E Commerce Applications

Opportunities and Threats facing E-mekaniks

 

Cost of advertising is an opportunity for E-mekaniks as we’ll be advertising our services online and spending less to the cost of manual catalogues, brochures and flyers. Through e-mails communication is faster and cheaper and access to information as well is an opportunity for E-mekaniks as Internet is the global source of information.  High quality services, low costs and diverse products contribute a lot to international market as the whole. As E-mekaniks Provides Service to the Top international electronic Brands and local Brands it will give a good scope for overall customer retention. Through building customer relationship, monitor customer behaviour through e-mails and direct marketing, offer excellent services, website put into practice ease of use, have variety of services to select from, on site servicing and lowest prices possible, E-mekaniks will gain the customer trust through its convenience.

As E-mekaniks is new in this business, it won’t be easy to gain customer trust and the brand reputation. The main threat to E-mekaniks is its competitors like fixya.com, homeserve.com etc. as these companies have been providing service for quite a long time online. E-mekaniks will provide a very reliable, onsite servicing and cheapest rates as a differentiation strategy amongst its competitor’s. As the business idea is to provide servicing online and onsite, the concern over security is vital to customers. Hackers are jeopardising the convenience and comfortability of online servicing. E-mekaniks will ensure that the customer information is not in danger of unauthorized users.

Data encryption and password, routers, firewalls, antivirus and anti spy-ware will be security measures taken into consideration by E-mekaniks. Poor communication infrastructure and decline in productivity are also major threats for E-mekaniks. Customer service is vital to consumers as they will be bringing business to E-mekaniks and without customers the business is doomed. E-mekaniks will make sure that every customer is attended in a proper manner and the services are always in time for their queries.

After reading the views of various authors we can define it as, all those services or sources through which we can gain a competitive edge over our rivalries to sustain in the market for long time profitability. e.g.  to offer same service in lower price better quality. Etc.

To gain a competitive advantage we should look at the following:

1. Unique Resources
2. Capabilities
3. Core Competencies

        We should think about what are the resources and capabilities we have, like we are offering the service at very low price in order to create a customer base, we should concern about the quality of service we are offering, we should capable to bring any new service in the market before any competitor.

        In order to know those activities through which we can gain competitive advantage we should look at the Porter's Value chain analysis. There are two parts of value chain first is Primary value chain activities and Support activities.

Value Chain Analysis

Primary Support Activities

1. Inbound logistics: Includes the receiving, warehousing and inventory control of the input material.
2. Operations: all the value creating activities
3. Outbound logistics: activities required to get the final product to the customer.
4. Marketing and sales: Channel selection, promotion and pricing.
5. Service: Customer support, maintenance etc.
   

Now look at our venture, we should have a warehouse in order to receive our inventories, some software’s for inventory control etc. Service which create a customer base for us like at lower price with better quality. Distribution channels as discussed we should hire some vehicles on rent in the start. Marketing and Promotion we have already discussed and we are having chat rooms, customer support number for our venture etc.

Support Activities

1. Procurement
2. Technology Development
3. Human Resource Management
4. Firm Infrastructure
   

How we are going to purchase we should have a better understanding with our supplier, other technical enhancements like SAP etc, how we are going to recruit expertise? What should be the procedure? I think it should be via a technical test, and finally our unique culture and structure of our firm

Porter’s Generic Strategies

After discussing unique resources and core competences of our venture we have studied the Porter's Generic strategies. According to the two of the main headings of the porter’s (cost advantage and differentiation) our venture falls under cost advantage. Since we are targeting a narrow market segment like we are only providing service in Coventry area with a focus strategy. So we fall under focus strategy and narrow market segment with a cost advantage of low cost.

Ansoff Matrix

Ansoff's matrix is one of the most well know frameworks for deciding upon strategies for growth.

Market Penetration

         Here we market our existing services and products to our existing customers. This means increasing our revenue by, for example, promoting the product, repositioning the brand, and so on. However, the product is not altered and we do not seek any new customers.

Market Development

        Here we market our existing product range in a new market. This means that the product remains the same, but it is marketed to a new audience. Exporting the product, or marketing it in a new region, is examples of market development.

Product Development

        This is a new product to be marketed to our existing customers. Here we develop and innovate new product offerings to replace existing ones. Such products are then marketed to our existing customers. This often happens with the auto markets where existing models are updated or replaced and then marketed to existing customers.

Diversification

        This is where we market completely new products to new customers. There are two types of diversification, namely related and unrelated diversification. Related diversification means that we remain in a market or industry with which we are familiar. For example, a soup manufacturer diversifies into cake manufacture (i.e. the food industry). Unrelated diversification is where we have neither previous industry nor market experience. For example a soup manufacturer invests in the rail business.

