The document discusses the benefits and weaknesses of e-commerce as well as the technology used to enable it. Some key benefits include access to global markets, 24/7 trading, low startup and running costs, and fluid pricing. Weaknesses include lack of trust, human contact, inaccurate product descriptions, and security issues. The technology section describes browsers, databases, domain names, ports and protocols. It also covers promotion techniques like search engine optimization, banners/popups, and establishing customer loyalty online. [/SUMMARY]

1. E-commerce
Anna Fitt

2. Benefits of E-commerce
Global Marketplace
By having a global presence a
business can target a global audience.

3. Benefits of E-commerce
24/7 Trading
trading can be carried out at any time,
day or night, in all different time zones around the world.

4. Benefits of E-commerce
Low Start -up & Running Costs
the start up costs and running costs of a website are
relatively low. This is a great incentive to company
owners.

5. Benefits of E-commerce
Search Facilities
it takes just seconds to find the
product you want. There are often
different criteria you can easily add to
find exact product you looking for.

6. Benefits of E-commerce
Fluid Pricing
prices are increased or decreased
quickly depending on circumstances.
when selling airline flight tickets as more are sold
and fewer are available then the tickets could become
more expensive as the demand rises.

7. Weaknesses of E-commerce
& how to address this
Consumer Trust
They can worry about several different issues when
using e-commerce sites like whether the company is a
legitimate, their personal information and security.
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8. Weaknesses of E-commerce
& how to address this
Lack of Human Contact
Customers might be deterred from
purchasing online because they can’t
speak to someone from the business
directly.
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9. Weaknesses of E-commerce
& how to address this
Product Description Problems
Customers might worry about the information which are on the e-commerce site,
And their products might not accurately reflect the real product.
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10. Weaknesses of E-commerce
& how to address this
Security issues
Customers worry about their financial details safety.
That the business will use these details in unauthorized way or security of this
Information may not be sufficient.
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11. The Technology
Browsers
They allow you to view web pages on the PC.
In case user interaction is needed to tell the
browser what web page or web site we want
to view. This is done by the browser’s address
bar. The URL and web address tells the
browser where to obtain a page.
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12. The Technology
Database systems
The Database system holds the catalogue of
products & customer records. A site which
allows users to sign in will have a database
which will gold all the customers details. It
should link seamlessly so the user is unaware
of it. There are organizations which outsource
the creation of the website, and also they
control the content of the database.Only
organization can make changes if needed in
database like changing prices etc.
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13. The Technology
Domain Names
Every website needs to have a memorable
domain name because if a site is easy to spell
and relevant to the business it will make the
users to remember them and go on them
more often when they access the internet.
Some of the names has a suffix like: gov –
Government agencies, org – Organizations.
Most of the business won’t have just one
domain name because if the user types the
domain in incorrectly, they will be directed to
the correct website straight away and a rival
business will often try to buy domain names
with similar names so they can try and reach
a wider target audience.
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14. The Technology
Ports & Protocols
Each computer is given a unique number to make sure
the data reaches the right location on a network. It
contains 4 numbers from 0 to 255. If a PC don’t use
the same protocol it becomes impossible for them to
understand the data which is transmitted between
them. PC has several ports which connect protocols
and IP addresses together for data to pass through
but they are visual so they can’t be seen. Each port
has number to identify it & it can be opened or closed.
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15. Promotion
Paying to be prominent in search engine
results
Search engines look for our search term within the web pages
they’ve collected and indexed. All the results are reflected in
engine’s determination of how relevant the site’s content is to
our inquiry. Some search engines might rank sites higher in
our results if the site pays a fee, regardless of its relevance to
our terms.
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16. Promotion
Newsgroups & Forums
They are tend to be very focused but the discussion might
be only about folk music and only posting of recipes or only
programming for Windows. You often need special
software to use them because they are more structured.
Web forums which are called discussion boards will function
in a similar way to newsgroups and they are an online
discussion site where all the people can hold conversations
by posted messages. There’s also another and more
modern form of creating a forum which will be in the form
of a group on social networking sites like Facebook, where
one topic is discussed in detail.
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17. Promotion
