4.

Software and Hardware Requirements

4.1. Software Requirements
Software requirements is a very important role for an organization that running EC business.
The features are including a cloud database, a flexible hosting site, a web portal which allow
social connections, and a secured site to be displayed

4.1.1. Business Process Management Software Supply Chain Management

KISSFLOW is a business process management software that able to create an unlimited
number of automated business applications. This software allow user to use a drag and
drop interface with more than 14 types of fields to create perfect form (KISSFLOW,
2016). Some example of enterprise customers are Dominos, Royal Caribbean, Office
Depot, Sysco, Vonage, PepsiCo, and Michelin (Process Excellence Network, 2016).

4.1.2. Database Technology

According to P&R Chemicals company requirements, the most suitable database
technology used by the organization is Oracle MySQL Cloud Services, which is the
worlds most popular open source database powered by the Oracle Cloud. This database
manages to deliver a secure, cost-effective and enterprise-grade MySQL database service
for modern applications (Oracle, 2016). A list of large organization such as Facebook,
Uber, Booking.com, LinkedIn, Alibaba.com and others are using this database technology
(Alexandru, 2016).

4.1.3. Hosting Services

Bluehost is one of the largest and most trusted web hosting services powering millions of
websites. Bluehost have several features, which makes the website to be safer, faster,
simpler and bigger. This software is also considered as the best cloud hosting and the
price is affordable (Bluehost Inc., 2015).

4.1.4. WebPortal no matter what suggested

P&R Chemicals would suggest to use IBM Web Portals software, which allows
companies to deliver a personalized web experience for customers, within a single point
of access to the applications, services, information and social connections (IBM, 2015).
 4.1.5. Secure Socket Layer
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security protocol for establishing an encrypted
link between a server and a client. This ensures that all data transmission between a client
and server remains confidential. By making an SSL connection to database, customers
believe that data will be encrypted when data being sent to and from the particular web
application (Code Certificates, 2017).

The software used by PnR Company was DigiCert. DigiCert introduced Managed PKI,
which is a cloud-based platform that provides insight and control into all certificate
functions. There are thousands of organizations that uses DigiCert, which includes
Facebook, Amazon.com, Paypal, and IBM (DigiCert Inc., 2013).

Cloud Databases helps to configures database instance to support the use of SSL when
the instance is provisioned. To encrypt data in transit using SSL, the database connections
will need to use an SSL certificate associated with Cloud Databases (Verma, 2014).

4.2. Hardware Requirements

4.2.1. Mobile Devices
7 Ways Mobile Devices Have Changed E-Commerce
By now, we are all well aware that mobile devices are rapidly transforming business, in
particular the world of e-commerce. However, pinning down which of these changes
really matter, and why, is often a struggle.

The rise of smartphones, tablets, and phablets has led to so many shiftsfrom little
tweaks (such as the need for bigger, clearer fonts) to huge strategic moves (the current
payment wars)that just keeping track of it all can feel overwhelming. Trying to draw
the right strategic lessons is even more daunting.

To help, weve highlighted seven key ways mobile devices have transformed e-
commerce. This list, of course, is no means an exhaustive rundown of every change in the
space. Rather, its simply an overview of some of the shifts we believe matter most.

Below are the following keys in no particular order:

1. Shopping behavior

The biggest impact of mobile on e-commerce may have dramatically expanded

opportunity. Until smart-devices became prevalent, online purchases were constrained by
locationcustomer really only could shop while at a desktop/laptop computer that had an
Internet connection.

Today thats all changed. Always-connected mobile devices let us shop from anywhere,
and so have fundamentally changed shopping behavior. In particular, mobile has broken
down the wall between physical retailers and digital sellers.

For example, according to recent data from Experian, 97% of tablet owners have made a
purchase on their device, and 83% have engaged in shopping-related activities
immediately before, during, or after visiting a store.

For both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce companies this represents both a huge
opportunity and a huge challenge. Consumers are increasingly accustomed to the idea
that almost any product can be bought online from any location. That means more
comparison shopping, more price awareness, and potentially shifting sales.
2. Purchasing behavior

Accompanying the overall shift in shopping behavior is a change in purchasing behavior.