        But we are intending to start a new business in a new market that means we are in diversification phase. Assume that we have our previous business in the same service industry so that we can say that our diversification is related. We need to be unique in our services in order to make customer loyal towards our brand.

After doing some internal analysis on the firm lets discuss the external factor through which we can get to know about the strength of the competition in the industry we are dealing in.

        For that Porter generated a model called Five Forces Analysis, through which we can determine the threats and barriers for us to run our venture.

1. Threat to new entrants: It is very high threat for us to get into the market in which we are new. We don’t have very high economies of scale; we don’t have a brand identity. We have to be careful while promoting and creating a good customer relationship.
2. Threat of substitute: This threat is low, we can say that since we entering into the market with a cost advantage, people can easily switch to us.
3. Buyer Power: This is medium, because there is no substitute available in the market, we have a cost advantage but we still have made a brand identity.
4. Supplier Power: This is low threat for us; since our venture is service oriented we can say that we have access to very limited number of suppliers.
5. Competitive Rivalry: There are rivalries in the market but we can say that strength is very low coz we are dealing in a specific area (Coventry); there is no one in this area.

LEGAL, ORGANISATIONAL AND CULTURAL ISSUES

Legal issues

Legal issues are the major issues we all should be considering before we introduce any business plans. Every company has to follow the law and order to do any kind of online marketing.

Majority of the people is under the impression that e-commerce as being focused on developing products, setting prices, creating promotions and deciding how customers can purchase products. But people who market them deal with many more issues such as legal issues. We also need to consider how the society will respond to all the legal implications on an internet shopping experience.

Obtaining a "domain name" is typically the first step in setting up a Web site. Developing a webpage will be next tedious task. In most cases, this will involve contracting for the services of software and Web developers. Use of a Web development agreement is important to ensure that costs can be better managed and that ownership issues can be properly addressed.

The increased popularity of on-line communications and increased amount of online fraud actives made the people afraid to do online trading. People are frightened to involve any credit card uses over the internet. There are different kinds of online companies which implement secure transactions over the internet such as “Paypal”, paypal offers secured money transactions over the internet. But it’s again up to the user whether to believe them or not.

The set of legal and policy options is shaped not just by culture, history, and politics but by the constraints of technology. The political, legal and ethical issues on the Internet are regulated by national legal constitutions. According to the UK ‘ Misuse of computers Act 1990’ this law makes it illegal for one to hack into computers, unauthorized access to computer material and unauthorized modification of computer material (Public Act 1990). the Data Protection Act Of 1998 state that ‘where personal data are processed only for purposes for which they are required by or under any enactment to be processed, the person on whom the obligation to process the data is imposed by or under that enactment is for the purposes of this Act the data’ (Public Act 1998).

Other legal laws to be observed are the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995; Freedom of Information Act 2001, the Human Rights Act and the Electronic Signatures Directives. All these laws will enable NURV to operate its online business legally, ethically and morally.

Our online venture will be completely follow the following laws which are applicable in UK.  As per government rules we have to follow all the laws which are been passed in Parliament, following are few major ones.

• Data Protection Act 1998
• Human Rights Act 1998
• The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000
• Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002

All these laws will enable e-mechanics to operate its online business legally, ethically and morally

Ethical issues

One of the major concerns of internet is securing the data online or secured data transitions. Quite recently we heard about lots of news related to social networking websites that the personal information has been shared with 3rd party. Regular internet users might have came across multiple spam emails which seeking your details for various proposes. Securing the date over the internet will be a difficult task due to the access of information’s to any individuals. Any one over the internet can steal others work and rephrase it and claim it as their work.

Business Ethics are very important to establish a good relationship between client and organization, it generate a confidence on the customer to trust the organization. When ethics related to marketing then we have to consider B2B ethics and B2C. There are a number of B2B & B2C legal, marketing ethics and client ethics in advertising variables to consider closely.

Privacy related to the security aspect of an individual or information. The definitions of privacy can differ across individuals and cultures. The invasion of privacy can be avoided by the issue of privacy laws.

There are millions of millions of websites scattered all over the internet with full of individual and organizational details.  Web sites which lie within open, unrestricted areas of access those are interconnected using hyperlinks. This has the result that any user can access, view and downloads pages, as in principle every text is linked to every other. This will violate the piracy laws.

All e-commerce businesses must protect its customers with privacy polices. In the design of our website we been taken special care that we will not share any personal information of any user. As per our venture we don’t required to share any information of the users with 3rd party. Our venture is completely focused on dealing with consumer products which has less after sales support or helpless customer cares.