Banners & Pop-ups
It entails embedding an advertisement into a web page and it’s
intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the
website of the advertiser. It is constructed from an image, but
the banner will normally go along down the side or along the
top of bottom of a webpage. They are often animated to help
attract attention to it. Most sites which offer to have a web
banner for another company on their site will receive more
money on a pay per click system.
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18. Promotion
Spam
This is an email which is not targeted at particular customer
or customer needs. It’s mailed to random people and
customers to reach as bigger audience as possible. When
more web users will become more concerned about internet
privacy and viruses, they will become less likely to open
emails from companies which they don’t know. Companies
have many different ways to get hold of our email address
and then they will send to us regular emails.
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19. Promotion
Ensuring An Effective User
Interface
This is essential to make sure when web users get
to our site. They will stay there for as long as
possible. There are several factors to avoid-
broken links, difficult navigation, unclear fonts
and too much text while we are creating a site.
When we create a simple and clear website it will
mean that this will be able to purchase products
and services with ease. If the users like the
website they will always come back to us.
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20. Promotion
Establishing Customer loyalty in a virtual
environment
We can find many different methods used to help create
customer loyalty which include direct mailing to each
customer because it’s really useful to keep our business at
the front of their minds. If we are setting up loyalty system
which is based on points or money spent so that customers
can claim rewards by staying with our company. We also
have to treat all the customers as individuals by welcoming
them onto our site by name when they sign in , but also
sending them information specific to them and offering
different products and services which we think they might
like by looking at the items they have viewed and
purchased before.
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21. Promotion
Site Names
The most important thing is to have a relevant,
memorable and suitable name to the site. If the name will
be complicated then the less users we will get because
they might up on rival businesses websites by mistake. By
having a multiple domain name registration this will help
to maximize the number of users which can access our
site.
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22. Promotion
Direct Marketing
This is targeted at specific audiences, most of the customers
which have signed up for a newsletter, offers or updates. It
basically mean if the user have chosen to be a part of this
they will have a genuine interests in the product so are
more likely to purchase from the site.
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23. Security
Hacking Hacking Prevention
Hacking means finding out weaknesses in an established
system and exploiting them. A computer hacker is a person
which can find out weaknesses in the computer and exploit it.
They can be motivated by an multitude of reasons, such as
profit, protest or challenge. By hacking a PC you are breaking
the Computer Misue Act. Some hackers hack to a PC just to
test their skills and for these individuals, computer hacking is
a real life application of their problem-solving skills. They use
it as a chance to demonstrate their abilities, not an opportunity
to harm others. Hackers who are out to steal personal
information, change a corporation’s financial data, break
security codes to gain unauthorized network access, or
conduct other destructive activities are sometimes called
crackers.
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24. Security
Viruses
A virus is a computer program which can replace itself and spread
from one computer to another. Viruses can be spread around
easily by disk to disk and computer to computer. A Trojan Horse
must be sent by someone or carried by another program and may
arrive in the form of a joke program or software of some sort. This
virus can damage the whole security of the PC. A Worm might
arrive by exploitation of system vulnerability or by clicking on an
infected e-mail. It can damage and compromise the security of the
computer.
Virus Prevention
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25. Security
ID Theft ID Theft Protection
This is a form of fraud or cheating of another person’s identity
in which people pretends to be someone else by assuming that
person’s identity. People are concerned about identity theft and
this can make them worried about giving their details to
companies that they are not familiar with. People’s personal
information can be accesses by many different ways like
leaving accounts logged in on whilst leaving a PC unattended,
not password protecting sensitive information and from
hackers and phishing scams.
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26. Security
Strong Passwords
Strong password is one way to help protect your personal
information and accounts. You shouldn’t use the same
password for all your accounts, they shouldn’t be written
down in one place. Your password should contain
characters like !”$%”^$ and be at least 8 characters long. It
shouldn’t contain any common words like 123, your birth
date or your login name and any words that can be found
in the dictionary.
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