Oddly, mobile devices have altered the process in two contrasting ways.

On one hand mobile has made showroomingviewing an item in a brick-and-mortar

store and then buying later onlinemore common. Business Insider estimates that 59
million American shoppers did this last year, meaning that the purchasing timeline for a
significant number of transactions has become elongated.

On the flip side, the immediacy of mobile devices has also shortened the purchase
process in other cases. A study by The Integer Group found 15% of all mobile commerce
purchases now occur extremely quickly (within a couple of minutes of discovery).
3. Brand favoritism

Why do people tend to shop so quickly on their mobile devices? Often because they have
limited time and limited screen space to browse. These same factors mean that consumers
often return to brands they trust when mobile shopping.

Thats why brands that offer a seamless mobile shopping experience earn the respect and
loyalty of their customers. Amazon, for example, is so strong as a mobile shopping entity
that boasts the largest mobile-consumer base of any e-commerce company.
Moreover, companies such as Amazon continue to increase their share of mobile e-
commerce because the cycle snowballsonce a mobile shopper favors a brand, they tend
to return over and over (and over).

4. Functionality

User experience and functionality are a crucial part of mobile commerce, and in many
ways the most simple to understand. Basically, your site must work well on a device for a
sale to occur. That means both the small things and the big things must be done right.

In particular, consumers expect that core e-commerce functions such as add to cart
work smoothly and error free. This mobile-optimized functionality can make or break an
e-commerce offering.

Of course, Mobile functionality isnt just one thing. Beyond the multiple design theories
(such as responsive design vs. dedicated mobile sites), there is the broader problem of
needing to account for both mobile apps and mobile websites. Moreover, there are myriad
smartphone screen sizes to think about.

On top of all that, theres the fact that mobile devices encompass two big categories
phones and tabletswith very different design and UX needs. Research from
ShopVisible shows that each of these device types now accounts for a significant chunk
of e-commerce traffic (21% for phones; 17% for tablets on average), meaning that neither
can be ignored without jeopardizing revenue.
5. Reliability

Hand-in-hand with functionality comes reliability. Consumers expect the same mobile
shopping experience wherever they go. They want the technology to work securely and
safely, each and every time they make a purchase.

If an e-commerce entity violates that trust (i.e., with slow page-load times, security
warnings, etc.), the site can translate to lost revenue. This is true on desktops as well, but
to a lesser extent. On a mobile device, both bandwidth and time are extremely precious,
making reliability an absolute essential.

6. Insurance

How can consumers ensure that an e-commerce site is reliable and that their goods will
arrive safely? Increasingly, via insurance.

This is one of the unexpected ways that mobile devices have changed not just e-
commerce, but commerce in general. In the past, when a consumer walked into a store,
they probably felt reasonably comfortable that theyd perform through checkout and back
home safely with the product. For mobile commerce those things are not necessarily a
given, and so the ability to gain peace of mind about purchase and delivery with
insurance is worth the cost.
7. Trust

Finally, the common thread that runs through many of the changes wrought by mobile is
trust.

Mobile devices have made trust even more essential for e-commerce sites because of
limited time and bandwidth, as well as because of additional security and privacy
concerns.

This necessity for trust while shopping is nothing newfor time eternal, people have
been trying to figure out whether they can do business with a store based on certain
signifiers. The difference is which clues consumers use in the digital environment.

As a research paper on e-commerce explained it back in 2007: Physical clues in the

traditional shopping environment, such as the appearance of the store and the direct
contact with sales persons that affect consumers sense of trust, are absent in the online
environmentTherefore, it is important to find factors that help to establish consumer
trust in e-commerce.

That, in essence, is the key to mobile e-commerce today. If you can establish trust via
certain factorsfunctionality, reliability, insurance, exceptional service, etc.
consumers will not only engage with your brand, but theyll come back again and again
(MDG Advertising , 2015).

Mobile Devices Are Driving e-Commerce Traffic

Only recently the level of traffic for e-commerce sites has dramatically shifted. The shift?
Mobile devices are driving e-commerce traffic. Nearly 50% of online retail traffic is
coming from mobile. The breakdown of that figure is this: 51.9% comes from PCs,
35.7% from smartphones, and 12.4% from tablets.

