Business Essays Online Shopping Mall

Business Essays Online stigmatiseping MallOnline Shopping MallThis handle presents the feasibility exact for growing the online obtain perambulation for UK retail out allows and nodes. The idea was translated by timbreing at the staggering growth of the internet drug user and online wanderping specially in UK with a record 12.8 billion pound online sale last year.This report analysis the need for online shopping mall as it provides a big luck to those who have less technical skills in developing the retail online identifys for themselves and these hosting identifys volition help them do the online business with les administration for a remuneration solo.The report is divide into nine sections starting from the explanation of what be online shopping mall and its importance in todays competitive business world along with the focus on how technology helps business to grow.Types of technology usable for developing online shopping mall ar as well discussed. For ba ck blockade development MySQL 5.0 data lay beat is utilize. On front end JSP pull up stakesing be utilize to develop the script as its easy to learn as well as more(prenominal) versatile.The basic cost conglomerate is for renting the set on ISP servers, the purchase of solid ground divulge, the registration with the search engines (directories) and the most important advertisement to generate job for the online shopping mall.In the end a detailed project plan on the basis of time and activities is explained in context of the feasibility of online shopping mall from data study trough construction of the site and maintenance.Aims and object glassivesAimsThe aim of this study is to present a formal report and a superpower point presentation on the feasibility of developing the online shopping mall for UK nodes and retailers.ObjectivesThe objective of this feasibility report is toProvide about(predicate) the background, importance and growth of the online shopping mall i n UK.Preparing a feasibility report by providing the tuition regarding site development, technology available and cost involvedPrep atomic number 18 the project plan andPrepare a four minute power point presentation to explain the feasibility of online shopping mall.1. Introduction1.1 Concept of Online Shopping MallThe idea of online shopping mall originates from e-commerce. E commerce is in practice in most of the developed countries of the world such(prenominal) as USA, UK, and atomic number 63 etc where shopping concept is changing from physical purchase to virtual buying. This typesetters case of business is very popular among the retail outlets that are looking for a boost in their sale by offering customers new channels or mediums to make a purchase. This way non only the customer has more options scarcely companies similarly enjoy an increase in their sale due to increase online outlet.Even after the immense success of e commerce there was a big group of business who ei ther knew how to do e-commerce or they were ineffective to manage the administration of such technical field which required a lot of web k straightawayledge. This generates a need of a place where these retail outlets sight start their online business but without some(prenominal) hassle.Online shopping mall is basically the by product of e-commerce. The idea is to provide the easiest platform to these retail outlets that feces do online business without any trouble or risk. Its a site where any retail outlet grass come up registered and have a space and the rest of the administration provide be d oneness by the host of that online mall. Not only that but also the host go out be the one who leave alone take c are of all defrayal procedures.Online shopping mall provides a lot of benefits to the retail outlets on the site such as administrative, management of the site as well as invoicing of the business. Customer is benefited too. He has not only the variety but also ease to find what of all time he is looking for at one place. The choices available to customer is many as products available on online shopping mall tail assembly range from at bottom the product category (all Nike products) or an entirely different product type ( homecare, clothing, electronics etc.) from as many retailers possible . 1.2 Scope of Online Shopping Mall In UKEurope has a staggering 42 million user of internet and talking of Britain, 11 000 users are adding to the list annually. This gives an immense boost in the revenues generated by online activities on monthly basis.Among all the internet activity online shopping is not only generating the maximum revenues but also is growing at the fastest speed. It brush aside be proved by the fact that almost 30% of all the sites are used for trading rather than attracting the advertisers for the means of business. By looking at this statistics and discriminating that this will grow to another 30% within next few Years businesses are attracted towards internet to boost their sale with a relevant pitiful cost, one of the best feature of online shopping.Moreover online shopping mall further reduces the cost and hassle for those retailers who have less technical skills to take the optimum receipts of the online business.According to the report of Ian Grant, as compare to Italy, Germany, France etc UK is the top most country in online shopping having a sale of approximately 12.8 billion pounds along with a record growth of 75% in online sale since 2005 till date2. Building The Online Shopping MallIn general there are 4 basic steps which you have to follow to have an online shopping mallGet a company who will host your siteGet yourself domain name for your online shopping mall. For a search engine you need to get directories. So Register with them Attract internet user with advertisement ( traffic generation)To maintain the sites you have to arrange the important tools required for order processing, invoicing and