Electronic Commerce - ElecTeesElct Me Website - Dissertation Example

Online businesses are preferable because they need lower start-up and operational costs which benefits both the buyer and the seller. Given this situation, an online e-commerce website was set up using RAD (rapid application deployment) methods. Zend Studio was used as the primary tool to create and implement the website on a web server with an individual domain name. The requirements for the project were gathered and analysed prior to its execution after which they were translated into the inputs for the projects along with the expected outputs. Waterfall development and implementation methodology were followed given its advantages in comparison to other development models. A timeline was created and followed to ensure that the project remained on track. With the initial implementation of the website, a comprehensive testing schema was introduced to test the functional and non-functional requirements of the entire system to ensure that a robust system was developed. The methodologies used during both the development and implementation were also analysed in great detail to ensure relevance to the project. Moreover, a stage-wise evaluation was also done to audit the development and implementation trail. This enabled the projection of shortcomings and provided direction to any future work. These efforts are documented and discussed below in detail.
3. Project Set-Up
An e-commerce website was set up given the rising amount of interest in e-commerce globally. The growth of e-commerce has been unprecedented internationally as more and more consumers from various national and other backgrounds prefer to shop online. In the United Kingdom alone the internet economy currently stands at around 100 billion pounds annually and is projected to grow a massive ten percent between 2010 and 2015 alone. (Robinson, 2010) While such growth is true of more advanced nations with higher per capita incomes, the trends in developing nations point to similar trends. China has some 384 million internet users and the online shopping industry’s size was 36.6 billion US dollars in 2009.