Ecommerce Case Study

Authors Avatar by riickii19 (student)

In order to begin E-commerce for the Cuckoo Games would be required to have an Internet Service Provider or more commonly referred to as an ISP. An internet service provider is a company that provides individuals and other companies access to the Internet and other related services. These services could include Web site building and virtual hosting. The reason that an internet service provider is required is because they have  the equipment and the telecommunication line access required to have a point-of-presence on the Internet for the particular area. A point of presence is an access point from a particular area to the internet. The larger ISPs have their own high-speed leased lines so that they are less dependent on the telecommunication providers and can provide better service to their customers. The internet service provider will enable Cuckoo Games to connect to the internet and open them up to a number of other opportunities such as an online website, online payment methods and ultimately selling their products online through E-Commerce.

It is essential for Cuckoo Games to have a sufficient computer network with a specification that will be able to cope with working online. This may mean that Cuckoo Games will need to purchase more equipment or improve existing equipment. In order for Cuckoo Games to benefit from E-Commerce they must have a few essential pieces of hardware and software. For example it will be essential for Cuckoo Games to have a Printer and could be beneficial if this also integrated Fax and photocopying facilities. A printer will be essential for the company as they will be required to print out invoices and receipts if necessary in order to attach to the products when they are being dispatched. The use of fax and photocopying facilities will enable them to receive information through fax enabling them to have a hard copy of the information. The ability to photocopy will allow the company to copy and information that they may need to keep, this could also be useful for customer service. I would ensure that Cuckoo Games was equipped with a modern printer with both a fax and photocopying function in order to help within the running of the business and providing invoices etc. for the customer.

It will be essential that Cuckoo Games have a computer or computers that will be able to handle the tasks required by the company. This may include holding all stock figures, process online orders, dealing with customer queries and giving real time support to customers. It is essential that the Cuckoo computers have sufficient Memory in order to store all the information necessary. It is also essential that the computers processor is quick enough to handle all of the information and tasks that will be necessary in the company. I would recommend that Cuckoo Games use an i7 processor; this will give them a great ability to multitask and will give them more than enough power to cope with peak times.

It will be necessary for Cuckoo Games to use a variety of software such as Microsoft word, Microsoft excel and many more. These will be essential for the company as they will be used in order to keep track of stock and can be used in order to produce invoices. Although this software can be expensive to purchase it will be extremely useful and despite their being a large number of variations and updates it is not completely necessary to upgrade at every stage as although the newer version may have some extra features an older version will do a sufficient job aswell.

In order for Cuckoo Games to make the most of E-Commerce it is essential that they have a website that looks professional, easy to use and is eye catching and grabs your attention. Although having a professionally made website can be expensive to have produced but Cuckoo Games will greatly benefit from a professional website rather than a cheaper alternative. If Cuckoo Games were to choose a cheaper alternative when having a website created it may mean that the website does not include as many features, for example scroll bars, moving images, hover over features. This will cause the website to become plain and boring making it hard for the customer to keep their attention on it. The website must keep the customers attention and at the same time encourage them to continue exploring further into the products and listings. By having an eye catching and user friendly website it can help to encourage customers to perhaps purchase more than they intended or to return to the website in the future.

Websites can be either a liquid layout or a static layout. A liquid website is when the size of the website adjusts to the resolution on the viewer’s screen ensuring that it is always ‘full screen’. A static layout for a website will make the website remain the same size regardless of screen resolution.

A benefit of a static layout for a website is that a fixed width layout allows the designer to build pages that will look identical no matter who is looking at them. They also ensure that elements such as images will not overpower text on smaller monitors, because the width of the entire page will include those elements. The scan length will not be impacted on large segments of text, no matter how wide the Web browser is. Although there are a number of benefits for static websites there are also a number of drawbacks, these include; Fixed width layouts can cause horizontal scrolling in smaller browser windows. And most people don't like to scroll horizontally. They can also result in large expanses of whitespace in larger monitors, resulting in a lot of unused space and more scrolling vertically than might otherwise be necessary. Fixed width layouts don't handle customer changes to font sizes very well. For small increases in the font size, they can be okay, but for larger increases, the layout can become compromised.

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There are a number of benefits for using liquid layouts as opposed to a static layout. A liquid width layout expands and contracts to fill the available space, this means that All available real estate is used, allowing the designer to display more content on larger monitors, but still remain viable on smaller displays. Liquid layouts also provide consistency in relative widths, allowing a page to respond more dynamically to customer-imposed restrictions like larger font sizes. Although there are a number of benefits to having a liquid layout there are also a number of drawbacks to this. Liquid layouts allow ...

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This is a very comprehensive and thorough case study of the realities of e-commerce that an organisation must consider when setting up to conduct their business online. It includes a full rage of practical and logistical issues and also hints at the social and ethical ones for example the closure of high street shops with which we are all to familiar. This is a whole other section of work though! There is good structure to the case study using a clear pattern of description, explanation, advantages and disadvantages. There is then evaluation of each particular topic within the context of Cuckoo Games, a company considering an online presence. The essay is balanced overall and reads well (not including the repeated chunk in the middle!). In terms of content there is more than enough to have covered the main points relating to e-commerce. In terms of improvement to this there are some things in terms of the quality of written communication that could be improved for example the odd wrong word or a sentence that does not make perfect sense (although the message gets put across properly). A final careful read through will address this and this hasn't been done yet (see repeated section!). This is a 5 star piece of work. Thorough, accurate, well considered and effectively covering more than enough information to give a thorough account of e-commerce in the context of a business considering its options of expanding in this way.