Small Business Websites

Tutorial Questions Week 13

Under the caption “Future Trends” discuss three small business online future trends from your perspective.

Develop 2-3 paragraphs for each trend, using your own words.

Some of the future trends for small business would include some of the following:

Mobile Shopping: This sort of trend is starting to pick up the pace in recent years, mainly because of the amazing technology that comes up every day. Now things are smaller and more powerful than before therefore able to do many things which couldn’t have been done three or four years ago. For instance now mobile phones work as digital cameras; PDA’s have now fused with mobile phones and are able to go online, and surf on the net.

Mobile shopping is relatively new compared to the rest of the online business technology, and it is growing fast. Now there are many people who do manage their business through their mobiles.

Selling ‘virtual goods’: Things which do not exist in real life but only inside the computers, example of this would be the online program/game called ‘second life’, in this virtual world people create items, and other different things and then are able to trade it with other players, people are able to buy houses, chairs, guitars, and all sort of things. Another example could be mmorpgs in which people create virtual characters and gain experience to level-up, they also gain gold and items which makes them more powerful. People are starting to sell this items and gold for real money to newer players which don’t want to go through the whole process. This is what is called the sale of virtual goods, selling things which do not exist in reality but only on a computer in exchange for money.

Small businesses will start online: One of the most important trends that people have omitted is the fact that there will be lots and lots of small businesses that are and will start online. Nowadays with the trend that everyone has to have their own business to succeed in their financial life, doing so online will be one of their first choices. This number would increase rapidly in the following years, due to the fact that creating a business online requires a minimum capital and also allows the business to be ‘viewed’ by the whole world.

Tutorial questions week 12

Small Business Websites

Tutorial Notes 12

1.                     Why do companies need to carry out website performance analysis?

It is done to see how the website is doing and the website statistic of what is viewed, when it’s viewed and what products or information are most viewed so that things could be improved.

2.                     What are the differences between back-end standards and front-end standards?

Back end would be customer related and front end would be customer interaction related.

3.                     Give examples of some of the standards that could be used as benchmarks for website performance analysis.

It would be the common standards such as, network management standards, database management standards, software integration and payment processing.

4.                     Why is supply chain as essential for e-business as it is for the traditional business? Discuss.

Supply chain is essential for all sorts of business since goods have to be delivered to the customers.

5.                     What are the “Terms of Delivery”? Explain.

CIF and FOB.

6.                     What does “CIF” stand for?

Cost insurance and freight.

7.                     If you place an order for a CD with a US website, what would you regard as a reasonable time-frame for the order to be fulfilled? Discuss.

A reasonable time frame would probably be week if the cd is ordered in the US and mailed to Australia. If the US website has a sub company or affliated company in Australia, it could then be ordered from the Australian company and delivered within a shorter time frame.

8.                     What is “colour coordination”? Give examples.

Colour coordination would be the types of colours used on a website. Such as RMIT’s blue black and red colour coordination.

9.                     Do you feel that human involvement is required for CM (Content Management) or it can be accomplished fully through the use of content management software? Discuss.

The software is used to assist users and it is not automatic.

10.                Give examples of intra-industry benchmarks for websites.

11.                List and discuss some of the Website Performance analysis techniques.

Criteria based, SWOT analysis and webqual.

Tutorial questions week 11

Tutorial Notes

Week 11

1.                     What are the essentials for a shopping cart? List and discuss.

Database linkage, product catalogue and payment system integrated.

2.                     When designing a shopping cart? What are the necessary features to consider?

Product and service categories, navigation bar and map and dynamic updates.

3.                     Give examples of dynamic updates to a shopping cart

Since products are updated dynamically from a database. If an item is sold out, the quantity of that particular product in the shopping cart would state sold out.

4.                     What is ISC? Explain with examples.

The shopping carts can be linked to VANs, ERP supply chain management system and JIT enabled.

5.                     How can ISC improve the JIT?

It would make things run a lot quicker and userfriendly.