Organisational issues

The whole approach of mankind to do shopping has been changed time to time. As per the recent study done by researchers it proves that’s a major community of population are doing shopping online rather than roaming around in the supermarket. 80% of supermarkets in UK are diversified in internet marketing as well to gain their market share. If they are doing a good business in shops then why they need to worry about the online marketing, reason being, every entrepreneur knows that future of shopping will change and every one wants to make use of the opportunities which lies in internet.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have connected people in ways that challenge the very concept of the traditional organization. Indeed, there is now some discussion of organizations with no physical place except in cyberspace

Cultural issues

Since the time internet has been expanded, many e-commerce and e-business companies have attempted, or are attempting, to expand their markets beyond their home countries. As the number of Internet users grows at an exceptional rate around the globe, there are great opportunities for companies to grab a share of the global market through the Web, but the bigger issues any organization has to face is the cultural impact which affect them. For e.g.:- places like India, Indians have a very strong culture in them. Most of the strategies being done in western will not be applicable in there because of the culture. As per our venture we took deep consideration of cultural issues can be faceable in of being international market player.

ONLINE MARKETING AND PROMOTION PLANS

Online shopping web sites are often called as storefront on the Internet. It's also an information kiosk, a customer service centre, and a post office box. A good web site can be one of the most economical ways of getting information out to customers and generate profit from it. Some websites don’t really sell thing but they generate money and good capital to run the business for example Google, Google started their business with a free search engine today its one of the world leading market players due to their business and marketing plans. Google reported revenues of $5.19 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, an increase of 42% compared to the first quarter of 2007 and an increase of 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007. In the first quarter of 2008, TAC totaled $1.49 billion, or 29% of advertising revenues. (Google Inc 2008)

It clearly states that a good promotion plans will always work out if the strategies are compatible with the existing market.

OVERVIEW OF E-COMMERCE ARCHITECTURE

The different types of transactions specified in this architecture are

Business-to-Business (B2B):

In this the transaction is done between two different business organisations. Usage of internet by organisations has become an effective medium to support all business services.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C):

This is the business or commerce conducted by the business organisations with an individual customer over the internet. The services performed during this process are online banking, travel services etc.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B):

During the process when the customer wants to know about the product, services provided by the business organisation on the internet, these transactions occur.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C):

In this the transactions held in between the consumer to consumer like interact with each other.

                

OSI MODEL LAYERS

Presentation Layer:

 The presentation layer is the webpage of the site that customers see when they visit to the e-commerce site. It controls the appearance of site including fonts, colour and buttons. Although there is a lot of information about the products in the related pages but most of the data the customer can get by this layer. It is very important that how we introduce a product and information regarding to the consumer.

Application Layer:

The most prevalently used layer of the OSI model is the Application layer. In an e-commerce application this layer handles the business logic. This layer encapsulates the heart of business banking like management rules, business concept.

Database Layer:

The detailed information about the products like product description, price, usage etc, is explained in this layer. For an e-commerce application this layer has database management system. It is also possible to keep track of the customer details, what they have ordered in past in here. This layer manages the storage of data.

WHY 3-TIER ARCHITECTURE?

The term e-commerce is generally said to be a business transaction by means of using a telecommunication networks.

 Actually there are different types of technologies used in e-commerce and they are

1. 2- tier architecture
2. 3-tier architecture
3. N-tier architecture

2-tier architecture is client server architecture where the processing load can fall either on the server or on the client.

Among the above mentioned architectures we use 3-tier architecture for our venture.

As the name suggests a 3-tier application is a program which is organised into three different major disjunctive layers. They are

1. Transaction processing (TP) monitor
2. Message servers
3. Application servers

Transaction processing monitor technology provides the capacity to develop effectively, run and manage transaction applications. This technology is used in customer services, data management, security systems and in delivery order processing. It is also having a capacity to connect various data bases.

Message servers have the ability to connect to various data base sources like (Relational DataBase Management system) RDBMS. Here messages are processed asynchronously. There are very sound business solutions for the wireless infrastructures of m-commerce.

The applications belonging to are very scalable. It has less concern with the security. Supporting and installation costs are less on a single server rather than maintaining them on a desktop client.

 

BENEFITS OF USING A 3-TIER ARCHITECTURE:

1. Component roles are clearly defined within a 3-tier framework.
2. Results in quick development during the reusability of business component.
3. Change management of the system is easy.
4. While utilising this we can find easy in transformation of system.
5. Scalability:

It is not necessary to require the connection from each and every client to the data base.

Transaction processing (TP) monitors can manage the number of application servers available.

6. Improve data integrity:

For the databases to be updated the middle tier allow only the valid data.

7. Improved security

As it is more secure, business logic is placed in a more secured central server.

Risks With 3-Tier:

It is a complex work to build 3-tier architecture as the programming tools do not hold all the services required. When compared with the other architectures, the supporting products implementing 3-tier architecture is not established.

Solutions to the Risks:

Distributive enterprise computing is considered as a precise alternative workable to it. When reliability and scalability requirements cannot fulfil the existing multi layer technology, Transaction Monitors (TM) can be the valid choice.