One interesting point on the above to note is that smartphones are generating more online
retail traffic than their bigger counterpart, the tablet. The reason for this might have
something to do with the fact that the average user will have her smartphone with her
almost at all times, whereas the size of tablets means they are, like laptops, used primarily
at home. Yeah, theyre technically mobile devices, but theyre still heavy and
cumbersome to lug around.

There are many reasons why this shift has happened, all of which stems from the very
simple fact that mobile technology is getting better (and bigger). As mobile technology,
namely smartphones, become more capable of fulfilling the tasks for which PCs and
laptops have previously been responsible, its only natural that our online shopping habits
would reflect this transition.

Nevertheless, despite that, all this online retail traffic is coming from the mobile, in the
case of actual online purchases made, PCs and laptops remain at the head of the pack.

People are browsing on mobiles (and very possibly while theyre on the go, not in the
comfort of their homes), but still following through with purchases from devices sporting
bigger screens... which isnt a huge surprise. For one thing, people dont use one device
in isolation from others. We watch television while we browse the Internet on our
laptops, while we send texts on our smartphones while we play games on our tablets. We
sometimes do one single thing across different devices at the same time. Its how the
modern technology consumer functions, but in the case of online retail purchases, where
is mobile faltering?

Old Habits Die Hard

One of the biggest issues posed for spending on mobile has to do with security. Pressing
buy at checkout on a mobile phone still seems a little strange. Its new territory. And
accordingly, because it still a foreign concept for so many, it will take a period to catch
on. For now, PCs and laptops are more widely trusted than mobile.

Another issue has to do with the very simple fact that buying stuff is just easier on
laptops and PCs. When youve got to punch in all your shipping details and credit card
numbers and usernames and so on, doing so on a mobile phone or tablet becomes
tiresome and downright annoying. New and improved apps are starting to change this
landscape, making it far easier to make purchases on smaller, mobile devices. But for
now, and for the most part, its just more comfortable punching in these details on a
keyboard. This point, however, reveals the key to the oncoming tipping point.

New apps are coming together with new-ish technologies. Pretty much all new
smartphones currently being made come packed with inbuilt NFC technology. Wearable
devices, toothe next generation of mobile devicesare being made with quick-pay,
NFC technology in mind. In short, mobile devices are making paying for almost anything
online and offlinea helluva lot easier. This coupled with the fact that app developers
are amalgamating these new-ish technologies with their appsa great example is finger-
swipe security for quick payments online its only inevitable that mobile will reach
complete e-commerce dominance in a future that will dawn quicker than we can say
mobile is the new black (Kissonergis, 2015).
4.2.2. Intelligent Agents
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to play a significant role in many leading
information systems. In the past, its use has been limited due to its
complexity, monolithic designs and lack of knowledgeable system
developers. AI contribution is now crucial in nondeterministic systems such as
workflow, data mining, production scheduling, supply chain logistics, and
most recently, ecommerce. Its new form is not the monolithic AI systems of
the past, but distributed artificial intelligence, popularly known as intelligent
agent technology. Intelligent agent technology is the next logical step in
overcoming some shortcomings in e-commerce. Namely, successful computer
systems underlying ecommerce require judgment and the knowledge of
experts such as buyers, contract negotiators and marketing specialists [12].

It is useful to explore the roles of agents as mediators in electronic commerce

in the context of a common framework. The presented model stems from
consumer buying behavior research and comprises the actions and decisions
involved in buying and using goods and services. The model covers many
areas, but focuses primarily on retail markets (although most concepts
pertain to business-to-business and business-to consumers markets as well).
Also, electronic commerce covers a broad range of issues, some of which are
beyond the scope of this consumer buying behavior model. There are a
variety of descriptive theories and models that attempt to capture buying
behavior, such as the Nicosia model, the Howard Sheth model, the Engel-
Blackwell model, the Bettman information-processing model, and the
Andreasen model [2]. These models all share a similar list of six fundamental
stages of the buying process, which also elucidate where agent technologies
apply to the shopping experience:

Identification: This stage characterizes the buyer becoming aware of

some unmet need by stimulating through product information. Agents can
play an important role for those purchases that are repetitive (supplies) or
predictable (habits). One of the oldest and simplest examples of software
agents are so called monitors: continuously running programs which
monitor a set of sensors or data streams and take action when a certain
pre-specified condition apply [2]. There are many examples in abundant
 use, one very familiar is a notification agent called Eyes by
Amazon.com, which monitors the catalog of books for sale and notifies the
customer when certain events occur that may be of interest to the
customer (e.g., when a new book in category X becomes available).

