tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68194875198889573552024-03-08T04:31:30.395-08:00Web Design, Dev & eCommerceA blog on Web Design Development, eCommerce, the history of Internet and Online Business development. I also want to post about web design tips and tricks and latest news, some spectacularly designed web site URLs as time permits.Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819487519888957355.post-51351362420483475882012-01-03T06:10:00.001-08:002012-01-20T02:37:55.785-08:00Building a business case for your ecommerce website<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Building the Business Case</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;">Just as with a business-to -business solution, a business case must be built before<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>embarking on an implementation for your ecommerce website, which means:</div><ul style="margin-top: 0pt;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">understanding your objectives;</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">understanding the business model;</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">balancing costs against profits.</li>
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In assessing the cost-effectiveness of a business-to-c it is useful to make the distinction between:</div><ul style="margin-top: 0pt;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">existing businesses taking advantage of the web;</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">small-time entrepreneurs seeing an sales opportunity and setting up a small shop front;</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">and new Internet start-up companies with innovative ideas.</li>
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The distinction is made because the three types of company may have very different plans.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;">Assuming that an existing business has planned for E-commerce properly (and is not just building a Web site because its main competitor has one), then it should have a very good idea of what it is doing and how much it will cost. It should also have projections for what effect this will have on its profits and running costs. It is almost unavoidable that certain things will be overlooked or unforeseen (perhaps the need for a foreign language version of the site), but in general creation of a business-to-consumer application will be absorbed into the company's overall IT strategy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;">Key aspects of the business cash for the existing business will be factors such as;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;">Are the existing products/services suitable for selling online?</div><ul style="margin-top: 0pt;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">What are the risks of selling online?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;">What are the risks of not selling online?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">What arc the commercial benefits to be gained by selling online, can they be quantified as part of the business case, how quickly will they be realised and how do they stack up against the likely costs that will be incurred?</li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;">The small-time entrepreneur probably has enough capital to try a few different ideas without being too concerned about whether some of them fail to get off the ground. The costs involved in setting up a web shop front are really quite small so it amounts to a little speculation on behalf of the entrepreneur.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;">The new Internet start-up company is a very different beast and, at least at the time of writing, is as much fuelled by high market expectations and an abundance of risk capital. The innovators have to have a good idea, and preferably some amazing technology, but the rewards may be tremendously high if the launch is handled in the right way.</div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" /></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Objectives</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;">This small list below summarizes what a company's objectives may be for a web-based E-commerce solution.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0pt;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Do you know what your target audience is?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Will the site be used for: sales, marketing, research, delivery of goods or services?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Do you need it to be integrated to other back office systems?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Are two versions of the site needed - one for the corporate internet and one for public access via the WWW?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Do you know what sales levels are likely to be initially?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Do you have targets in place for how you would like these sales levels to grow?</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">Can you cope with them?</li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
By now you should have a feel for what types of question you need to consider in looking at what E-commerce can do for your business. Defining what you want to achieve will help with the next stage -deciding how you are going to achieve it.<br />
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To learn more about how to <a href="http://www.turbopowers.com/">choose the right web design company</a> to develop your ecommerce website please check: <a href="http://www.turbopowers.com/">http://www.turbopowers.com/</a></div></div>Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819487519888957355.post-60309159474600814082011-12-15T00:48:00.000-08:002012-01-20T02:36:33.210-08:00History of Ecommerce part 04<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><strong>Identifying the Business Potential</strong><br />
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The developments in communications and standardisation over the past 20 years will undoubtedly continue, and will lead to improvements in the ways industry trades. We now have a range of communications options: telephone networks. ISDN, X.-IOO, the Internet, satellite and mobile communications, and others, such as digital radio, will doubtless become popular. What is important, is how these options are used.<br />
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Ii is vital from outsite for any organisation looking to move into E-commerce. particularly business-to-consumer. to clearly understand whether the products and services they offer are suitable for st-Ling online. Some general guidance on the potential for E-commerce can be gauged by asking the following questions:<br />
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• Is the organisation looking to sell to the correct demographic group in terms of geography (where the potential customers are located) and the type of person (is the potential customer likely to have access to Internet services and the ability to pay for transactions online)?<br />
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• Can the products be delivered digitally (for example, software, music, videos, books) or services accessed digitally (e.g. train tickets, airline tickets, holidays)?<br />
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• Can value be added to specific services by making them available online (e.g. online auctions or stockbroking can significantly change the existing business models)?<br />
