MBA IS- 4th SEM MI0039 eCommerce 4 Credits

Assignment Set- 2 (60 Marks) Note: Each question carries 10 Marks. Answer all the questions. Q.1 Warigon is a retail company and they want to automate the payment system. Assume that you are the design engineer of that company. What are the factors that you would consider while designing the electronic payment system? Ans: electronic payment system is a system of financial exchange between buyers & sellers in the online environment that is facilated by a digital financial instrument (such as encrypted credit card numbers, electronic cheques, or digital cash) backed by a bank, an intermediary or by legal tender. EPS plays an important role in e-commerce because it is necessary to close the e-commerce loop, since billing & payment are the last activities in any sales transactions . in developing countries , the underdeveloped electronic payment system is a serious impediment to the growth of e-commerce. In these countries , entrepreneurs are not able to accept credit card payments over the internet due to legal & business concerns . The primary issue is business security. Q.2 Discuss the working concepts of EDI Ans: electronic data interchange is an important subset of e-commerce .EDI is the interorganizational transmission of business documents in structured ,machine process which is able to format through telecommunications from computer to computer. EDI working concepts are as follows : 1) Preparation of electronic documents : The first step in any sequence of electronic data interchange is the collection & organization of data by ABC internal application systems. Some methods of generating electronic documents are: Transcribing data Reformatting existing computer based data Updating existing application Purchasing software 2 )Outbond translation : the electronic file is then translated into a standard format. The result is a data file that contains a series of structured transaction related to the purchase order.

3) Communication: ABCs computer automatically makes a connections with its value added Network , &transmits all the files that have been prepared . Each file is processed by the VAN & is routed to the appropriate electronic mail box for each manufacturer. 4) Inbound translation: The manufacturers retrieve the files from their electronic mail box at their convenience, & reverse the process that ABC went through, translating the file from the standard format into the specific format required by the manufacturers application software Q.3 What are the four Ps of marketing? Explain how it is applied to internet marketing Ans: The four Ps product, price place & promotion are widely used to divide marketing . The 4 Ps in terms of internet marketing are as follows Product: Various factors have to be thought upon by\online marketers with respect to the sell. The most obvious fact is that in e-marketing the customers cannot see & touch products in the same way they can visit a store or showroom. That is the reason why products such as books, CDs & computer goods have traditionally better than food & clothes. Price: The internet has helped towards lowering of prices for certain products. The chances for comparative shopping have been increased by the internet. Some online markets like www. Priceline.com allow customers to set their own prices. lower p[rices are away of encouraging customers to make their first online purchase as it involves minimal risk on the part of internet users .pricing is an important factor in getting users to buy products online, but it is not the only factor. Place: location is considered as the most important factor when it comes to real world marketing. The location of a shop in a commercial area or the prestigious address of an office does have an impact on marketing success rate in the real world. However, in the internet the real world business location becomes irrelevant irrespective of business location we will be able to reach people around the globe.. Promotion: on the internet promotion of a business is a completely dependent on the business owner or company itself. There is no need to rely on advertising or print media to get the message across.. Thye internet puts the promotion of a companys business on its own terms. Instead of relying on advertising or journalists to get its message across, it can communicate directly vwith its audience. Q.4 Analyze the structure of a website Ans: Frames

Many websites simply do not index framed pages. Of those that do (Google is among them), frequently what people forget is that if a person comes directly to one of your framed pages, they won't be able to navigate from there to the rest of the website. Frames, in general, are not recommended.

URL Format
The format and length of a URL can have an affect on whether the page is indexed or not. Some engines will not index a URL that contains characters such as question marks, amperands and other odd characters. The length of the URL should always be limited as much as possible. We should also remember that people may want to bookmark certain URLs in the website or type them in manually. So they should be as readable as possible.

Keywords in URL
Whenever possible, try to use keywords that are used in the meta tags, title and content of the page in the URL of the page. The frequency of keywords is important. But it is also important to not overdo it. Too many of the same keywords can be seen as spam and the page can be dropped (or permanently banned) from the search engines.

Internal Linking
Search engines do not follow JavaScript, Flash, and CSS links. It is imperative that even if these flashy elements are used for primary navigation that a backup set of plain HTML links is written for the search engines. If the search engines cannot follow the links, they will not go past the first page of the website. Websites using image maps for navigation may also encounter indexing problems.