Brokering:
o a) Product Brokering: once a buyer has identified a need to make a
purchase (possibly with the assistance of a monitor agent), the
buyer has to determine what to buy through a critical evaluation of
retrieved product information. There are several agents systems
that lower consumers search cost when deciding which products
best meet their needs: PersonaLogic, Firefly, and Tete-a-Tete
(discussed in section 4.2). The result of this stage is a consideration
set of goods.
o b) Merchant Brokering: this stage combines the consideration set
from the previous stage with merchant-specific alternatives to help
determine who to buy from. The problem that was exposed here
was that most of the merchants do not want to compete on price
only, and want the value-added services (e.g., warranty,
availability, delivery time, reputation) to be included in consumers
buying decision.

Negotiation: in this stage, price and other terms of the transaction are
settled on. Real-world negotiation increases transaction costs that may be
too high for either consumers or merchants. There are also impediments
in the real world to using negotiation such as time constraints,
frustrations, all parties to be geographically co-located etc., which mostly
disappear in the digital world. The majority of business-to-business
transactions involve negotiation. In retail, we are mostly familiar with fixed
prices. The benefit of dynamically negotiating the price for a product
instead of fixing it is that it relieves the merchant from needing to
determine the value of the good a priori [2]. Rather, this burden is pushed
to the marketplace.
 Payment and Delivery: this stage can either signal the termination of
the negotiation stage or occur sometimes afterwards (in either order). In
some cases, the available payment or delivery options can influence
product and merchant brokering.

Product Service and Evaluation: this post-purchase stage involves

product service, customer service, and an evaluation of the satisfaction of
the overall buying experience and decision.

Table 1: The online shopping framework with representative examples of agent

mediation

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.99.9342&rep=rep1&type=pdf

4.3. EC Justification
Based on the above requirements, P&R have concluded the justification for EC. They are
currently using outsourcing.

http://www.donotdwell.com/list-of-web-hosting/

Need to provide Advantages and disadvantages of using Outsourcing

 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3705-Outsourcing-v-Hiring-In-house-Pros-and-
Cons

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/pros-cons-hiring-
house-vs-outsourcing/

5. Conducive Online Environment

5.1. Site Map
A sitemap is a map of your sites contents. Sitemaps typically take the form of a long list of
links. Some sites have HTML maps accessible to all visitors (look in the footer for a
sitemap link), while others rely solely on an XML file that is submitted directly to search
engines.

The current accepted standard is to at least have a sitemap in XML format (and well explain
the benefits of that shortly). Having a visible sitemap page is optional.

Sitemap have menus, links, search boxes, or all three, these functions exist for humans.

Sitemaps, on the other hand, arent meant for humans at all. Although your shoppers
certainly could use them to find a specific page or destination, their primary purpose is to
help search engines index your site. The search engine is then able to quickly add these
pages to its index basically, the giant library of every website and individual page it
knows about and review its data to determine which search queries it is relevant to.

If a product page is included in your sitemap, a search engine can easily find and index it,
which means shoppers looking for something specific from that search engine will be able to
find it, too.

Without an XML sitemap or even without a manually updated sitemap page you might
run into few issues, such as new pages can take a long time to be discovered, product images
might not be included in image search results, unable to increase ranking for update sitemap
for a long time and few links which has likely to be excluded from searches.

The long and short of it is this: without a sitemap, search engines can and will still crawl and
index your store for inclusion in search results. But a sitemap makes the process
much, much faster. It only takes a few minutes of work between generating the XML file and
submitting it to Google, Yahoo!, etc.

Were going to focus solely on how to create the XML version of a sitemap and not an
HTML (stylized, on-site) one.