PLATFORM /TECHNOLOGY RECOMMENDATIONS:

For rapid development and deployment of web applications we use the web application LAMP, which refers to the tools Linux, Apache, mySQL

, and PHP. To provide a platform for developing web based applications, the LAMP tool provides a collection of software programs.

Linux-it is an open source operating systems

Apache- web server which serves both static and dynamic web pages.

MySQL- database management system makes best use of SQL to process data.

PHP- programming or a scripting language.

This tool mostly comprises of two-thirds of servers, databases and scripting languages.

Some features of LAMP:

      Integration:                                                                                                                          

       While compiling PHP, we can decide which extensions are available can      be         decided by us.

Community and News:

Huge amount of information can be gathered by the mails and news for installation and development problems.

Security:

As it is used by many communities and people, this is a stable and secured technology.

DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

A system development methodology refers to the framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system. There are several software development processes for developing a software product and each describing approaches to a variety of tasks or activities, the main processes are

• Waterfall
• Iterative

Waterfall

The waterfall model is “a sequential software development model (a process for the creation of software) in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance.”  (wikipedia 2008)

Initial investigation

                     Requirements

                      Definition

 

                               System Design

                                                        

                                          Coding, testing...

                                                             Implementation

                                                                      Operation &Support

Figure . (Steps of waterfall model, Source-Wikipedia)

Basic Principles:

1. Project is divided into sequential phases, with some overlap and splash back acceptable between phases.
2. Emphasis is on planning, time schedules, target dates, budgets and implementation of an entire system at one time.
3. Tight control is maintained over the life of the project through the use of extensive written documentation, as well as through formal reviews and approval/signoff by the user and information technology management occurring at the end of most phases before beginning the next phase.

Strengths: 

1. Ideal for supporting less experienced project teams and project managers, or project teams whose composition fluctuates.
2. The orderly sequence of development steps and strict controls for ensuring the adequacy of documentation and design reviews helps ensure the quality, reliability, and maintainability of the developed software.
3. Progress of system development is measurable.
4. Conserves resources.

Weaknesses:

1. Inflexible, slow, costly and cumbersome due to significant structure and tight controls.
2. Project progresses forward, with only slight movement backward.
3. Little room for use of iteration, which can reduce manageability if used.
4. Depends upon early identification and specification of requirements, yet users may not be able to clearly define what they need early in the project.
5. Requirements inconsistencies, missing system components, and unexpected development needs are often discovered during design and coding.
6. Problems are often not discovered until system testing.
7. System performance cannot be tested until the system is almost fully coded, and under- capacity may be difficult to correct.
8. Difficult to respond to changes.  Changes that occur later in the life cycle are more costly and are thus discouraged.
9. Produces excessive documentation and keeping it updated as the project progresses is time-consuming.
10. Promotes the gap between users and developers with clear division of responsibility.

Iterative

Iterative is used to describe a  planning and development process where an  is developed in small sections called iterations. Each iteration is reviewed and critiqued by the software team and potential end-users; insights gained from the critique of iteration are used to determine the next step in development. Data models or sequence diagrams, which are often used to map out iterations, keep track of what has been tried, approved, or discarded, and eventually serve as a kind of blueprint for the final product.

(software quality 2008)

Fdigure .(Iterative usability tuning, source-google)

Basic Principles:

1. Not a standalone, complete development methodology, but rather an approach to handling selected portions of a larger, more traditional development methodology (i.e., Incremental, Spiral, or Rapid Application Development (RAD)).
2. Attempts to reduce inherent project risk by breaking a project into smaller segments and providing more ease-of-change during the development process.
3. User is involved throughout the process, which increases the likelihood of user acceptance of the final implementation.
4. Small-scale mock-ups of the system are developed following an iterative modification process until the prototype evolves to meet the users’ requirements.
5. While most prototypes are developed with the expectation that they will be discarded, it is possible in some cases to evolve from prototype to working system.
6. A basic understanding of the fundamental business problem is necessary to avoid solving the wrong problem.

        

Strengths:

1. Addresses the inability of many users to specify their information needs, and the difficulty of systems analysts to understand the user’s environment, by providing the user with a tentative system for experimental purposes at the earliest possible time.
2. Can be used to realistically model important aspects of a system during each phase of the traditional life cycle.
3. Improves both user participation in system development and   communication among project stakeholders.
4. Especially useful for resolving unclear objectives; developing and validating user requirements; experimenting with or comparing various design solutions; or investigating both performance and the human computer interface.
5. Potential exists for exploiting knowledge gained in an early iteration as later iterations are developed.
6. Helps to easily identify confusing or difficult functions and missing functionality.
7. May generate specifications for a production application.
8. Encourages innovation and flexible designs.
9. Provides quick implementation of an incomplete, but functional, application.

