E-Commerce: Software Supplies and Support - Essay Example

Part A: Business Plan Software supplies are both a business-to-business market and a business to consumer market. Software supplies are a consumer market and as it contrasts with the other trade sectors. The Internet as a channel for software sales, including computer games, has two distinct advantages: The customers are presumably computer literate and will be able to operate the medium The product is electronic and can be delivered via the net. The supply chain for software delivered over the net is therefore very simple. It is a straight transaction between the customer and the supplier without the need for any agent or retailer. For a small software outfit, the Internet provides the only readily available marketing channel. Using the Internet, a small software company dies not have to cut a CD, write a manual and get a box printed. More importantly the small software company dies not have to fight to get its product stocked by retailers, it can do its own retailing on the net and it can release its product for a free trial for any customer who is not sure that the product is one that will suit them. Small software companies using the net sometimes have a limited lifespan. Good ideas that are piloted by small software companies can be taken over by the big competitors and the originators are left out in the cold – that is unfair but then that is business. Vision Edge Soft is an online shopping portal for application, business, game software, etc. The main focus of this business is of providing an avenue for fast software purchasing to customer, after-sales support and upgrades, and a high-volume of software products, which can be bought online. This generates a competitive border among competitors. This will allow generate sufficient income from a small investment by being retailers and a distributor. Competition Amazon.com is known to be the first and largest online retail shopping store online. It was the pioneer in selling products and goods online. Ever since its launch, Amazon product catalogue has been increasing and categories are adding. One of which product category is software. Amazon.com is the visible threat to this proposed e-commerce venture since they are famous and they already have the stand-out reputation for customer satisfaction. Although Amazon.com offers software retailing, it is still not their premier product. Amazon.com is known for being an online bookstore, since they started with that catalogue. And yet, putting up this business can overcome this risk of competition. What advantage it brings to Edge Soft is that it only focuses on software retailing and not a mixed product e-store. By focusing in such catalogue, customers are determined and can find straight-forward software solutions they need without browsing deep into subcategories. Works Cited Schneider, Gary. E-Commerce. UK: Course Technology, 2006. Palo Alto Software, Inc. 2007. Sample Business Plan. 19 March 2007 . Part B: Branding & Marketing Branding Edge Soft (www.edgesoft.com) is the proposed business name and site domain name. Edge Soft means ‘Edge Software’ which particularly mean the various circumference of software is sold in this site. This site would be an online reseller for the latest software and related supports. “Edge Soft – The On-Stop Software Shop” will be the tagline to use for marketing, a sensible site name and a meaningful tagline helps describe the business entity. Marketing With a small investment, e-commerce business must priorities how to drive customers to their site and eventually be their valued once. There are different ways to provide this business the web presence by touching different channels of media for advertising to get customers in through the doors. Online Newsletter – Offering online newsletter allows your customer to subscribe the latest updates, new product releases and special offer announcements. This newsletter can be distributed to subscriber in a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis depending on the customer preferences. Search Engine Placement and SEO – Search engine is a standard way to find any Internet site and of which includes online shopping sites. A large number of online shoppers utilizes online search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) to find their products, services and any desired information about a thing. Proper search engine placement or marketing will bring you numerous clicks and leads. Conventional Advertising – this may include advertising in TV, newspapers, etc. Using this type of advertising may not seem soothing with the Internet address as its statement. Apparently, still online business recommends this traditional way. Exchange Links – Outbound links from other relevant site referrals can boost you search engine rankings and exposure. Links are included on a variety of other sites with a variety of deals being done. Links can be a good way of getting customers. Personal Recommendation – This is a typical yet effective way of referring customers to a site. A satisfied customer will bookmark the site and will come back to the site again and recommend it to their friends. Proposed Customer With the software industry, piracy has been a menace in this business. It brought negative effect to the production of software. But, authorities are empowering mechanism and legal approach to eradicate the practice of illegal copying which is known as pirating. Organizations and businesses are now obliged to purchase licensed and authentic copies of the software they used in their production. Customers for Edge Soft may range from personal to mid-size business and organization since this is a retailing software e-shop and cannot sustain bulk selling for corporate or big organizations. This allows organizations purchase online their needed software online. Works Cited Whiteley, David. Electronic Commerce: Strategy, Technology and Application. USA: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 2006. Wikipedia Foundation Inc. 2007. Electronic Commerce. 21 March 2007. