.
Registration :
Registration form is provided so that the users can register themselves before purchasing their desired products. Here, the new user is intended to register with the website for finishing the shopping. Based on the details like User name, password, retype password ,e-mail id etc. to finish the registration.
Payment Type : Once the customer is logged in he can pay the bill by two options like pay with cash or pay with card.
Confirmation:
Finally, the users are provided with the checkout product list for billing purpose. This process of checkout requires the Users to login in order to track their order.
Admin:
The site administrator has been provided with the admin panel to manage the stores and the store administration has been provided with the admin panel so as to manage the portal content such as products, categories, etc.
Business Analysis:
A business can be defined as an organisation or industry or online service that provides services like selling or buying the goods providing career to others. Any Business results either in profits and losses.
To start a new business there is a need for good planning and organising, nevertheless research. Now-a-days business is not constrained to an organization or an industry but is boundless to the whole world considering e-business as an example. Online business is booming everywhere as it changes the way the people do their business using the internet with just a click without effecting other facility.
Any business needs a strategy i.e., scope and direction to maintain the business for long term and to have good customers.
Revenue:
Any Business needs a revenue i.e., money which can be received from selling products or services. The total revenue for any company is calculated using the formula
Total Revenue = Selling Price per unit *Number of units Sold
For example if a company sales a single item for £1.10 with a profit of £0.40 than its revenue is (£1.10 * 1) £1.10 with a profit of £0.40.
Similarly for 10 items it would be (£1.10 * 10) is £11.00 would be the total revenue with a profit of £4.00 i.e., profit is calculated as
Profit = Total Revenue – Total cost
If the Revenue is greater than Total cost than it is profit and if revenue is less than total cost than it is loss.
In the present project “iStore” the business gets the revenue from
Once the store is registered, the store is provided with a 15days free trial and thereafter if the stores want to continue the store is charged particular amount.
For every product sold from any store the iStore gets 5-10% of profit from the cost of item sold.
User part got the advertising banner for advertising products or stores, which is one of the sources of revenue.
For the delivery of the products the customer is charged £3 for normal delivery and £7.99 for the express delivery.
In this business everything is insured like the products being sold, Equipment used like vehicles used for delivered .An insurance police will be provided to the company and also the employees.
Methodolgy :
This part of the document gives the information about the technologies used to develop the project and the technologies being used are compared with the other technologies avaliable in the market to show how good is the technology we are using.
Background :
The web designing projects are developed using different tools and technologies with a database. In general, a web desinging can be developed using the technologies like asp,jsp,java. Dot net, PHP, mxml, and xml etc and there are different databses like Oracle, SQL , MySQL etc. But, for the e-commerce application being developed uses PHP, Mxml , CSS and the database My SQL providing the customers to have a good look and security with easy navigation.
Technology Assessment :
Web Servers :
Any Website is placed on a computer known as a webserver and this servers are always connected to the internet . Every websever is connected to the internet and is been given with a unique address which is a series of four numbers between 0 to 255. The range would be from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 . For Example 68.178.101.200 .
Mainly there are four webservers in the market
Apache HTTP Server :
Apache web server is developed by Apache Software Foundation and it is the most popular web server used world wide . More than 60% of the web server machines use the Apace web server which is an open source software. The great thing of the Apache web server is it can be used or installed on almost all the operating systems like Linux,Unix, Windows ,FreeBSD, Mac OS X and more.
Internet Information Services (IIS) :
IIS is a web server from Microsoft it has got very high performance. IIS web servers are designed to run on windows NT/2003 and 2003 servers as this comes bundled with Windows NT/2003 and 2003. And even new version of IIS are avaliable for windows new versions.
Lighttpd :
The Lighttpd is a web server that is avaliable free and is distributed with the FreeBSD operating system and is pronounced lightly. As like Apache it is also a open source software which can run on the different operating systems like Windows, Mac OS X , Linux and Solaries. It got the features like fast, secure and consumes very less CPU power.
Jigsaw :
Jigsaw(W3C’s server) is also a open source software and avaliable free of cost and can be used on different platforms like Linux, Windows ,Unix, Free BSD, Mac OS X etc, and it is been developed in Java even than it can run CGI scripts and PHP programs. It comes with the World Wide Web association.
Conclusion :
Considering the features of the different servers available, I finalized to use Apache web server as it is most popular open source software and most of the hosting providers provided apache hosting.
Web Application Scripting Tools:
Any web application is developed using the scripting tools like PHP, ASP , JSP or Pyton for creating web pages.
