PHP and MySQL Web Development - P60 ppt

267 Types of Commercial Web Sites n What happens if a purchaser is not satisfied with a purchase? Under what circumstances will you give a refund? Who pays for shipping? Mail order retailers have traditionally had more liberal refund and return policies than traditional shops. Many offer an unconditional satisfaction guarantee. Consider the cost of returns against the increase in sales that a liberal return policy will create.Whatever your policy is, make sure that it is displayed on your site. n Should customers entrust their credit card information to you? The single greatest trust issue for Internet shoppers is fear of transmitting their credit card details over the Internet. For this reason, you need to both handle credit cards securely and be seen as security conscious.At the very least, this means using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to transmit the details from the user’s browser to your Web server and ensuring that your Web server is competently and securely adminis- tered.We will discuss this in more detail later. Ease of Use Consumers vary greatly in their computer experience, language, general literacy, memo- ry, and vision.Your site needs to be as easy as possible to use. User interface design fills many books on its own, but here are a few guidelines: n Keep your site as simple as possible. The more options, advertisements, and distractions on each screen, the more likely a user is to get confused. n Keep text clear. Use clear, uncomplicated fonts. Do not make text too small and bear in mind that it will be different sizes on different types of machines. n Make your ordering process as simple as possible. Intuition and available evidence both support the idea that the more mouse clicks users have to make to place an order, the less likely they are to complete the process. Keep the number of steps to a minimum, but note that Amazon.com has a U.S. patent 3 on a process using only one click, which they call 1-Click.This patent is strongly challenged by many Web site owners. n Tr y not to let users get lost. Provide landmarks and navigational cues to tell users where they are. For example, if a user is within a subsection of the site, high- light the navigation for that subsection. If you are using a shopping cart metaphor in which you provide a virtual container for customers to accumulate purchases prior to finalizing the sale, keep a link to the cart vis- ible on the screen at all times. Compatibility Be sure to test your site in a number of browsers and operating systems. If the site does not work for a popular browser or operating system, you will look unprofessional and lose a section of your potential market. 3 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Number 5,960,411. Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 267 268 Chapter 12 Running an E-commerce Site If your site is already operating, your Web server logs can tell you what browsers your visitors are using. As a rule of thumb, if you test your site in the last two versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape/Mozilla on a PC running Microsoft Windows, the last two versions of Netscape/Mozilla on a Apple Mac, the current version of Netscape/Mozilla on Linux, and a text-only browser such as Lynx, you will be visible to the majority of users. Tr y to avoid features and facilities that are brand-new, unless you are willing to write and maintain multiple versions of the site. Providing Services and Digital Goods Many products or services can be sold over the Web and delivered to the customer via a courier. Some services can be delivered immediately online. If a service or good can be transmitted to a modem, it can be ordered, paid for, and delivered instantly, without human interaction. The most obvious service provided this way is information. Sometimes the informa- tion is entirely free or supported by advertising. Some information is provided via sub- scription or paid for on an individual basis. Digital goods include e-books and music in electronic formats such as MP3. Stock library images can be digitized and downloaded. Computer software does not always need to be on a CD, inside shrink-wrap. It can be downloaded directly. Services that can be sold this way include Internet access or Web hosting and some professional services that can be replaced by an expert system. If you are going to physically ship an item that was ordered from your Web site, you have both advantages and disadvantages over digital goods and services. Shipping a physical item costs money. Digital downloads are nearly free.This means that if you have something that can be duplicated and sold digitally, the cost to you is very similar whether you sell one item or one thousand items. Of course, there are limits to this—if you have a sufficient level of sales and traffic, you will need to invest in more hardware or bandwidth. Digital products or services can be easy to sell as impulse purchases. If a person orders a physical item, it will be a day or more before it reaches her. Downloads are usually measured in seconds or minutes. Immediacy can be a burden on merchants. If you are delivering a purchase digitally, you need to do it immediately.You cannot manually over- see the process, or spread peaks of activity through the day. Immediate delivery systems are therefore more open to fraud and are more of a burden on computer resources. Digital goods and services are ideal for e-commerce, but obviously only a limited range of goods and services can be delivered this way. Adding Value to Goods or Services Some successful areas of commercial Web sites do not actually sell any goods or services. Services such as courier companies’ (UPS at www.ups.com or Fedex at www.fedex.com) tracking services are not generally designed to directly make a profit.They add value to 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 268 269 Risks and Threats the existing services offered by the organization. Allowing customers to track their parcels or bank balances can give the company a competitive advantage. Support forums also fall into this category.There are sound commercial reasons for giving customers a discussion area to share troubleshooting tips about your company’s products. Customers might be able to solve their problems by looking at solutions given to others, international customers can get support without paying for long distance phone calls, and customers might be able to answer one another’s questions outside your office hours. Providing support in this way can increase your customers’ satisfaction at a low cost. Cutting Costs One popular use of the Internet is to cut costs. Savings could result from distributing information online, facilitating communication, replacing services, or centralizing opera- tions. If you currently provide information to a large number of people, you could possibly do the same thing more economically via a Web site.Whether you are providing price lists, a catalog, documented procedures, specifications, or something else, it could be cheaper