Weaknesses:

1. Approval process and control is not strict.
2. Incomplete or inadequate problem analysis may occur whereby only the most obvious and superficial needs will be addressed, resulting in current inefficient practices being easily built into the new system.
3. Requirements may frequently change significantly.
4. Identification of non-functional elements is difficult to document.
5. Designers may prototype too quickly, without sufficient up-front user needs analysis, resulting in an inflexible design with narrow focus that limits future system potential.
6. Designers may neglect documentation, resulting in insufficient justification for the final product and inadequate records for the future.
7. Prototype may not have sufficient checks and balances incorporated.

Selection of development approach

We will follow an iterative development approach for our e-business project because of its flexible nature in dealing with requirements changes throughout the project life cycle. The system that will be developed is based on a business model and software development (VTE, online search for online tutors, and pay as you go system). It will operate in a highly competitive and ever-changing business environment. To create and sustain strategic competitive advantage, in addition to providing innovative services, we will take the best of what our competitors (direct and indirect) already offer and provide an attractive, innovative and unique tutorial solution (offline and online). We will also constantly innovate by improving our existing services and developing new features.

Throughout the project life cycle, we will need to monitor closely the competitive and market environment and use incremental and iterative development and testing approaches (e.g. usability testing) to ensure that our “product” is ready to market. Because the one constant is change, the process must be “agile”. It is assumed that the project team will consist of about four people, who have a mixture of experience levels, who prefer a more ordered approach.

We looked at the four iterative development approaches; prototyping, spiral model, Rational Unified Process (RUP) and Extreme Programming (XP). RUP has advantages over the other development methodologies:  

• RUP is an iterative development technique (just like Prototyping, XP and Spiral Model), which contains industry best practice. (Kruchten 2004).
• RUP can be tailored for a small project (3 to 10 people, with duration of less than one year) like ours. Despite the project being small, it still requires a process (thus allowing successful practices to be repeated). However the project can afford less formality hence reducing time to market. In contrast to Prototyping and XP, RUP requires a project plan to be created and allows schedules and resources to be defined. This has the advantage of setting time and costs limits while still allowing the development process to adapt to change.
• RUP is an iterative approach and is not agile in itself. However it can be made agile or more agile by tailoring. The tailoring involves reducing the number of artefacts.
• RUP can be used for e-business systems including third generation systems such as ours (highly personalized solutions that are adaptive and automate the complete business process (e.g. integrated database management).
• RUP is better suited to a programming team that has a range of experience levels and needs a more ordered approach. Agile approaches are best suited to senior programmers and an organisation that likes a more chaotic approach.
• RUP using Unified Modelling Language (UML). UML is a widely used notation for communicating through diagrams with assigned semantics. It allows all parties involved (final users, developers, managers, designers, etc.) to communicate in a manner understood by all. (Rushton Prince, “Using RUP/UP: 10 easy steps”)
• RUP takes into account the business dimension, not present in the other methodologies. The RUP is the process not only for implementing a software methodology, but for establishing a business case for the system first. In "Using RUP/UP: 10 easy steps" Rushton Prince states “the complexity of business operations and associated software products increase, a process that helps guide the capture of business rules and efficiently relate them to software development is a must”. RUP can model business processes by using UML
• RUP can be tailored to a small to medium project such as ours.  The tailoring may involve a focus on technical artefacts rather than management artefacts with fewer management artefacts. The artefacts are smaller than for a large project, for example the business case for a small project could be a spreadsheet where as for a large project it could be a three-volume proposal. It offers more flexibility and reactivity, thus reducing time to market.
• No detailed specifications are created or preserved in XP, where as they are in RUP.

Problems with other techniques are:

1. Prototyping can be misleading. The prototype can be mistaken for the finished article by the customer. The prototype may just have the look and feel and may have limited or severely- limited functionality (Green and DiCaterino 1998).
2. Prototyping can result in a system with a poor design. This is the result of rapid development, where the system is built as a series of layers, with the overall design not being considered (Green and DiCaterino 1998).

To summarise, RUP contains the best practice of iterative approaches, it contains a business dimension that other methodologies do not have, which involves creating a business case and modelling business practices and can be tailored to small projects and be more agile. Therefore RUP is chosen as the methodology to develop the e-commerce platform

INTRODUCTION TO USABILITY

Usability is the most traditional concept of study in human computer interaction (HCI) research and also usability has been defined as the quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease of use during the design process (Pearson 2007).

Usability is defined by five quality components: 
1. Learn ability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
2. Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
3. Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re-establish proficiency?
4. Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
5. Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
In human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer science, usability usually refers to the elegance and clarity with which the interaction with a computer program or a web site is designed (nielsen 1994).