By using plugins such as Google XML Sitemap plugin, sitemap can be easily generated
and updated whenever perform modification of the site, which ensures that search
engines get the latest information.

Figure 2: A sample sitemap generated by the plugin.

To perform an initial submission of sitemap to the major search engines, there are two
ways which is either adding a line to sites robots.txt file, or submitting the XML file via
Google and Bings Webmaster Tools. For submission via robot.txt file, just make changes
at the website domain name. For submission via Webmaster Tool.

Note that submitting via this method will only cover the Google, Bing, and Yahoo! search
engines (Bings Webmaster Tools also covers Yahoo!). So if you are concerned about
smaller search engines and comfortable editing your robots.txt file, consider that instead
or even along with the WMT method. In creating an XML or HTML sitemap by hand, the
process is necessary for sitemap to be updated manually and replace the file(s) in site
directory each time perform any changes (Kohler, 2016).

Figure 1: Screenshot of update code for sitemap (sitemaps.org, 2016)

 Figure 3: Sitemap for PnR Chemicals Company

5.2. Site Design

Company Name and

Logo Login / Register

Search Function About Us Buyers / FAQs

Suppliers

Apparatus and Materials Chemicals

Home Page
 Company Name and
Logo Login / Register

Search Function About Us Buyers / FAQs

Suppliers

About Us Contact Us

Feedback

About Us, Contact Us, Feedback

Company Name and

Logo Login / Register

Search Function About Us Buyers / FAQs

Suppliers

Buyers Suppliers

Buyers and Suppliers

 Company Name and
Logo Login / Register

Search Function About Us Buyers / FAQs

Suppliers

Place Order / Sell Items

Checkout

Place Order, Sell Items and Checkout Page

Company Name and

Logo Login / Register

Search Function About Us Buyers / FAQs

Suppliers

Login Register

Login and Register Page

 Company Name and
Logo Login / Register

Search Function About Us Buyers / FAQs

Suppliers

FAQs

FAQs page

5.3. Services Features

So you want to start an eCommerce business. You may be feeling a mixture of emotions at
this point: excitement, apprehension, impatience and confusion.

The first few decisions that new store owners make are crucial: what to name their new
business, where to host their store, and so on. One such decision and one of the most
confusing is which eCommerce platform should power their store.

With so many platforms to choose from, and countless features and functions available, the
sheer number of choices is bound to get overwhelming. Its also sometimes hard to tell
whether or not the platform youre looking at can offer you the functionality you want, or if it
will properly scale or even be cost-effective as your store grows.

Today, were going to look at some of the most important features an eCommerce
platform should have. This list will help you evaluate the platforms youre considering
along with common business goals, and help you decide whether or not it offers what you
need to get started and grow your business.
Lets get started by talking about how you can first find eCommerce platforms, and evaluate
them using the criteria well establish here.

How to find and evaluate eCommerce platforms

Searching for eCommerce, sell online, or any variety of an online store-related

keyword will bring up at least two to three dozen viable options for creating your own
eCommerce business. Some platforms offer to take care of everything for you, including
hosting and updates. Others provide the software and let you take care of the rest. And they
all promise great things.

So while its easy to find tools that allow you to sell online, this is going to give you a pretty
big list to start with. Its not feasible to evaluate fifteen platforms at once, so the best
approach is to cut your list down to two or three strong contenders. You can do this by
asking very basic questions about your needs.

For example:

Can you or your developer purchase hosting and install software? If so, search
specifically for self-hosted platforms; if not, look for hosted options instead.

How much can you afford to pay? Many platforms are free, while others (namely
hosted) charge monthly or yearly fees dependent on factors like how many products you
carry or how much traffic you generate.

Do you have a developer, or do you need to go elsewhere for help? If youre on your
own, focus your search on solutions with thriving communities or highly-rated support
teams.

Does being able to modify your stores core code matter to you? If it does, youll want
to select only open-source platforms.
Think about what matters most to you at the basic level. It may be price, it may be hosting, or
it may be a combination of things. Use these criteria to narrow down your list of must-
haves until you have a few strong contenders to look at.

Now that youve come up with a list, its time to narrow it down even further. Here are some
of the most important features any good eCommerce platform should have. If any of the
platforms on your short list are missing these, you might want to reconsider them as a
candidate.