dealing2.1 Background Research For Building An Online Shopping SiteBefore starting to get up an online shopping mall we need to have clear idea of few things that will be needed once the site is complete.Domain nameWebsite Hosting hard Server CertificateMerchant AccountPayment performance gateway.2.1.1 Domain NameThe domain name is that name by which will be accepted on the internet, to show our online appearance we need a domain name for our website, this name can be a of up to 67 characters in aloofness and should be easy and meaningful to remember so that customer can remember it easily. The domain name is registered with a suffix, this suffix is a . Extension and represents the character of the website. Few common extensions are.com used for commercial business website.net. used for commercial network.org used for organization.There are other extensions available as well these include, .biz, .edu, .tv etc. Choosing a domain name is a difficult task as here are close t o 128 Million domain name registered and that is the reason thats why choosing a name that will represent out MALL will be a difficult task as most of the name are already taken. Therefore lots of brainstorming is required to select a name with following quality.It should be short short to memorizeShould not be confusable.Not easy to misspellShould represent the MALLConsidering these factor we can choose a domain name that will represent our website.2.1.2 Website HostingA web hosting company provides space and bandwidth on rent, once our site is developed we can put the content of the website on the allocated space on the hosting server, this transfer can be made from development site to hosting server using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) softwares. Once website is uploaded and domain is enjoin to rented space. The site is up and liberationning and whenever user enters the domain it is directed to this space.A web server is a powerful computer machine which is designed in such a wa y that it can bare the load of internet traffic accessing the website present on it. This server can be on any plat form either Linux or Windows but should be able to handle the load. The web hosting companies usually setup these servers in data centres these data centres are responsible for making the backup and providing tribute of data. The place responsibility of data centre is to make sure that website is always present on the internet.A distinctive process of how the web server makes a bridge between the website visitor and the administrator of the website is shown in the diagram below (courtesy of eaysiteguid.com)The visitor enter the domain name of the mall in the web browser, the domain name is resolved on the domain name server (DNS) and the user browser connects to the web server which in return send the contents of the website to the visitors browser. Similarly the developer can connect to the web server to upload new contents and for management of website.2.1.3 SSL Pr otectionSecure Socket stage (SSL) is the technology that provides an encrypted link between your host site and the web server. An SSL is required as we pauperization to provide safe environment to the customer as our website will be involved in credit circular trans carry through, and there might be a chance of theft of education and customer personal randomness can be jeopardized.For our Shopping Mall we require SSL certificate to make our customer feel comfortable while they are giving there teaching to us, they need to be sure that there information will be kept private and only will be used for the transaction they are making, we are obligated to protect our customers.In the real mall there are guards to protect customers and shops from theft same as we need SSL as our mall guard. Another reason of implementing SSL is that there can be legal consequences as if some ones information is compromised, wherefore as we are not involved in theft but we can be the generator that gives the way to let other people information accusable and that customer can get us in to trouble. So SSL can be our first line of defence. Therefore a SSL certificate is required for our eCommerce site as we may unlax customers if we cant protect there information.How SSL ProtectsIn SSL the transfer of data from the user webpage to the web server is in encrypted form, the mark is scramble in such a way that no one can use it outside, the encryption can be 128 bits or 256 bits depending on the complexity of encryption, mostly for online shopping site 128 bit encryption is used, the 256bit is usually used by banks. This certificate is issued by the SSL issuing vendor that provide certificate with a encryption key, this encryption key is put on the server that do the SSL encryption, the website host will install this certificate on the web server, once installed when a customer access the site, a padlock is shown on the bottom of the browser that tell that this site is secure, im politeing the padlock shows the certificate, which tell whos this certificate belongs to.The cost of SSL is declined rapidly from 400 pounds to now it is between 20 to 60 Pounds per year, SSL can be purchase by different vendors like VERISIGN. There is a facility to get a overlap SSL which is provided by the host. This SSL certificate is further cheaper but the drawback is that when a user or customer check the certificate the name of the host appears on the certificate sort of of the merchandiser that can cause confusion on user mind as the information will not match with the site owner. So its best to have our own SSL certificate, after getting the certificate we can install the certificate on the root directory of our web server.2.1.4 Merchant AccountA merchandiser theme is an account which is provided by banks or finical institution. This type of bank account allows any e-commerce business to accept credit cards online, it is used by customers to deposit the money