In this chapter, the learning objectives are: Understand the issues involved in choosing the most appropriate hardware for an e-commerce site, rightsizing hardware platforms for the site, rightsizing e commerce connections, identify additional tools that can improve Web site performance.
CSC 330 E-Commerce Teacher Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan GM-IT CIIT Islamabad • • Virtual Campus, CIIT COMSATS Institute of Information Technology • T1-Lecture-8 Building E-Commerce Web Sites Chapter-3 Part-III T1-Lecture-8 For Lecture Material/Slides Thanks to: Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc Objectives Understand the issues involved in choosing the most appropriate hardware for an e-commerce site Rightsizing Hardware Platforms for the site Rightsizing e commerce connections Identify additional tools that can improve Web site performance T1-Lecture-8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-3 Merchant Server Software Packages Integrated environment with most or all of functionality needed: Functionality Support for business models Business process modeling tools Visual site management and reporting Performance and scalability Connectivity to existing business systems Compliance with standards Global and multicultural capability Local sales tax and shipping rules T1Lecture6 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-4 Building Your Own E-commerce Site Options for small firms Site building tools ◦E-commerce templates (open template) ◦Open-source merchant server software enables you to build truly custom site, requires programmer with expertise, time Cloud Computing; Software and Hardware as service Host e-commerce site; Yahoo’s Merchant Solutions; or colocation your servers at ISP; establish your own NOC; T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-5 Choosing the Hardware for an E-commerce Site Hardware platform: Underlying computing equipment that system uses to achieve e-commerce functionality Objective: Enough platform capacity to meet peak demand without wasting money Important to understand the different factors that affect speed, capacity, and scalability of a site T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-6 Right-Sizing Your Hardware Platform: The Demand Side Demand is the most important factor affecting speed of site Factors in overall demand: Number of simultaneous users in peak periods Nature of customer requests (user profile) Type of content (dynamic versus static Web pages) Required security Number of items in inventory Number of page requests Speed of legacy applications T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-7 Rightsizing E-Commerce Platforms T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-8 Degradation in Performance as Number of Users Increases—Resource Utilization As the number of concurrent users (N) rises, the transaction rate (T) rises linearly until an inflection point (X) is reached, after which performance falls at a nonlinear rate until a crash is experienced T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-9 Degradation in Performance as Transaction Latency vs Resource Utilization (b) Likewise, latency increases to a point where it becomes exponential and service quality is unacceptable T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 110 Improve processing architecture T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 116 Other E-Commerce Site Tools Web site design: Basic business considerations Enabling customers to find and buy what they need Tools for Web site optimization: Search engine placement ◦Meta-tags, page titles, content, keywords ◦Identify market niches, localize site ◦Expertise ◦Links ◦Search engine ads T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 117 E-commerce Web Site Features that Annoy Customers SOURCE: Based on data from Hostway Corporation’s survey, Consumers’ Pet Peeves about Commercial Web Sites, Hostway Corporation, 2007 T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 118 T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 119 Developing a Mobile Web Presence Planning and building mobile presence As with regular Web site, use systems analysis/design to identify unique and specific business objectives Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc Slid e 4 20 Developing a Mobile Web Presence Two more features Design Consideration Three types of mobile e-commerce software (Performance and cost) ◦Mobile Web site ◦Mobile Web app ◦Native app Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc Slid e 4 21 Developing a Mobile Web Presence Design considerations Platform constraints: Smartphone/tablet Software : (Performance and cost ) Mobile Web site: ◦Least expensive Mobile app: ◦Can utilize browser API Native app: ◦Most expensive; requires more programming Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc Slid e 4 22 Tools for Interactivity and Active Content Web 2.0 design elements: Web 2.0 refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web applications to users Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online Importantly Web 2.0 includes open communication with an emphasis on Web-based communities of users, and more open sharing of information Over time Web 2.0 is being used more as a marketing term than a computer-science-based term Blogs, wikis, and Web services are all seen as components of Web 2.0 T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 123 Designing for Accessibility in a Web 2.0 and Mobile World How can Web sites be made more accessible? Should all Web sites be required by law to provide “equivalent alternatives” for visual and sound content? To facilitate disables What additional accessibility problems mobile devices pose? Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc Slid e 4 24 Tools for Interactivity and Active Content CGI (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 ASP (Active Server Pages) a proprietary software development tool that enables programmers using Microsoft’s IIS package to build dynamic pages Java a programming language that allows programmers to create interactivity and active content on the client computer; thereby saving considerable load on the server T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 125 Tools for Interactivity and Active Content Java Server Pages (JSP) like CGI and ASP, a Web page coding standard that allows developers to dynamically generate Web pages in response to user requests JavaScript a programming language invented by Netscape that is used to control the objects on an HTML page and handle interactions with the browser ActiveX a programming language created by Microsoft to compete with Java VBScript a programming language invented by Microsoft to compete with JavaScript T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 126 Tools for Interactivity and Active Content ColdFusion is an integrated server-side environment for developing interactive Web applications Developed by Macromedia, Combines an intuitive tag-based scripting language and a tag-based server scripting language (CFML) that lowers the cost of creating interactive features It offers a powerful set of visual design, programming, debugging, and deployment tools T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 127 Basic Business Considerations Personalize Tools Ability to treat people based on personal qualities and prior history with site Customization Ability to change the product to better fit the needs of the customer Tools to achieve: Cookies: when a user returns to a site, you can read the cookie to find a customer ID, look the ID up in a database of names, and greet the customer T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 128 The Information Policy Set Privacy policy Set of public statements declaring how site will treat customers’ personal information that is gathered by site Accessibility rules Set of design objectives that ensure disabled users can affectively access site T1Lecture8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 129 Thank You T1-Lecture-8 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 130 .. .Building E-Commerce Web Sites Chapter- 3 Part-III T1 -Lecture- 8 For Lecture Material/Slides Thanks to: Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education,... rules T1? ?Lecture? ?6 Ahmed Mumtaz Mustehsan Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc 1-4 Building Your Own E-commerce Site Options for small firms Site building tools ? ?E-commerce. .. hardware for an e-commerce site Rightsizing Hardware Platforms for the site Rightsizing e commerce connections Identify additional tools that can improve Web site performance T1 -Lecture- 8 Ahmed