Benefits of PHP over other Scripting Tools
PHP Hypertext Processor is a web programming language on server-side which can be embedded into HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language). The uses and benefits of PHP are extensive that includes any sort of server functionalities like taking the inputs from the user and manipulating and displaying the outputs. PHP is considered to be a platform independent as it runs on both UNIX and Windows servers thus it is considered to be more accessible than Windows (ASP). This scripting language is gaining its hold in the programming area of development. This is another language in the slot of object oriented language which even has speed on Linux server which is useful to build large and complex web application. PHP is a useful programming and scripting language as it is easy to integrate with the given web pages and allows for the use of advanced programming structures in the development. Another main advantage of PHP compared to other scripting languages is that it easily and very well interfaces with MySQL which is a popular type of online database. Another add-on point of PHP is that it is an Open Source code as it is available public for free whilst the source code for ASP.net and other language based product cannot be obtained. With all these reasons PHP is considered to be relatively cheap and best programming and scripting language for the open source products. As it is an open source programming language the code can be shared between the developers without any reflexes. This indeed leads to the stage where the developers can rely on each other for using the characteristic of reusability of the pieces of the code which can be termed as functions, classes instead of developing the common piece of code every time and reinventing the wheel. This scenario will reduce the production time vividly.
Some of the benefits of PHP over other open source languages like JAVA are as follows:
PHP is considered as more swift development tool in comparison with JAVA if once the developer once get used to the process of developing the simple web pages.
There is no particular IDE for the development of PHP applications. There are some tools like Komodo for checking the syntax at real time process and debugging.
It is not necessary to restart the server whenever it is required to update a PHP file unlike does in JAVA. Even this is not exact problem with JSPs but when it comes to Java Servlets the web server will try to unload all the classes from the memory and reload it as and when requested.
These are some of the advantages of PHP over some other scripting languages and some other open source developing languages.
Therefore I have chosen PHP for the project development process as it is open source, lightweight and rapid in comparison with other technologies like MS.NET
Database :
Any e-commerce needs to have a database for storing the data of the registered users, products, etc. In market, there are lot of database systems available like Oracle, MySQL , SQL Server etc.
Benefits of My SQL over other Database
Major database systems that are used in the present web developing systems are Microsoft MS SQL server and My SQL. These two systems are similar with respect to the general data manipulations some of the features like supporting the primary key operations, key indices which enables the user to speed up the operations and queries and restrain input. In addition to this these two systems Microsoft offer some form of support to XML formats.
But the advantages of MySQL over the other start with its nature of open-source system which is not present in MS SQL server as it is a closed one and a build on proprietary structure. MySQL is an open storage and extensible database engine that offers multiple variations such as Berkeley DC, InnoDB, Heap and My ISAM while these options cannot be seen in MS SQL server as it offerings are limited only to a Sybase-derived engine. MySQL has major advantage of integrating impeccably with any number of web designed technologies and programming languages which keeps it over the MS SQL server. MySQL is also considered to be ahead in terms of its compatibility which works better than any Microsoft products. MySQL is considered as a robust, fast database with relatively good feature set. If any project is designed to be portable then it’s pretty good to implement on My SQL. It also offers a very good admin security and a good database system to implement. Postgre SQL is one of the other open source relational database management system which matches the standards and operations of SQL server and also runs on different platforms. In spite of all these features it is a slow due to its advanced features and becomes complicate to use by the developer in a large web developing projects (Mike Jewson, 2006). Due to these advantages, MySQL has been chosen for the database management system in this project.
User Interface :
Benefits of Adobe Flex over Silverlight
Adobe flex is an open source structure which runs in adobe flash player to create rich internet applications (RIAs). It merges the functionality of desktop applications with that of the accessibility of web applications. This tool will allow for the speed prototyping of difficult web applications. The aim of flex is to understand the Adobe’s goal for its suite of products. And adobe’s goal is to influence the wide number of designers who already know with adobe design tools. Whereas for Microsoft Silverlight’s goal is to influence the Windows Presentation foundation framework (WPF), the .NET framework and also its ascertained developer base. WPF is used to present a visual front end for all windows foundational applications.
Flex has a wide selection of out of the box elements like DataGrid, Tree and Panel which are employed to deliver the view of a Flex RIA. These flex applications are collected into Flash bytecode and it runs in Flash Player. It also influences Flash transitions and animations and supports media streaming and data push. Flex applications programming is done in combination of MXML and Action Script languages. When it comes to Silverlight this type of programming is not possible (Chris Giametta, 2009).
Adobe flex events are more spontaneous than the Silverlight to implement. This can be defined as static resources in App.Xaml and compiled into the application. These two tools provide XML based mark-up language and with convenient methods for designing controls. But there are some differences which are practically proved between these two tools-Flex’s MXML and Silverlight’s XAML. Prior tool is assembled straight into Action Script modules. If Flex builder is used, then developer could set a breakpoint directly in MXML and wait for it to be performed. After breakpoint is reached the object and its related property assessments can be examined. Silver light’s XAML is gathered into common runtime object code. This creates problems with debugging. This tool is less compact and is more flexible than flex (David Roossien, 2009).
Technical Analysis:
iStore project is divided into two modules the first module is Admin which got two things iStore admin and store admin and the second module is User .