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce>. Part C: E-Commerce Website Part Commonly, e-commerce sites are dynamic and needs some registration and handling transactions. This can be achieved by applying some web scripting languages. Server is also a concern where data is stored and product details. Server – Choosing the right server for this business is not trivial since the concern for this business is delivering customer their products as presented in the website. There are various options for server operating systems. Linux based server can be the appropriate for the website and database. Linux is cheap and goes well with the budget of the business. Linux also support the preferred scripting language and database for this e-commerce website. Scripting Language – PHP is an open-source web scripting language is widely used and becoming more popular than even. PHP offers the website application with vast coding approach; it can even handle object-oriented programming. Also, PHP is a platform independent so there is no problem with Linux server. It also provides support for a large number of databases, including MySQL. Database – MySQL is a multi-user and multithreaded RDBMS server that uses SQL to manipulate data. It supports PHP scripting language and supports implementation with Linux server. MySQL is the primary option for the website implementation since it has the ability to handle large databases and multi-queries at the same time. Having this server specification, the phase of development can commence. The chosen development tool is Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 for the scripting and coding. While for the images, Macromedia Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop can be applied. Macromedia Dreamweaver offers the perfect tools for website development and supports different scripting languages which include PHP/MYSQL. Dreamweaver gives the developer the complete options with its development preference desired. Dreamweaver offers a WYSIWYG environment which allows developers to see the results while they are actually coding. It also gives developer the option to integrate other media tools like flash, images, cascading style sheets, other scripting languages, etc. Finally, Macromedia Dreamweaver is customizable and can do web editing fast and is extensible. It also offers developers to test the web application via localhost settings and can let developers preview of their work. Works Cited Schneider, Gary. E-Commerce. UK: Course Technology, 2006. http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ accessed on 21 March 2007 Part D: Security Model Offering customer with software, of course, allows them to browse items from different categories and then added to their shopping cart. But prior to checking out, customers must register themselves and personal informations are requested. Some customers worry about integrity and confidentiality about their personal identity. Considering this situations, a security plan must be established. There are numerous threats to the security of Internet e-commerce. Security breaches are most frequently discussed in terms of the Internet and the danger that hackers will intercept messages, misuse the information or modify the content of the message. The internet is only one potential source of insecurity. Several factors must be considered to assure user the security they want. This includes authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. Below are applicable security measures to apply with Edge Soft: Encryption - This allows the conversion of data into a code so that it cannot be read by unauthorized users. The data is converted into the code by the customer and decoded by the decryption application at the server. Modern encryption methods can also be used as an encryption algorithm and a binary number that is the key. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), developer by Netscape, is the commonly used encryption method by most online business. This uses both public and private key encryption. The use of this encryption should meet the requirement for confidentiality and goes long way to ensure integrity and avoid hacker’s attack. Digital Signatures – This is used to authenticate the customer and to check that the integrity of the information has not been altered in transit. The authentication element requires a digital ID; also know as the digital certificate that is issued by a third party certification authority. Digital signatures plainly need to be encrypted when they are delivered from the certification authority and when they are used in the transaction. The digital signatures are, in terms of transmission authentication and integrity very secure. Trusted Third Parties – If authentication, confidentiality and integrity have been dealt with, that leaves non-repudiation. The way to deal with this issue is to also transmit a copy of the transaction to a third party, trusted by both sides, and where the record of the transaction could be used to settle any disputes obviously for this purpose the message would require a digital signature to verify its source. Trusted third parties are there and used to record some commercial transactions. Works Cited Whiteley, David. Electronic Commerce: Strategy, Technology and Application. USA: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 2006. Part E: Online Payment Processing The software supplies sold over this website accepts online payment transactions cash will not do. For an order transaction, payments are made after checking out products in the shopping cart. Credit/Debit cards and e-cash (e.g. Paypal, E-gold, etc.) are the primary payment mode offered. Credit/Debit cards used in processing payments are recorded in a database, which stores detailed log and card information. This may be less secure as the conventional credit card processing, as signatures of the customers are present in the transaction slip. Processing a credit card transaction involves some expense and there are also charges levied on the vendor by the credit card companies. The credit card payment is also traceable and is therefore not suitable for a transaction where the customer may wish to remain anonymous. Similarly, in a debit card or cash cards transactions are processed in the same way as credit cards. Credit Card payment is the common payment method offered for online stores. Shoppers who holds credit card can purchase software online providing the checkout form with information needed for payment processing, this may include card number, expiry date and billing address of the card to be used. Through checkout, the provided card information will be verified by the system. Declined credit card information will show relevant prompt or error messages. A successful checkout transaction, which is the provided credit card details are verified and proven to be authentic. This approach is also applied to common cash cards or debit cards. All data related to the purchasing transaction of a customer, including the credit card details, IP address, time and date of transaction are kept on record for further referencing. E-cash like Paypal and E-gold offers third party merchant tools where buyers can use their Paypal or E-gold accounts to do payments for the software products they purchase. All transaction is also kept in tract in the merchant tool transaction history tool. All payments made through this third-party payment tool will be directly credited to the merchant’s account. Merchants can track who made the payment and other transaction details. E-checks and e-coupons will be implemented soon and considered since few buyers’ user e-checks to issue payments. Although check payments may take time for verification, it is effective to apply every payment option to various types of buyers. E-Coupons are issued for some special offers and discount to specific software product. Works Cited Whiteley, David. Electronic Commerce: Strategy, Technology and Application. USA: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 2006. Schneider, Gary. E-Commerce. UK: Course Technology, 2006. Read More