Integration with your countrys payment options

First things first: to sell goods online, you need to be able to accept payments from
customers. And to accept payments, your store needs to hook into a payment gateway
essentially, a special processor that securely moves funds from customers bank accounts into
your own.

Not every payment gateway is compatible with every eCommerce platform. In fact, this is
one of the most common reasons that store owners strike otherwise favorable options from
their short lists: they simply wont work in their country. This is sometimes because demand
for certain payment options is lower, or there are technical limitations preventing the
platform and gateway from working together.
Make sure your intended platform supports your payment gateway or currency of choice.
(Photo credit: Yuri Samoilov)

Before selecting a platform, you should ensure that your chosen payment gateway is
supported, either in the core platform or via an extension or add-on. If it is not, you
can potentially have someone develop an add-on for you, but this can be very costly and may
not even be successful.

If you havent yet chosen a payment gateway, this may not matter, but you should at least be
certain that the store will support your countrys currency (or currencies, if you plan on
accepting several). This often cant be modified, so do your homework before making a
decision.

Multiple design options

You might have a vague idea about the design of your store. Perhaps you want a storefront
that is simple, sleek, and neutral. Or maybe you want a store full of bright colors and large
images to show off the impressive details of your complex products. Can you see your vision
through with the platforms youre evaluating?

A great many eCommerce platforms offer free or paid themes that can easily be used to
modify the look and feel of your store. Applying them may be as easy as clicking a button
in the administrative settings, or it may require uploading a file to your server. Some
platforms offer only a few themes, while others offer dozens of options.

You can also look around online to find themes developed and made available by community
members or independent designers for the specific platforms youre evaluating. If the
platform youre considering has a large, thriving community that makes free or low-cost
themes available, you might have a better chance at finding a theme you like than you might
if the platform has a small community or has even locked down theme development.

Site security

How secure is your store?

As a new store owner, phrases like PCI compliance and SSL certificates are likely to
make your head spin. But these are topics that you should become familiar with. The
security of your store and the customer data it contains is incredibly important, and the
platform you choose will have a huge impact on this factor.

The PCI Security Standards are a set of 12 security standards applicable to all websites that
accept and store payment information. As a store owner, most of your transactions will likely
be processed through your platform and a secure payment gateway, and you can feel
confident that they abide by the standards. But its still a good idea to become familiar with
the requirements so you know your platform wont put you at risk for an audit or your
customers at risk for an attack.

SSL certificates are small data files that allow a browser to securely process sensitive
transactions, like online purchases. A certificate will likely be issued to you by your platform,
should you choose a hosted option. If the platform you are evaluating does not offer a SSL
certificate, you may choose to purchase one with additional features.

Many platforms offer additional security perks and packages, including fraud protection
and monitoring for DDoS attacks. Whether or not you need these additional options is up to
you, but keep in mind that you may find them valuable in the future, as your store grows in
size and popularity. You can always add features via software or external service providers
later, of course, but this may prove more costly than simply choosing a platform that bundles
the features in by default.

Easily created pages, content, and forms

An eCommerce stores purpose is to sell products, certainly. But dont be drawn in solely by
platforms that offer beautiful product pages and little else in the long run, this could result
in a frustrating experience that harms your ability to reach new customers.

An online stores ability to rank highly in searches depends, in part, on the amount of
unique and helpful content available. While this doesnt necessarily mean you have to create
and maintain a blog or start a content marketing campaign, Google specifically looks for
stores with keyword-rich copywriting that helps shoppers find what they are looking for.
Because of this, your platform should allow you to easily create and add this content to
new or existing pages.
It should be a snap to create and add content on your store.

Ideally, you should look for a platform that also has a reputation for being a reliable content
management system (or CMS). Reading user reviews or talking to other store owners will
likely be the best way to gauge this. If the platform you choose is a weak CMS, you may
struggle or waste time to add even simple content blocks, which can ultimately hinder the
success of your online store.