User Features:
Home
Login
Categories
Featured Stores
Products
Product Description
About Us
Contact Us
Shopping Cart
Check Out
Payment Options ( Card or Cash)
My Orders
Search
Logout
Store Admin features:
Login
Manage Orders
Products
Add new Products
Logout
iStore Admin Features :
Login
Manage Orders
Manage Stores
Add new stores
Manage Categories
Add new categories
Customers
Change Password
Logout
Application Analysis & Design:
Application Implementation:
iStore project has been implemented using PHP, Adobe Flex Builder and My SQL. This project is divided into two modules such as Admin module and User module.
Admin Module
This module got two categories iStore Admin and Store Admin.
iStore Admin Login Page: Here the admin users login in to the site using the login details provided by the iStore team. If the admin enters wrong user name and password then user will be prompted to re-enter the correct user name and password. When the login details are successful the webpage redirects to the Home page which is Manage Order. Once the admin is logged in he got the permissions to manage the stores, categories or change password as the admin is given with some default password.
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Manage Stores: Admin is responsible to manage the stores i.e., adding the new stores are editing the stores that is deleting the existing the stores ,or by clicking on the products link in the product of the table which is displayed in the form admin can view all the available products under a particular store name and can manage the products as well. Manage icon in the manage field of the table is used to edit the required attribute with respect to the products and the stores in the site. Delete icon is used to delete the stores which are no more required or no more posting the products onto the site. On the top right corner of the table there is link called Add New Store through which the admin can enter new store and register them accordingly.
Add new Store: This form is accessed by the admin user to add new stores so that the user can post the new products or services into the site by creating the new store. Here in this form it is required to give the store name logo, image of the store and branch of the store with a user name and password so that the store admin can login to add the products, when the iStore admin wants to add a new store. Here it is even required to mention the status of the store whether it is active or inactive by selecting check box given in the form. The Store logo is displayed on the home page of the user .
Manage categories: This form is used to manage the products that are posted onto the site. This is done by the admin user to manage the products and its arability on the site. Here by clicking on the icon in manage field of the table category details can be edited according to their requirement and specifications. If the admin wants to delete the field admin can do that by just clicking on that delete icon. On the top right corner of the table there is link call Add New Category through which the admin can enter the new category or the products type into the site. Thus the product type or the categories can be managed by the admin through this form in the site.
New Category: This form is sued to enter the new categories of the products into the site. When the admin clicks on the top link in the manage categories form the form will be redirected to this page. In the form admin can enter the details of the new category they want to enter into the site and even have to mention the status of the category by selecting the check box active in the form to keep that particular category in active state and once save button is clicked the category is saved. And the page will be redirect to the list of the categories page.
Admin Categories Page
In this page the list of categories will be displayed and there will be option for the admin to update and delete the category. On the right corner there is a link called add categories if this is clicked then it will redirect to the new category page.
Admin Add new Products
In this page the admin can add the product providing the details that are required for adding a new product. The fields in that page are selection of the category giving the product name, image , video , cost and description of the product. And there is a check box called Active if it is checked then that particular product will be displayed on the product page under selected category and if it is not checked then the product will not be displayed. After that admin just needs to click on the save button. Then the page is redirect to the list of products under that particular store. Even the store admin can also add the new products if required.
Admin manage Products
In this page the list of added products are displayed and the admin can manage the product by clicking on the manage icon and can also delete the product by clicking on the delete icon.
Manage Order:
In this page the admin can see the order and can modify the status of the delivery of the order. Clicking on Order Info will give the complete order details including how the payment is made, list of items purchased, total amount paid etc. Clicking on manage will provide the option of editing the status.
Change Password:
In this page the admin can change his password by typing new password field and retype password field, and clicking on the save button.
Log Out
Every form have the log out link on the top right corner when clicked on that link then the admin is logged out from that account.
Store Admin Module :
Login:
The store admin can login to check the orders , products for particular category.
Manage Order:
In this page the admin can see the order and can modify the status of the delivery of the order. Clicking on Order Info will give the complete order details including how the payment is made, list of items purchased, total amount paid etc. Clicking on manage will provide the option of editing the status.
Products
In this page the list of added products are displayed and the admin can manage the product by clicking on the manage icon and can also delete the product by clicking on the delete icon.
Add new Products
In this page the admin can add the product providing the details that are required for adding a new product. The fields in that page are selection of the category giving the product name, image , video , cost and description of the product. And there is a check box called Active if it is checked then that particular product will be displayed on the product page under selected category and if it is not checked then the product will not be displayed. After that admin just needs to click on the save button. Then the page is redirect to the list of products under that particular store. Even the iStore admin can also add the new products if required.
Log Out
Every form have the log out link on the top right corner when clicked on that link then the admin is logged out from that account.
Customer Module
Home Page
Home page is the initial page of the Website. In this page on the top right corner there are four links they are Home, Products, about us and Contact us. By clicking on the about us link the page is forwarded to the about us page. If clicked on the products or contact us they forward to their respective pages. On the left side of the home page there is a panel for login in t
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