electroni cally that is through credit cards, the process where the money is transferred through credit card is called Card Not Present (CNP) merchant account and is needed when the customer wear upont send the money in physical form during the transaction.Merchant account can be undefended by any bank which gives this facility to the merchant to accept transaction electronically. To open a merchant account negotiation is done with the bank or institution over the different charges, these charges involvedUp Front Application Fees This is the fees that the provider charges for handling the transitions, as the number of merchant account provides are increase and competition is make up, most of the providers waive this fee off.Statement fee This is the fix amount fee that the merchant have to pay for his account, this is normally around 10 to 15 pounds per month, and this fee is also called on going fixed fee.Discount rate This is the sales commission charge by the merchant account provider o n each transaction it is normally between 2 to 4 percent of the sales.Fixed Transaction Fee This is the fixed transaction fee for each sale, unlike the discount rate this fee is a fixed amount and not the percentage, this fee is usually 0.05 to 0.01 pounds per sale.Termination Fee This fee is aerated if the account is closed before the contract period is ended.Chargeback Fees This fee is charges if a customer wants a refund and want to withdraw there money then the merchant account provider will charge a fee usually between 5 to 10 pounds on each withdrawal.A merchant account acts as a go between your gateway (Credit card mainframe) and your business account, the money comes to this account and passes to your business account and if there are chargeback or user cancel the transaction money is takes from you business count and from merchant account gets out.2.1.5 Payment MethodThe payment method on an online shopping site the process is almost same as the physical shopping site, lik e in shops peoples comes select items or products and pay cash on the counter, in online shopping site customer visit the website select item and put in the ring ( THE CART) and finally check mark using credit card.Once customer is checkout his credit card is needed to be verified, this is checking whether credit card is valid and that there is money in the account and also that there is no skulker case. The checking of the credit card can be done by using a payment processing method there are two types of payment processing methodsPayment ProcessorPayment GatewaysPayment GatewayThis method involves checking credit card information in real time as the transaction is taking place, The gateway dish is provided by different companies like LinkPoint, Authorize Net etc. The gateway mainframe verifies the credit card information in real time and completes the whole process (acceptation or rejection) of payment within second and traction results are displayed to customers. The process works like this.After customer has indomitable the item he wants to purchase he clicks the BUY spill on the webpage.Once the customer is finish with shopping, he clicks on the checkout expiration which takes the customer to a secure form where his personal information is entered including the credit card information.The credit card information is send to the payment gateway.The gateway processor sends the transaction data to merchants bank, which then passes the information to Credit card interchange.The credit card interchange then sends the data to credit card issuer for verification.The issuer then verifies the data and sends the result to credit card exchange whether the information is valid or not.The credit card exchange then sends the acceptance or abnegation information to merchants bank processor.The transaction results send by the merchants bank processor are passed to payment gateway.The payment gate way then send the denial or acceptance information to the merchant who then display the confirmation or rejection of purchase on the webpage.If transaction is prospered the merchant account is debited and customers is credited (this process is done in real time).The whole process is depicted in the figure belowAdvantagesThis method provides captain solution as all the transaction is done in real time.Transaction result can be displayed on the webpage that is acceptance or denialThe process is invisible to the customer.The funds are directly deposited in the merchants bank account. And merchant dont have to worry about fund deposition as the whole process is automatic. This is because the fraud is detected before the product is shipped.Some service provider provide fraud shelter as well, this protects the merchant and the actual card holder to become the victim of fraud.Transaction fee and service charges are less then of payment processor.DisadvantagesThis humour of payment processing required a merchant accountCost of setup is high then paymen t processor.Payment ProcessorThis method is also called delayed response as the transaction is not completed in real time. When the user is ready to checkout he is redirected to payment processor service provider, such as PayPal, Verisign PayFlow link etc and these providers then handles the transaction for the merchants.The customer is informed about the completion of transaction once he is finish checkout but in actual the process is of verification is started at this time. The credit card is processed and transaction approval or decline results are informed to the merchant who is then responsible to inform the customer about the transaction approval or rejection thought email. The process works like thisAfter customer has decided the item he wants to purchase he clicks the BUY button on the webpage.Once the customer is finish with shopping, he click on the checkout button which takes the customer to a secure form on a ternary party website where his personal information