to make the same information available on the Web instead of printing and delivering paper copies.This is particularly true for information that changes regularly. The Internet can save you money by facilitating communication.Whether this means that tenders can be widely distributed and rapidly replied to, or whether it means that customers can communicate directly with a wholesaler or manufacturer, eliminating middlemen, the result is the same. Prices can come down, or profits can go up. Replacing services that cost money to run with an electronic version can cut costs. A brave example is Egghead.com.They chose to close their chain of computer stores, and concentrate on their e-commerce activities. Although building a significant e-commerce site obviously costs money, a chain of more than 70 retail stores has much higher ongo- ing costs. Replacing an existing service comes with risks. At the very least, you will lose customers who do not use the Internet. Centralization can cut costs. If you have numerous physical sites, you need to pay numerous rents and overheads, staff at all of them, and the costs of maintaining inventory at each. An Internet business can be in one location, but be accessible all over the world. Risks and Threats Every business faces risks, competitors, theft, fickle public preferences, and natural disas- ters, among other risks.The list is endless. However, many risks that e-commerce compa- nies face are either less of a risk, or not relevant, to other ventures.These risks include n Crackers n Failing to attract sufficient business n Computer hardware failure 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 269 270 Chapter 12 Running an E-commerce Site n Power, communication, or network failures n Reliance on shipping services n Extensive competition n Software errors n Evolving governmental policies and taxes n System-capacity limits Crackers The best-publicized threat to e-commerce comes from malicious computer users known as crackers. All businesses run the risk of becoming targets of criminals, but high profile e- commerce businesses are bound to attract the attention of crackers with varying inten- tions and abilities. Crackers might attack for the challenge, for notoriety, to sabotage your site, to steal money, or to gain free goods or services. Securing your site involves a combination of n Keeping backups of important information n Having hiring policies that attract honest staff and keep them loyal—the most dan- gerous attacks can come from within n Taking software-based precautions, such as choosing secure software and keeping it up-to-date n Training staff to identify targets and weaknesses n Auditing and logging to detect break-ins or attempted break-ins Most successful attacks on computer systems take advantage of well-known weaknesses such as easily guessed passwords, common misconfigurations, and old versions of soft- ware.A few sensible precautions can turn away nonexpert attacks and ensure that you have a backup if the worst happens. Failing to Attract Sufficient Business Although attacks by crackers are widely feared, most e-commerce failures relate to tradi- tional economic factors. It costs a lot of money to build and market a major e-com- merce site. Companies are willing to lose money in the short term, based on assumptions that after the brand is established in the market place, customer numbers and revenue will increase. At the time of writing, Amazon.com, arguably the Web’s best-known retailer, has trad- ed at a loss for five consecutive years, losing $99 million (U.S.) in the first quarter of 2000.The string of high-profile failures includes European boo.com, which ran out of money and changed hands after burning $120 million in six months. It was not that Boo did not make sales; it was just that they spent far more than they made. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 270 271 Risks and Threats Computer Hardware Failure It almost goes without saying that if your business relies on a Web site, the failure of a critical part of one of your computers will have an impact. Busy or crucial Web sites justify having multiple redundant systems so that the failure of one does not affect the operation of the whole system. As with all threats, you need to determine whether the chance of losing your Web site for a day while waiting for parts or repairs justifies the expense of redundant equipment. Power, Communication, Network, or Shipping Failures If you rely on the Internet, you are relying on a complex mesh of service providers. If your connection to the rest of the world fails, you can do little other than wait for your supplier to reinstate service.The same goes for interruptions to power service, and strikes or other stoppages by your delivery company. Depending on your budget, you might choose to maintain multiple services from dif- ferent providers.This will cost you more, but will mean that, if one of your providers fails, you will still have another. Brief power failures can be overcome by investing in an uninterruptible power supply. Extensive Competition If you are opening a retail outlet on a street corner, you will probably be able to make a pretty accurate survey of the competitive landscape.Your competitors will primarily be businesses that sell similar things in surrounding areas. New competitors will open occa- sionally.With e-commerce, the terrain is less certain. Depending on shipping costs, your competitors could be anywhere in the world, and subject to different currency fluctuations and labor costs.The Internet is fiercely compet- itive and evolving rapidly. If you are competing in a popular category, new competitors can appear every day. There is little that you can do to eliminate the risk of competition, but, by staying abreast of developments, you can ensure that your venture remains competitive. Software Errors When your business relies on software, you are vulnerable to errors in that software. You can reduce the likelihood of critical errors by selecting software that is reliable, allowing sufficient time to test after changing parts of your system, having a formal test- ing process, and not allowing changes to be made on your live system without testing elsewhere first. You can reduce the severity of outcomes by having up-to-date backups of all your data, keeping known working software configurations when making a change, and moni- toring system operation to quickly detect problems. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 271 . attract honest staff and keep them loyal—the most dan- gerous attacks can come from within n Taking software-based precautions, such as choosing secure software and keeping it up-to-date n Training. users. Tr y to avoid features and facilities that are brand-new, unless you are willing to write and maintain multiple versions of the site. Providing Services and Digital Goods Many products. staff to identify targets and weaknesses n Auditing and logging to detect break-ins or attempted break-ins Most successful attacks on computer systems take advantage of well-known weaknesses such