Usability inspection method 

        Usability inspection is the general name for a set of methods that examine the user interface. Usually, usability inspection is search the design to find the usability problems, though some methods also address issues like the severity of the usability problems and the overall usability of an entire system. Many inspection methods lend themselves to the inspection of user interface specifications that have not necessarily been implemented yet, meaning that inspection can be performed early in the usability engineering lifecycle. (Useit 2008)

        According to Nielsen (1992) he created some method for the usability inspection which is: Heuristic evaluation, heuristic estimation, cognitive walkthrough, pluralistic walkthrough, consistency inspection, feature inspection, formal usability inspection and standards inspection. Heuristic evaluation is the most informal method and involves having usability specialist’s judge whether each dialogue element follows established usability principles. Heuristic evaluation is a usability evaluation method which helps find out usability problems in the user interface design. It specifically involves evaluators examining the interface and judging its compliance with recognized usability principles, the main purpose to heuristic evaluations is to identify any problems associated with the design of user interfaces; therefore this method it will be chosen in this report to be applied in a website. Usability consultant Jakob Nielsen developed this method on the basis of several years of experience in teaching and consulting about usability engineering. (Nielsen 1994)

        There are several sets of possible heuristics available on the Web and elsewhere. It is designed to pick out as many flaws as possible, and various sets of usability evaluators have found different formalizations to be most useful for their needs. The most commonly used is Nielsen's set of ten usability heuristics (Ukoln 2008)

1. Visibility of system status.
2. Match between system and the real world.
3. User control and freedom.
4. Consistency and standards.
5. Error prevention.
6. Recognition rather than recall.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors.
10. Help and documentation.
     

Visibility of system status

        At any website the system must informed the users all the time about what is going on in the website through right feedback and reasonable time. (Useit 2008)

• The system should keep track of:
• Whether this is the first time the user has been in the system
• Where the user is
• Where the user is going
• Where the user has been during this session
• Where the user was when they left off in the last session

Match between system and the real world

        The system should speak the user’s language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms, follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order(Useit2008).

        Also in this case the programmer should use more common and familiar icons to be match between the website system and the other websites, otherwise the users will need visual assistant to guide them through the website which will be not practical way, this lead the match between system and real world must follow the real-world principles to avoid the misunderstanding of use the system. (Coweb 2008)

This corresponds to issues dealing with correct labels and titles as well as relevant metaphors.

 User Control and Freedom 

        Users should be free to select and sequence tasks (when appropriate), rather than having the system does this for them. Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Users should make their own decisions (with clear information) regarding the costs of exiting current work. The system should support undo and redo (Useit 2008).

 Consistency and standards

        Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions. (Useit 2008)
If a term appears several times in a program, it means the same thing. If the user is required to differentiate what a particular term means in different context, there is something wrong. Also, this extends to actions, situations, sounds, etc... If left-clicking opens up a menu, don't make another menu opened with right-clicks.

Error prevention

 
        Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action. (Useit 2008) Also the error prevention is potential errors recognised before becoming a problem.

 Recognition Rather Than Recall

Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate (Useit 2008).

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use 

        Accelerators, unseen by the novice user, may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions. (Useit 2008)

 Aesthetic and Minimalist Design 

        Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed; every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. (Useit 2008)

Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover From Errors 

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution (Developer 2008). However, the error messages should be informed clearer. The message can display in different colour including sound to get an attention from the user.

A good example of this can be found in most e-commerce interfaces, if a user forgets to enter data in a required field, the system presents an error message and pinpoints which fields are missing data.

 Help and Documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large. (Orcmacro 2008)

 Usefulness of heuristic method

        Heuristic method is very useful method compare with the other method due to some reason such as it is provide quick feedback to designers, cost less than the other methods to perform the a heuristic evaluation of usability evaluation and also the results generate good ideas for enhancing the user interface in the websites. The designer and development team will also receive a good estimate of how much the user interface can be improved from the feedback (Usability book 2008).

        Moreover Heuristic evaluations are one of the most informal methods of usability inspection in the field of human computer interaction (HCI) also the heuristic method useful to be employed in the website on the begging of the prototype before the users will use the website and help with additional testing. (Usability net 2008).

        Usability problems found are usually limited to features of the interface that is reasonably easy to demonstrate such as the colours it has been chosen for the website, layout and information structuring, consistency of the terminology and the interaction mechanisms. (Usability net 2008)
According to (Nielsen et al., 1990) mentioned some barrier it could encounter using heuristic method in the website which is the individual evaluators will identify a relatively small number of usability issues and the multiple evaluators are recommended since a single expert is likely to find only a small percentage of problems. The results from multiple evaluators must be aggregated.

USABILITY PLAN FOR E-MEKANIKS:

Visibility of system status

         In our website the system status view has to be essential responsibility to display the services to attract the users which is vary important part of usability, such as the colours, the colour brightness and create the icons in a good size to be clear for the users.

Match between system and the real world

        When we start programming our website we should use more common and familiar icons to be match with the other websites, otherwise the users will need visual assistant to guide them through the website which will be not practical way, this lead the match between system and real world must follow the real-world principles to avoid the misunderstanding of use the system. (Coweb 2008) Also we should make differences between the icons and the background colour.