is taken , once user finish checkout he is shown transaction is completeThe user part is now done, the user thinks that transaction is complete but in actual the information is send to payment processor that then communicates with the banks to authorize the credit card.This process can take minutes or up to a daysIf transaction is denied the merchant are notified through an email, if transaction is successful the cash is deposited to merchants account. Other wise merchant has to inform the customer that the transaction is denied.AdvantagesNo merchant account is required as third party processor will handle the transaction and will deposit the money to your accountCost less to setup then process gateways.Transaction fee and process charges are less then process gateways.DisadvantagesDelay in transaction process to completeCredit card is checked for authorisation after the user is informed that transaction is complete.Customers are redirected to third party website such as PAYPAL etc for chec kout process and to finish transaction, this losses the uniqueness of mark as customers sees that he is being redirected and this causes the flow to break.Customers are informed later whether the transaction is accepted or denied, and if denied then customer can get irritated.3. sign Requirement3.1 The UsersThe concept of this project is to design a website mall which can serve two types of customers one will be the shop owners who would like to open a shop in our virtual mall and second will the customers who will purchase item from those shops. An Administrator will be the one who will administer the mall, the shop owners and the customers. Therefore our design should coupe up there type of users, this include the ADMINISTRATOR who will be looking before the whole site, The ca-ca owner who will be managing a shop in the Mall, and the CUSTOMER who will be purchasing the products.3.1.1 AdministratorAdministrator will be user who will have full access to the MALL, he can be said a s a super user, all the implore to open a shop will be send to the administrator and then admin will decide weather to accept the request or reject itAdmin will also responsible for managing the categories or subcategories of shops, he can add remove or update them as required without affecting the shop owners. Admin will also look after feedback sent and can reply to them or remove them. The Use case diagram below show what actions admin can perform in the system.3.1.2 Shop OwnerIf a user want to open the shop in the mall, he will fill in the form and send it to administrator, If his request is canonic by the administrator and is granted space in the mall he will become the shop owner,The responsibilities of shop owner is to manage the shop, he can add remove categories, design a catalogue and can remove, add or update item in the catalogue. He can also generate several reports regarding the sales and inventory that will keep him up to date f the business. A shop owner can remove the shop anytime he wants. The Use case diagram below shows what action shop owner can perform on the system. 3.1.3 Mall CustomerMall customers will be the users who will purchase products from the mall they can browse the mall search shops, products within different shops and can compare prices. After they have decided what they want to buy, they can add the items to the shopping cart and can checkout at any stage during there stay on the virtual mall, when checking out customer can login and all this information will be updated in the checkout form.A customer can login any time to view his order positioning or he can change his personal details like shipping address and other information. The Use case diagram below shows what action mall customer can perform on the system.3.2 Mall InterfaceAn initial study was done on what port wine will be created for the Mall, these interface includes.3.2.1 Admin InterfaceADMINISTRATOR ADMINThis interface will only be available to administrat or and let user administer the site from accepting shop request to generating reports and modifying site contents.3.2.2 Shop Owner InterfaceCATALOGUE CREATOR A catalogue creator interface will be available to shop owners where shop owners can add, remove or update items by category. These items will be added to the catalogue accessible by the customers.SHOP OWNER ADMIN This page will be available only to shop owner from there he can perform the administration of this shop, this include link to catalogue creator, report generator and information updater.3.2.3 Customer InterfaceCATALOGUE For every shop a catalogue will be created from where customer can find item information and price. ware SEARCH A search page will be build where customer can search for products this page will fetch the results from the data bestial and display them on the search page.SHOP SEARCH This feature will allow customers to search for shops by categoriesSHOPPING BASKET A shopping basket will be created whic h will be linked with the BUY button and when a customer hits the buy button the selected item will be added to the basked, the customer can view this basket to update or remove items.CHECKOUT FORM A form will be created that will take customer information and send it to processor gateway for verification and save the transaction data in the database.3.2.4 MiscellaneousLOGIN INTERFACE A login interface will be provided where administrator, shop owner and customers (optional) can login the user will be directed to the page his user type belongs to.REGISTRATION PAGE This page will let user to register with the site either as a customer or shop owner.4. Technology Available for DevelopmentNow days different technologies are available for developing software and website. Few of them are open source and do no add cost in development. For building our website we require to choose technology for Backend and Front end development.4.1 BackendBackend is where the Website