Spamming Techniques
Whether intentional or not, it is important to understand the common techniques that people have tried to use in the past to trick search engines into giving their websites higher rankings. The techniques are numerous, and some are extremely subtle. An experienced search engine optimization specialist, however, will easily spot these problems.

Download Speed
Download speed is not only important to users, but to search engines as well. Measure the load speed of the pages within the website to find problem pages. If your website

takes longer than 5 seconds to load, you are forcing the user to decide whether or not they want to stay or not. Search engines will also have a problem indexing your website because of their built-in time-out tolerance levels Total Size There are two things to consider when deciding what is an appropriate total size of a document on the web: your target demographics and search engines. While it may be perfectly acceptable to your target demographic to include intense graphics, multimedia, flash objects, etc. it is never acceptable to search engines.

Browser Compatibility
A quick check of your web server logs will reveal what kinds of browsers people are using. Make sure you've tested out your pages in all the browsers that commonly access your site.

printing Compatibility

If it's likely that visitors would print pages of your website, then you need to make sure that the pages are formatted properly. By default, Internet Explorer will print at approximately 680 pixels wide by about 780 pixels tall.
Q.5 List the benefits of online catalogue Ans:

On-line Catalog In todays dynamic business environment, who doesnt like to maximize his revenues and minimize his costs... to take orders from his customers even if the office is closed... or to expand his brand into new markets nationally and internationally? All this can be achieved by having Product Catalog, Online Online Catalog is a time-saving tool that provides valuable information to the prospective customers about your product specifications. It facilitates the potential customers in locating the products they want and in a way they want it. And thats how you would be able to convert an online visitor into a buyer. Our fleet of professionals helps you in creation and deploying process, which includes: 1. Hosting your catalog on your website.

2. Handling electronic image of your products. 3. Monitoring and providing support to your website. 4. Designing your catalog with unlimited number of products, classified into categories and sub-categories. The control of this customized catalog is at your fingertips. Whether you want to search for a particular product, control company standards, change or update overall catalog settings; it would just require a few keystrokes. Apart from the above benefits, our online catalog and ordering solution enables you to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Facilitate the buyer to buy 24X7; Track product and product line interest; Broaden your market reach local and global; Retain and attract buyers and business partners; Online capability saves your customers time and money; Lower marketing overheads like ordering, processing and status-check costs; Improve order accuracy i.e. decline in unwanted calls, non-desirable faxes etc; Provide detailed, accurate and updated product information, including images, descriptions and prices.

Q.6 Define Mcommerce. Describe the areas of potential growth and future of mCommerce ? Ans:

Commerce the next Hype?

It looks as if the term M-Commerce and the business models behind become the next great hype in the digital economy. At the moment, however, it is not clear, where the story will end. Suppliers of MCommerce Solutions, content providers and suppliers of hardware (mobile phones) predict (again) a great future for this concept with great new services for the customers and great business for themselves. There are two possible directions for the development of M-Commerce in near future: M-Commerce becomes the next hype with all the consequences of a hype M-Commerce is a natural evolution from E-Commerce into a digital and mobile world Definition "Mobile Commerce is the use of information technologies and communication technologies for the purpose of mobile integration of different value chains an business processes, and for the purpose of management of business relationships. Webagency, 2001 The basic idea of M-Commerce is to distribute information and thus to generate business in a mobile way. M-Commerce gives traditional media (newspapers, magazines, TV) the opportunity to supply

different pieces of information to millions of users, and in the end of the day - to earn money from reusing their content. These ideas are supported by a variety of predictions, most of them base on the sales figures of mobile phone devices. In general, this is a good starting point. However, it does not take into consideration other devices (e.g. PDA) or the limited usability of mobile phones. The reason for the idea to predict mobile commerce volume from the level of mobile phone use is that powerful UMTS networks will be available to all users in the long run. That means, that, once technical preconditions for mobile commerce are available to the user, he will probably use them. Nevertheless, it is completely open to which level there will be real sales from M-Commerce. From a business model point of view, there is a M-Commerce-copy for every model in the offline and the online-world. Hotel room reservation, auctions and event tips are just some examples of what us-