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• Does the organisation have products that can be sold from a Web site, even though they may need to be delivered and paid for conventionally (e.g. cars, household electrical goods, even houses)?<br />
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• Are they very specialist products, where the web can increase their exposure to (perhaps) overseas markets, or standard products that can easily be sold via a catalogue?<br />
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The decision to proceed with an E-commerce project would probably require a 'yes' to many (although not all) of these questions.<br />
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In any event, whether the potential application is business-to-business or business-to-consiuner, the key requirement is to develop a clear business case that supports the decision to proceed. This business case should address a variety of key issues including:<br />
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• statement of business benefits to be achieved;<br />
• projected sales and overall revenue over 1, 3 and 5 years;<br />
• level of investment required (both in terms of IT. staffing levels and other resources);<br />
• projected profitability;<br />
• unique selling points of the new venture;<br />
• a clear evaluation of the risks in moving forward with such a venture (and indeed the risks associated with not moving forward);<br />
• systems and resources required to handle integration with back-office systems such as order processing, order fulfilment, stock control etc.)<br />
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<a href="http://web-designing-company.yolasite.com/">http://web-designing-company.yolasite.com/</a></div>Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819487519888957355.post-1577927524940371932011-12-11T21:17:00.001-08:002012-01-20T02:35:08.416-08:00History of Ecommerce part 03<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><strong>Slower than Expected Growth</strong><br />
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By the end of the 1980s there were high expectations for EDI, and analysts repeatedly made predictions of unprecedented growth. It was widely agreed that only one per cent of potential users had implemented EDI and the number of users was predicted to double every year. It was said that no-one could stay in business without EDI.<br />
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For some reason, though, the growth never matched expectations. The new business 'revolution' was only taking off at a modest pace. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most often cited is that international standards have taken a long time to be developed to a level where they match business requirements.<br />
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More practical reasons were also to blame. For a start, the process was too complicated for many would be users. Although there were some off-the-shelf EDI packages, integrating them with iii-house systems (such as accounts) could prove very expensive. As a result, those who did invest in EDI did not always gain benefits. A large retail company could benefit by purchasing from its (multifold) suppliers, but this does not always benefit those suppliers. Unless they have integrated their EDI application and their order processing system, then they will probably have printed out the orders for processing. Someone in that position was unlikely to be introducing EDI to their own suppliers further down the supply chain.<br />
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By the early 1990s, EDI had reached a respectable level of awareness among businesses. There were a few newsletters and magazines dedicated to it, conferences and exhibitions, the odd article in a national paper. X.400, another internationally agreed standard for the exchange of E-mail (and other data types), had a similar (perhaps lower) level of publicity. Then came the Internet.<br />
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<strong>The Internet</strong><br />
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You will already be aware that the growth of the Internet has been phenomenal. In February 2000. an Irish consultancy firm, Nua, estimated the number of Internet users worldwide to be 276 million. Of these, 136 million were in the United States and Canada, 72 million in Europe (with 14 million in the UK, and }'2 million in Germany), and 55 million in the AsiaPacific region.<br />
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The global figure is a huge increase on the 115 million that Nua estimated were online in April 1998. and the US Computer Industry Almanac predicts that the number of Internet users worldwide will have grown to 720 million by the end of 2005.<br />
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However, it is interesting to note how much more popular media attention has been given to 'the Net' than was ever afforded EDI. Is it because it is available globally, or because it is easy of use, or as a result of major industry players such as Microsoft and Novell developing interfaces to it?<br />
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All of these have had an impact. Perhaps the most significant factor, though, is that the Internet offers a range of messaging techniques, all of which work rapidly. The standards used to make it work are not all ratified by international standards bodies, but they do work. The factor of not having to wait for standards to be agreed has surely accelerated the growth in the number of Internet users.<br />
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<div>An equally significant factor is that, with the existing level of awareness of E-commerce practices, the Internet can easily be identified by companies as a means of exchanging business data. It is a phenomenally well-advertised medium which offers access to a range of business applications:</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>FTP;</li>
<li>E-mail;</li>
<li>Voice-mail;</li>
<li>conference;</li>
<li>bulletin boards;</li>
<li>marketing;</li>
<li>advertising;</li>
<li>credit card transfer;</li>
<li>EDI;</li>
<li>on-line catalogues;</li>
<li>stockbroking;</li>
<li>many, many more.</li>
</ul><div style="text-align: left;">Offtopic: Check out my favorite and in my opinion, the <a href="http://www.quantumcloud.com/">best web design company</a> - Quantumcloud and 2advanced <a href="http://www.2advanced.com/">http://www.2advanced.com/</a></div></div>Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819487519888957355.post-69923150075246836652011-12-07T01:27:00.000-08:002012-01-20T02:34:24.724-08:00History of Ecommerce part 02<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;">The Emergence of Standards</span><br />
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An enormous amount of work has been done behind the scenes to ensure there is compatibility between different systems so that they can be linked to each other (either directly or via a communications network) in order to exchange data. This work has been carried out on a whole range of levels, right from the mechanics of putting the cables and wires together to providing standard applications interfaces in software packages- This standardisation process is called Open Systems Integration (OSI) - which is not to be confused with the ISO (International Standards Organisation) which ratifies these standards. <br />
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<strong>Internet Pointer</strong><br />