data will be stored, this data can be of the customer, shop owner or can be site contents. For an ecommerce activity databases are the foundation, all the information comes from the database and all the information will go to the data base. There are several databases technologies available like MSACCESS, MSSQL and MYSQL.MSACCESS is Microsoft database that can run on windows base servers. It is used for small scale ecommerce website, it is easy to develop database using MSACCES for developing low traffic site. It is a file ground database and the paradox with file based database is that if a data base crash all the data is lost.MS SQL SERVER is also Microsoft based database server which has wide support, it has powerful enhanced feature like stored procedure. It is very fast and stable. A free Express developer edition is available to create local anaesthetic database for development and testing.MYSQL SERVER is an open source database, it also has extremely huge support partnership, the version 5 has enhanced feature that can be used to create enterprise level databases. It is super fast and stable as compare to other databases. MYSQL is also multi platform so that it can be deployed on any web server running on either windows or Linux.It is important that data base should be build correctly as application will run on top of it and after launch of website if a serious flaw is found then its hard to fix the problem as data base structure has to be changes that can shake the foundation of the application. So its undeniable that through time should be overhaul in designing of database. Few factors were conceders while choosing the database. These factors involveStability The database should be stable and should not crash as this can make the site down which can cause potential loos to business.Scalability data base should be scalable to handle large amount of data and can be extended if necessary once build.Speed Speed is once of the important factor, the database should be able to retrieve information on fast rate so that customers or users dont have to wait for the data to be fetched the data based should be able to optimize queries.Referential integrity This concept involves that data base should be developed in such way that inconsistent data should not be saved in tables.4.2 FrontendFront end is what the user will see on the webpage, this user can be a customer or the Mall administrator or shop owner. The front ends code brings the information back from the backend and display to the user or take the information from the user and send it to back end for processing or storage. We require a scripting quarrel that can be used to develop font end. There are different scripting languages available for writing server side scripts like asp viper, JSP and PHP etc.ASP Active Server pages ASP is Microsoft developed scripting language used to create dynamic WebPages, it is used by many web hosting companies and lots of material and books are available, the disadvantage of using ASP is that the code can be writing by using only VBScripts as Microsoft bounds that, and writing code in VBScripts has its own limitation.JSP Java Server pages is another technology of creating dynamic WebPages, it is based on JAVA programming language to design server side code. The JSP code is incorporated in HTML files by using special tags to write dynamic contents. The JSP source code is executed from the server on JSP Servelet railway locomotive this Engine then generates the HTML and sends the output to client browser.The advantage of using JSP over ASP is that ASP is based on Microsoft .NET architecture and can only run on Microsoft platforms where as JSP is Cross platform and can be run on any platform like Linux and windows. Another advantage of Using JSP is that beside its Object oriented, it can be used with different technologies like, Extended java beans (EJB), SERVALETS and AJAX to make site more interactive.PHP PHP is one of the widely used ser ver side scripting language, by using PHP dynamic websites can be created which provide interaction of user with the website. PHP is cross platform language that is PHP scripted running from Linux web server can be executed on windows machine and vice versa. The language is open source and is available without any cost, beside open source it has huge development community with can be contacted for help if required. The language is fast, stable and secure.5. Selected Technology5.1 BackendBacked will be developed using MySQL 5.0. The reason for using MySQL is that it is open source and will not add cost in development, beside that it have extremely wide support and a huge developer community from where great help can be obtain. Other reason is that it is expected that the site will have heavy traffic and fast stable and secure database server is required and MSSQL is the only open source database that can be relied upon.The 5.0 version of MySQL also includes the stored procedure call, a stored procedure call can save the query data that is frequently used so that that data does not need to be fetch from table again and again, and its a sort of caching. Beside that MySQl has built in security feature and as MySQl database is not a file thats why it cant be copied from the server, MySQL is also multi platform and can be deployed on any server.5.2 Front EndJSP will be used to develop the front end scripts as we have previous background of JAVA and JSP is based on java and is easier to learn and to develop and it is more versatile and different technologies will be used like SERVALETS and AJAX to make the shopping experience more interactive and as AJAX function can be executed on user browser therefore carefully writing the function can strike the bandwidth usage hence making the website much fast.6. Cost InvolvedBuilding and making the ecommerce site functional require cost, this involves the cost of softwares that will be need to d