SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

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Shweta Rai(39) Yashodhara Rao(43) Mohd. Asad(20) Ashif Ansari(08)

INTRODUCTION

Whether any business is small or big, ecommerce has a lot to offer. More and more offline businesses are making web site to further promote themselves. And customers expect them too. In fact, one of the first things people look for when they see an ad is a web site or e-mail address. An ecommerce site gives our business several advantages: - It reaches more people - It makes information more accessible - It makes order and payment processing faster and easier But ecommerce development requires careful and thoughtful planning.

BENEFITS OF E-COMMERCE

Some of the benefits of electronic commerce are as follows:Product promotion Cost saving Timely information Information consistency Better customer service Better customer relationship Customization of products Competitive advantages Convenience of doing business

Dimensions of E-commerce

HOW DO WE START?
1. DOMAIN NAME. Register a good domain name that is easy to read and memorize. We may or may not use a hyphen for two-word domains. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. If possible, register them both. Look for expired domains before getting a new one. Search engines consider old domains more reliable than new ones. 2. WEB SITE. Second in ecommerce development is making a business web site. The site must have a clear description of the business (including history and achievements), complete product listings and descriptions, contact pages, testimonials, news and press releases, and information pages like a FAQ and a site map. The web site must be simple yet attractive.

3.WEB HOST. We must make sure to choose a web host that is stable and reliable. Does it guarantee 24 hour uptime? Is tech support always available? What security options does it have? Bandwidth? Disk space? Ecommerce development is not the same as personal web site maintenance. The demands are higher and more urgent. So we have to keep that in mind when choosing. 4. SECURITY. Get authenticated SSL certificates and use secure data encryption for the order pages. SSL isn't understood by customers but they'll trust more if they see it. 5. PAYMENT METHODS. How do we plan to accept payment? Credit card? Wire transfer? PayPal? Western Union? Credit card is a favorite in ecommerce development, and so is PayPal. But we don't limit the customer's options. We should Be ready to provide alternatives for those who can't use these payment methods.

6. PROMOTION. This is where SEO or search engine optimization comes in. The sure-footed way to get to the top is to get other great web sites to link to us. If not,we can buy keywords from search engines. When those keywords are searched, our site will appear at the top. we should also get some SEO software.

E-COMMERCE SITE FOR ONLINE BOOK SALES

The objective of this presentation is to develop a general purpose e-commerce store where any product (such as books, CDs, computers, mobile phones, electronic items, and home appliances) can be bought from the comfort of home through the Internet. An online store is a virtual store on the Internet where customers can browse the catalog and select products of interest. The selected items may be collected in a shopping cart.

PROJECT DESIGN

In order to design a web site, the relational database must be designed first. Conceptual design can be divided into two parts: The data model and the process model.

Process Models for Website Development

There are different website development process models, which can be used for website development. The common models include: 1-System Development Life Cycle 2-Prototyping Model 3-Rapid Application Development Model 4-UML Based Development Model

However, in most of the models the website development process goes through the similar phases. In some models two phases may be clubbed together to make one process or a process may be divided between two processes.

PROCESS MODEL

A Process Model tells us about how the data is processed and how the data flows from one table to another to gather the required information. This model consists of the Functional Decomposition Diagram and Data Flow Diagram(DFD).

Customer-Browse Context DFD

Customer - ShoppingCart Context DFD

User Interface Design

Steps in e-commerce website development

There are numerous stages in the web site design and development process. From gathering initial information, to the creation of your web site, and finally to maintenance to keep your web site up to date and current.
Stage 1 Information Gathering Stage 2 Requirement Analysis Stage 3 Planning Stage 4 Design Stage 5 Development Stage 6 Content Writing Stage 7 Testing Stage 8 Delivery Stage 9 Maintenance and Updating

INFORMATION GATHERING

This first step is the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company it is created for. It involves a good understanding of you what your business goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals. Certain things to consider are: Purpose What is the purpose of the site? Do we want to provide information, promote a service, sell a product ?