Online support and documentation

If you have a problem you cant solve, you can probably reach out to your developer or
agency if you have one. But what if youre on your own? Or theyre on vacation? Or you
simply cant wait for a response?
Your platform provider should offer help when you need it. (Photo credit: Zsolt Fila)

It doesnt hurt to take a look at the kind of support documentation thats available for
the platforms youre evaluating. Look for resources like how-tos, FAQs, detailed guides,
and video walkthroughs. Take a peek at their support forums or Q&A areas, if they have
them, and see how quickly and thoroughly theyve answered questions.

If youre still stuck, youll likely need to reach out to someone. Many eCommerce
companies offer some combination of phone, chat, email, and ticket support to address
and resolve questions. Review which support options are available and how much
theyll cost (if anything).

If you feel most comfortable with email support and the platform youre evaluating
doesnt come with that, dont feel bad about picking someone else. Only you know
whats best for you and your company. You can also read support reviews on third party
websites to find out how well these companies have served their customers a good
idea for any new business relationship.

Room to grow

Do you really need a platform that can support hundreds of SKUs, store tens of thousands
of customer names, and send triggered emails based on cart activity? You might not need
that now but you could be singing an entirely different tune in just a few months.
If you stay in the small store mindset when you choose your platform, you may limit
what youre capable of as you grow. You might find, a few months from now, that you
need the ability to offer many more products than you ever thought you would be
interested in selling. If your chosen platform cant adequately support you, youll be left
with a tough decision to make.

Ideally, you should choose a platform that either allows you to scale up and down your
plan as needed, or gives you the flexibility to add extensions or new features via a
marketplace. Both option will give you the ability to add new features without migrating
to a new platform, which can be incredibly time-consuming, costly, and perhaps most
importantly stressful, as anyone whos ever done such a migration can tell you.

Choose your eCommerce platform wisely

There are plenty of options available for selling online, and that can make choosing your
platform a challenge. Rather than guessing, or making a selection based on name alone,
you should aim to use the criteria weve highlighted here to narrow down and ultimately
select the right solution for you.

To recap, we recommend taking the following factors into consideration when making
your choice:

Payment options Above all else, make sure the platform integrates with your
chosen or intended payment gateway, and can support your countrys currency (or
currencies).

Design options Review how many free or paid designs are available, as well as the
potential cost for having an external designer create one for you.

Security Is your platform PCI compliant? Does it offer an SSL certificate? What
about additional security perks?
 Easily created content If your store doesnt have strong supporting content, it may
suffer in Google searches. Look for a platform that allows you to easily create and
manage new pages, contact forms, and on-page copywriting.

Online support and documentation Look for detailed documentation and support
options that meet your personal preferences, like tickets, chat, or email support.

Room to grow Can you upgrade your plan or add new extensions as your needs
change? Avoid thinking like a small store youll only limit yourself.

We hope this guide has given you some insight into the most important features of an
eCommerce platform, and what to consider when you are choosing one. Do you consider
any additional factors equally important? Let us know your thoughts in the comments,
wed absolutely love to hear from you (Kohler, 2015).

http://academic.emporia.edu/esrs/vol46/colorado.pdf

5.4. E-Marketing
E-marketing is the result of information technology applied to traditional marketing, which
increases the efficiency in traditional marketing functions and transforms many marketing
strategies by using e-marketing technologies. This will allow new business models to add
customer value and increase company profitability (Strauss, El-Ansary and Frost, 2002).

References
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Software / Application Type of Software Cost Benefits
system
KISSFLOW Business Process KiSSFLOW offers a free 14-
Management (BPM) day trial to users without a
credit card. They charge
$6/user/month and require a
minimum of ten users to start
using the application.
Enterprise pricing plans are
also available upon request.
Oracle MySQL Cloud Database Technology $130.00 (per month) For Easy to us
Services Non- Metered Self servic
Elastic sca
$0.233 (per hour) For
High avai
metered
Bluehost Hosting Services Plan
For Basic
- 12 months ($8.99 )
- 24 months ($8.49 )
- 36 months ($7.99 )

For Plus
- 12 months ($12.99)
- 24 months ($11.99)
- 36 months ($10.99)
IBM Web Portal Web Portal
Cloud Databases Secure Socket Layer (SSL)

Hardware System Hardware Type Cost Benefits Risk

Android and IOS Mobile Devices

Intelligent Agents