User Control and Freedom

         The home page in our website should have search engine to makes the user needs more easily and let them feel the freedom and the easy access to the website which gives more advantage such as offering a wide variety and quantity of information resources for the website which make the user comfortable, confidante and easy use, and it is lead to enhance our website with the users.

Consistency and standards

         If a term appears several times in a program, it means the same thing. If the user is required to differentiate what a particular term means in different context, there is something wrong. Also, this extends to actions, situations, sounds, etc... If left-clicking opens up a menu, don't make another menu opened with right-clicks.

Error prevention

         The less chance a user can screw up a program, the better, so do not allow the user to do potentially hazardous actions.

Recognition rather than recall 

Colour-coding is a good example of recognition rather than recall. Color-coding can be applied to objects (hyper text links) as well as actions (visited hyper text links).

Flexibility and efficiency of use 

Bookmarks, sitemaps, and personalization all fall under this heuristic.

Aesthetic and minimalist design 

Are there too many icons? Do we need all those divider lines? Less is more is the theme here

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

A good example of this can be found in most e-commerce interfaces. If a user forgets to enter data in a required field, the system presents an error message and pinpoints which fields are missing data.

Help and documentation

This heuristic deals with the end-user's access to help and documentation. How useful is our help tab? Who actually gets our training materials? Who is allowed to contact our help desk?

WEBSITE LAYOUT

1. Simplicity and consistency

 E-mekaniks website is clearly identifying what it’s all about which is Providing Servicing for the household electronic appliances and the sales of used products. It is very simple and easy to navigate as the site is consistent and predictable; users will feel comfortable exploring our site and be confident that they can find what they need. The graphic identity of a series of pages in our Web site provides visual clues to the continuity of information. The presence of a graphic header on every page of the site creates a consistent user interface and corporate identity. Our site loads faster as there are no ad banners, flashy images, too much text and misuse of tables. The colour provides adequate contrast for ease of reading and it is easy to find information about our products and services we render with direct access. The site provides feedback and dialog with the contact details of the web master, this will make users feel in touch and it also boost the customer relationship as they able to contact us for any feedback.

2. Clear navigation aids

Through following the Web standards our navigation aids are easy to use, consistent throughout the website. A home page link is visible and consistent through the pages and this will make it easy for users to be able to return easily to our home page and to other major navigation points in the site. Our links are clearly labelled and visible without the use of icons which may lead to a slow loading time of the site. A visible search button on the homepage in our site improves the task time for users as search can quickly speed up the process. Our portal caters for all people, regardless of physical or technological readiness, with access to information.

Content

E-Mekaniks website supports the Service simplicity as it clarifies the significance of the service levels, the price and the appliances supported by e-mekaniks. The used goods are also displayed to attract users and as well increase in terms of sales. E-Mekaniks will unique differentiate itself form other website by producing a chat room service. This chat room provides solutions for minor or frequent problems which can be solved by the customer.

PROTOTYPE

E-Mekaniks has developed a prototype for its electronic commerce venture.

Prototype is available online at URL http://emekaniks.weebly.com/

The website has been developed with extreme emphasis on usability.

It has easy navigation features, and product finding features that include Keyword Search, Category browsing, Special Offers and Popular Items.

We have also provided a chat room link, through which E-Mekaniks will provide solutions to minor problems to its customers, about new appliances, upcoming sales and related activities. This would make the customer keep returning back to our website.

Overall, the prototype has been developed with the customer in mind, to make their query solved and have a enjoyable experience.

Below is the screen shot of the About us Page

INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION REPORTS

JOSEPH BATARSEH (2029317)

        E-mekaniks is the name of our group for E-commerce group assignment and I have been one of the members there which I learned lots of thing like Team work with others for our project I have contributed in:

1. Development approach.
2. Usability.

Development approach

In development approach I have explain the main models for the development approach methods like Waterfall and Iterative and how each of them will work. I added some diagrams to explain the process in that model and the Basic Principles, Strengths and Weaknesses of the models to give me the opportunity to chose the right model for our venture which is explained under the development approach Section  and why it has been chosen and then in the end the Problems with other techniques specially for the prototype.

Usability

For the usability I just started with introduction to explain what is usability and I listed five components to define the usability and gave more explanation about the usability inspection method which is Heuristic evaluation, heuristic estimation, cognitive walkthrough, pluralistic walkthrough, consistency inspection, feature inspection, formal usability inspection and standards inspection and then the heuristic evaluation has been implemented to our business because it is the most informal method and I found that (Ukoln 2008) classified ten usability heuristic which I explained them and did explained how and where this ten heuristic will be used for our website, what to add, what to avoid and how the website can be error free.