6.                     What are the differences between B2B and B2C shopping carts? Discuss.

B2b shopping carts have a high degree of customization, restricted access and in-built customer service option where as B2C shopping carts would be similar to B2B’s but lower degree of cutomization.

7.                     What is the relationship between the shopping cart and the physical storefront?

Common database, integrated supply chain management and shared management processes.

8.                     What are the key features of “Good” and “Bad” shopping carts?

Good features would contain extensive product lists, integrated payment options and in-built account management facilities and Bad features would be unsorted product lists, no direct links to payments and poor stock management at the back-end.

9.                     Can you develop a shopping cart? What are your technical/skill requirements?

Yes it is possible to, requirements would be the development software and knowing how to link the database to it.

10.                What are the differences between the back-end and the front-end of the shopping cart? Discuss/

Backend shopping cart- monitoring stock level, transaction accuracy, distribution and delivery and accessibility control. Front end would be the final price calculation and interaction between the business and customers.

11.                 Identify the elements of a back-end of the shopping cart.

Monitoring stock level, transaction accuracy, distribution and delivery and accessibility control.

12.                What is an “Intelligent” shopping cart?

Sensitive to price changes, pricing may vary depending on the market conditions.

Tutorial questions week 10

Small Business Websites

Tutorial Notes 10

Exercises

1.                      Research, and write comments on, the PayPal Australia payment option

Paypal basically works as a middle person. This service is for transactions between customers and sellers. How does it work? First off both users buyers and sellers have to create a paypal account. Buyers would then have to deposit money into the account via credit card or bank transfers. There would be a transaction option where buyers can enter details of the seller so that payment could be made. This payment option would be recommended since it’s cheap, user friendly and easy to use. There is a slight transaction fee and free withdrawal fee to banks if it’s more than $150.

2.                      Research,  and write comments on, the BPay payment option

Bpay payment allows users to pay bills online or any form of payments that it supports, such as electricity, phone bills etc. The bill or invoice would be a bpay code which you have to type in before the payment and this would be needed to make the payment.

3.                      Research,  and write comments on, the POSTbillpay payment option

POSTbillpay can be done via the internet, phone or in person. On the invoice they would be a postbillpay code which you have to type in online or phone. This payment option is similar to Bpay.

Tutorial questions week 9

Small Business Websites

Tutorial Notes 9

1.                     What are the 3 elements of commercial websites?

The 3 elements would be functionality, informational content and emotional appeal.

2.                     How do you define emotional appeal?

It would be hard to measure and it is often irrational.

3.                     What are the biggest limitations of the emotional appeal?

The biggest limitation would be the understanding of those that are irrational which makes it hard to measure.

4.                     Is emotional appeal more effective in B2B or B2C settings? Discuss

B2C since it’s towards customers and this would affect the customers emotions.

5.                     What are the possible ways of measuring effectiveness of the emotional appeal? Discuss.

It would probably be feedbacks written by the customers to the business.

6.                     What is the Relationship between informational content and functionality?

Interdependence, integration is essential and often poses a major problem for companies as content is developed by people other than web developers.

7.                     Would you Use Microsoft Word for Web Content Development? Discuss.

No since it’s not a web authoring too, other softwares such as frontpage or dreamweaver would be recommended.

8.                     Give examples of content friendly applications

Frontpage and dreamweaver.

9.                     Discuss the limitations of these applications web-development-wise.

If there are plenty of contents, it would be hard to organize them.

10.                What are the key differences between primary, secondary and supporting content?

Primary would be instrumental in keeping the website up and running, key sections of the website and requires regular updates. And secondary would be policies, faq and static information.

11.                Why it is so difficult to classify links is either informational content or functionality?

It is because the informational contents of the links can also be updated and changed.

Exercise

Identify and locate three small-business websites and make your own observations about their content and functionality. Provide sufficient information for a reader to quickly comprehend the nature of the business and what services/products it is offering - the URL is a must.

For preference, select Australian-based businesses.

www.noodlebox.com.au

Contents observed are good, good informations website and good functionality.

www.ebay.com.au

Plenty of informational content and good functionality.

www.rmit.edu.au

Information contents are there and very bad functionality.