E-Commerce With WWW/Internet:
Web-based E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing segments of the technology that defines the business strategy. Web-based E-commerce provides easy and better communication between geographically separated buyers and sellers. E-commerce is a way of doing business by enabling better interaction among customers, business partners and business relationship managers using electronic tools. The Web provides an array of electronics tools such as e-mail and Web pages for E-commerce and its related processes. Web-based E-commerce continues to improve convenience and versatility using increased processing power and expanded cellular capabilities and makes it more reachable to the customers.
To design a Web-based E-commerce architecture, the following steps are performed:
1. Planning for Web-based E-commerce architecture.
2. Understanding the roles of buyers and sellers.
3. Analyzing the requirements of buyers and sellers.
4. Resolving the issues in Web-based E-commerce.
1. Planning for Web-based E-commerce architecture:
• The basic idea of designing and building of any architecture is not only to describe the computational steps but also the description of task. To design the architecture of a Web-based system, the following points must be kept in mind:
• Understanding the various roles and the kinds of users to ensure that the maximum users can get the maximum advantages of the system to accomplish their aim Understanding the functions of the different modules of the system and their interfaces, i.e. how the different functions perform a special task by exchanging information and how the functions are related to each other in a single unit
• Recording the links of the transaction details of the business in a database. The transaction details contain information such as transition type, purchased item information, i.e. price, item identification and stock information.
• Specifying the trust model for the system: Every system must have at least an implicit trust model that helps maintain the security of the system by providing the details of the relationships between the components.
2. Understanding the roles of buyers and sellers:
As a Web-based E-commerce system is used by different users for different purposes, the roles of the buyers and the sellers need to be considered. The roles consideration helps you to recognize the various operations in designing and analysing the architecture of-a Web-based Ecommerce system that satisfies all the requirements of the business.
Roles of a buyer:
In Web-based E-commerce, customers have different roles with respect to the services they require or the action they perform. A buyer plays the roles of a Specifier, an approver and a recipient. A specifier selects' the hem to be "purchased, an approver is the person who agrees for purchase and a recipient is the person who gets the delivered items and services.
Buyers' roles are also distinguished according to the relation with the seller such as anonymous buyers and member buyer. An anonymous buyer is a walk-in buyer who uses the system to deal with the seller only once for a simple purchase. A member buyer establishes a membership with the seller by repeatedly
purchasing goods.
Roles of a seller:
On the other side of Web-based E-commerce, the sellers also have many roles on the basis of the responsibility assigned to the person in the company.
The most important business roles are as follows:
• Business manager: They are responsible for all the business approaches such as deciding on-line products and services, determining pricing and establishing business relationships. The success of on-line business mostly depends on this role.
• Internet commerce architect and the systems analyst: They create and manage the contents of the transaction process, the technical needs of the
buyer and all the outer business requirements into a system design.
• Content designer: They are concerned about the look and feel of the Web-based E-commerce system such as graphic designs, page layout and user experience.
• Content author: They work within the design of the content designer by creating and adapting the product information to a form.
• Implementer: An implementer implements the software and the program, which are used to work with the Web-based E-commerce system.
• Database administrator: They are responsible for maintaining the correctness, consistency and integrity of data stored in t database.
• Sales and marketing team: They focus on all the efforts to promote Inter-net-based E-commerce.
• Buyer service representative: Buyer service representatives handle all the buyer dealings.
3. Analyzing the requirements of buyers and sellers:
The different requirements of buyers and sellers affect Web-based E-commerce applications. .Web-based E-commerce systems include a client system, a merchant system, a transaction system and a payment gateway. A client system is a computer system that is connected directly or indirectly to the Internet and always used by buyers for browsing and purchasing items. A merchant system is the computer system that contains the electronic catalogue of the sellers of online goods or products. A transaction system is the computer system that processes an order and stores the information about the transactions. A payment gateway is the computer system that controls the financial networks—for example, authorization and settlement of credit cards used by the buyers.
Requirements of a buyer:
The Web-based E-commerce architecture is influenced by the structure and presentation of the Website and the facilities provided by the Web browsers that are commonly used by buyers to deal with sellers. Client wallets are used for different payment methods—such as cash and E-payment—by keeping track of the transactions. These payment methods require additional processing such as cryptographic operations. This application is used by only a few buyers, so they are irrelevant for most of the Web-based E-commerce systems. Some buyers use third-party systems such as server-side wallets that are Websites used for buyer payment credential registration for the sellers without using special client software.
Requirements of a seller:
In a Web-based E-commerce architecture, the seller is involved in all the stages of E-commerce sales life cycle. Two things are common for every Web- based E-commerce architecture: one, creative presentation of products and two, payment service. Some of the seller requirements are stated as follows:
• Content management system is responsible for the creation and management of dynamic updated contents of the Website and the whole Web presentation.
• Transaction processing system is used to track the transaction information such as item, buyer, cost of item, type of the payment and status of the service.
• Payment processors control the money movement. For example, in the credit card payment system, the seller connects to a credit card processor for the authorization.
• Fulfillment systems are used to handle the packing and the shipping orders of the deliverable products.
4. Resolving the issues in Web-based E-commerce:
Before designing an Internet-based E-commerce application, a developer must consider the various issues that will arise if the problems are not handled on time. Security is a very important aspect of any Web application; therefore, if a developer does not consider points of security, the application might fail to deliver the desired services to its full potential. On the Internet, buyers are always concerned about their social security number and credit card details. Other than E-commerce security, there are some other issues, which are as follows:
1. Security issues
2. General issues
3. Legal issues