SAJITH NAIR (1971035)

        Group Participation: - I had a great time to work with all my group mates. It has been a great experience for me to be the part of our E-mekaniks team member. We all started off our assignment with a blank page, as our classes and group meetings goes by we learned how we need to work together as a group and we started off our E-mekaniks venture. We had few disagreements with in our self in the initial stages but we learned from our mistakes and manage to make our contribution and make our Venture a success. Mutual understanding between each other helps us to complete our task on time with proper documentation.  

Research Development: - My part in our group assignment was researching about Legal, Organizational and Cultural Issues, being from a IT background I wasn’t aware in details about Legal issues of a Online company can face. But with the help of my research I learned different areas of legal and copyright issues a company/organization has to compete with. As per the government rule it is mandatory that every company has to follow all the acts which is been introduced, if they failed to do so then they will be caught during the external audit. It is highly crucial to any organizations that they should make their employers aware about the legal complications. Even though my personal contribution plays a major role in our group assignment, I did mange to criticise and make necessary changes which has been requested by my group mates.

The biggest problem faced by the Ecommerce organization is cultural issues. Each and every country has its own culture and it’s on ethics, which will be different from different part of the world. If our venture will not able to follow the standard webpage format then it will be a failure in the business. Since our operations are focused more into as a local business, we won’t be facing much cultural issues. But we do face issues with people who came from different part of the world accessing our webpage.

Every organizations has its own way of doing business, our business is also unique due to the uniqueness of our operations. We decided to do business with in local and expand our business depending our customer’s interest, but we will not deviate from our pioneer business. We explain our individual business in detail on our project proposal.  

BHARAT KUMAR S (2083881)

Working in this E-Mekaniks group has made me to take active participation in group work but also make me to work effectively with group members. As we have started our prototype with blank page, by continuous effort and gathering information from different sources we have improved much. Regarding my topic in our venture i have work for the overview of the E-commerce architecture and platform/technology recommendations.

 

1. Overview of E-commerce Architecture:

For our venture we have chosen 3-tier architecture. We have taken this as it is having much more effectiveness than any other that specified. How to develop a venture with   Quick development, improved security, clearly specifying the component roles can be well known and better implemented by using this architecture. As there much other architecture we have chosen this as regarding to C2B it is the best that we can approach.  

2. Platform/Technology Recommendations:

For this we have chosen the LAMP application for our venture. The term LAMP is an abbreviation for Linux, Apache, MY SQL and PHP.   The steps that make us to go for to this are this is a tool that provides us the collection of software programs.  And also huge information can be gathered by the collection of stuff from news, e-mails, and the development programs.

SUNIL KUMAR N (2114082)

It was a great time I had with my E-Mekaniks group as we worked as a team through out our course work for the E-Mekaniks ecommerce venture as we keep on sharing the information about our venture by latest updates and also referring the course tutorials. The task which helped us a lot is the discussion forms and the meetings between our group members as we use to give feedback and any recommendations that are necessary for each individual task which had been discussed in the class room and the group meetings.

        As a group member for our E-Mekaniks venture I contributed some parts of the group report about the SWOT Analysis and the Business model for the E-Mekaniks.

• SWOT Analysis: As the SWOT analysis defines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats which will influence any business. In our E-Mekaniks e-commerce based venture the major points we can consider are the strengths and threats as we are new to the market and business we have so many threats from our competitors as it may effect their business and also it may affect and decline the productivity of servicing levels when taking consideration of strengths like Visibility in Service, Price, strategic location and wide range of services which can give a long time stability of the venture in the market.

• Business Model: In the E-Mekaniks venture it includes the unique combination of services, products, image, and distribution that the company carries forward. As we have implemented the 4P’s in our venture  which comprises of Products, Price , Promotions and Place. Which will give us a good scope for a new entrant into the service industry

GAURAV KUKAR ()

        My part with our group was the introduction, Ansoff, value chain and Porter generic methods. It had been a great pleasure for me to work with our group mates. Since our venture was unique I faced some challenges to fit my marketing techniques research with our topic.

Value chain

With related to our venture, I did research on warehouse in order to receive our inventories, some soft wares for inventory control etc. Service which create a customer base for us like at lower price with better quality.  For the distribution channels we decided to hire some vehicles on rent for the initial start. For the marketing propose we decided to create chat rooms, customer support number for our venture etc.

Poters

After discussing unique resources and core competences of our venture we have studied the Porter's Generic strategies. According to the two of the main headings of the porter’s our venture falls under cost advantage. Since we are targeting a narrow market segment we only providing service in Coventry area with a focus strategy.

Ansoff

Ansoff's matrix is one of the most well know frameworks for deciding upon strategies for growth. Most of my research directed towards my Ansoff strategy. Since our strategy is different from other ECommerce venture, we fall under market development. Electronic market is already existing but we focused on new methods of developing our market with the existing products.

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