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More information on the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and other world standards can be found at <a href="http://www.iso.ch/">http://www.iso.ch/</a> and <a href="http://www.wssn.net/">http://www.wssn.net/</a><br />
Most of the results of this work are invisible to companies using computers. Nowadays you can be fairly sure in purchasing hardware that there is a high level of compatibility with other systems. This is not always the case with software products, although popular products have spawned de facto standards that are now being used widely. Examples include Word, the word processing program from Microsoft which has been adopted to such a wide degree by both business and home computer users that it is now acknowledged as a de facto standard.<br />
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Hand in hand with standardisation comes simplification. In the 1970s and early 1980s a single container shipment might have required up to 80 different import/export documents to go with it. Much of the information on these forms was common to all of them. In the UK, the Simpler Trade Procedures Board (SITPRO), worked to simplify all of these forms and as a result produced the Single Administrative Document (SAD)<br />
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Now the common data only had to be filled in once and the form could be used for a wide range of purposes. Effectively it was a large and more complicated form but it was simpler to understand and use. Much the same sort of processes went in to creating EDI messages, such as invoices (a message could be said to be an electronic version of the information in the form).<br />
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<strong>Pioneers</strong><br />
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Initially the growth of E-comnierce practices was bound to be slow. A number of forward-thinking companies pioneered various techniques for transferring data in formats that enabled it to be processed on receipt. In a sense, it was an act of blind faith, and much of the work that was done laid the foundations for other companies.<br />
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At this time the terms E-commerce or ED! did not exist, but that is what companies were trying to achieve. The most important realisation was that common data formats were needed for such transfers to work between communities of traders. This led to the creation of standards bodies in Europe and the US, and saw the co-operation of industry groups in defining message requirements.<br />
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A number of pilots were set up, not all of which were successful in trading terms, but which helped to elevate the subject in public awareness. Two of the better known ones were in the shipping industry and were known as DISH and SHIPNET. A number of port community systems were created across Europe. Felixstowe, Southampton, Rotterdam and Amsterdam all set up import/export systems which are still in use.<br />
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During the 1980s, a number of communications companies introduced Value Added Network Services (YANs) to provide secure communications channels for business visage. The VANs' awareness raising activities, alongside work being done by the standards bodies, helped to start build communities of users in a variety of business sectors, such as the retail industry.<br />
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These particular communities could grow rapidly as the main ones, such as major supermarkets and shopping chains, could make EDI capability (specifically the ability to receive electronic orders) a prerequisite of selecting a supplier. The suppliers needed the business and had to comply.<br />
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Smaller VANs have emerged to cater for the requirements of specific sectors, such as education. The airline industry freight forwarding community and shipping community have all, at some stage, created networks for transmission of EDI and E-mail data.<br />
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Offtopic: Check out this interesting <a href="http://www.dna88.com/">blog about web design and development</a> if you like.</div>Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819487519888957355.post-76423689179500994532011-12-07T01:13:00.001-08:002012-01-20T02:32:00.580-08:00History of Ecommerce part 01<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;">A Brief History of E-commerce</span><br />
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<div></div>In year 2012, no one is a stranger to the concept of ecommerce. It has become a part of our normal life. But it was not so mundane and ubiquitous like papers and running waters even 10-15 years ago. I just want to go through a brief history of e-commerce and its rising into the current state.<br />
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<div></div>E-commerce is about using data for commercial purposes by transmitting the data electronically between computer systems in a standard format. But what are the key drivers that triggered the major growth that we saw in E-commerce systems and applications within the last two decades? Well over the past 30 years computer hardware has become cheaper by the month. Operating Systems and. particularly, the software that runs on them, have become more powerful and (arguably) more user-friendly, providing a wider range of solutions to the business market. At the same time, communication options have diversified and improved.<br />
As a result, various industry sectors began to see the potential of linking their computer systems either directly or via communications networks. Once such links were in place, then it was a natural progression to begin exchanging information between trading partners. The requirement for some sort of structure and standardization to these exchanges of business information was recognised, hence the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).<br />
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<div></div>We then saw the development and tremendous growth of the Internet as a business tool, with few companies not able to identify specific business benefits that it could deliver. The sorts of questions that organizations were being asked in relation to how they might benefit from the use of the Internet included:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Do you have business partners and trading partners overseas?</li>
<li>Do you make use of faxes and international phone calls?</li>
<li>Do you need to find market information regularly?</li>
<li>Do you travel regularly to business meetings by plane or train?</li>
<li>Do you need to keep in touch with company news?</li>
</ul>Positive answers to these types of questions pushed organizations into using the Internet for e-mail and access to the World Wide Web. The growth in business use was then mirrored by the explosion in the number of Internet users within the home, providing a vast potential market for the many business-to-consumer services that are now emerging.<br />
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We will look at some elements in the growth of E-commerce in more detail in subsequent posts.</div>Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819487519888957355.post-21636253007466805352011-12-03T09:39:00.000-08:002011-12-03T09:39:51.664-08:00Web design and development<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Starting out the web design and development blog. Intend to post some tips and tricks related to web design and development.</div>Andrew Wigginhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17483711395808316050noreply@blogger.com