Goals What do we hope to accomplish by building this web site? Two of the more common goals are either to make money or share information. Target Audience Is there a specific group of people that will help us reach our goals? Consider their age, sex or interests this will later help determine the best design style for our site. Content What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on our site? Are they looking for specific information, a particular product or service, online ordering?

REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS

After the required information has been gathered, the next phase in web design and development software process is requirement analysis. Total analysis of how the system developed is going to help and replace the existing system is done in this stage. The target audience of the website also needs to be taken into consideration.

Requirement Analysis for E-Commerce Website

We need an online shopping cart program. We need to secure everything from the time customers enter our site through our "Thank you for your order" acknowledgement and receipt. We need a way to accept payments from a credit card. We need to know what we sold, when we sold it, to whom we sold it, for how much (including taxes and shipping) and how that relates to inventory.

We need to have a reliable and efficient mechanism for handling returns and customer complaints. We should always declare what information we gather and what we do with it as well as how we protect it. And we need to have a way to ensure and measure customer satisfaction with our service and product.

PLANNING

At this stage, the requirement analysis team can seek help from web designers, developers and not to forget, testers. This will help them to come up with a realistic plan to execute the project. The site map for the website should be prepared at this stage. The entire website may have to be divided into topics and sub topics. At the same time, a plan can be chalked out for navigation through the system. The interface should be made in such a way, that navigation between the different pages and sections of the website is easy. The plan needs to also take different forms, pop ups and flash, e-commerce applications, etc., into consideration and plan for them accordingly.

DESIGN

After the planning phase comes the website design phase. In this phase the logo of the company, colors, background, etc., to be used in the website are taken into consideration. More than one prototype of web page design will have to be created. The prototypes are normally shown to the client. The client approves one of the many prototypes and then further work can be carried out on the website. This is a crucial phase in the portal development process. The database team will take the database requirements into consideration at this stage. The database design will also be finalized simultaneously.

DEVELOPMENT

After the design has been approved, the real development process starts. The process normally starts with the development of the home page. There are prototypes or templates created for the other pages. All the required elements on the website are implemented at this stage. On the technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development. This involves writing valid XHTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible.

CONTENT WRITING

Website content is an important part of the website. The content has to be so written, that the customers are attracted to the product or services offered by the company. The website content development can be assigned to professional content developers. These professionals do content writing for the website, which will take into consideration design templates, grammar, spelling and develop relevant and specific content.

TESTING

Like for any software, the website also has to go through software testing life cycle. The software testing for websites is more rigorous. The testing procedure has to take into consideration the multi-user system, along with server requirements, etc. Web browser testing is also carried out to ensure that the website does indeed work in all the browsers. Both automated and manual testing procedures are carried out on the system.

Life-cycle testing process model for e-commerce website

Functional Testing
Product quality enhancements are required to increase overall business profitability. With Functional testing we verify that the application performs according to specifications. From the starting of a project our test analyst works with the client and the development manager to prepare effective test cases according to the requirements. They are Unit Testing Smoke testing / Sanity testing System & Integration Testing Usability Testing Regression Testing User Acceptance Testing Globalization Testing Exploratory Testing

Performance Testing

The performance testing include load testing, stress testing, scalability testing, reliability testing and volume testing. The objective of performance testing is to break the application to avoid the last minute surprises and to demonstrate that the system meets the performance Key Features of Performance Testing Services: Flexible User Scenarios Dynamic Data Generation Load test up to 1000 users Real-world Load Simulation Distributed Load Testing

DELIVERY

After the final approval of the website, the website is delivered. Normally the web development services also offer domain name registration along with web hosting services. We may look for low cost web hosting to lower the cost of the website. The site is uploaded on a web server and the last test is carried out. The last test ensures that all the necessary files have been uploaded and the site is fully functional.

MAINTENANCE AND UPDATING

This is an important process in the website development process. It is important to keep the website updated with the new requirements. For which the website may have to go through the entire cycle again. In case of any problem to the website, measures have to be taken to remedy the problem at the earliest. After the website development process is over, measures will have to be taken to increase website traffic. Different measures will also to be taken so that the website is included in the web directories, which will help the website with better traffic and clientele. Website submission to different search engines may also be considered, as it will help to increase traffic to the website.

THANK YOU!