Bead Bar Web Site’s E-Business Model and Technologies

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Table of Contents

Bead Bar e-business model
Technology used to build e-commerce web site
Web site traffic generation
Electronic Payment Capability
Encryption
References

Bead Bar e-business model

Bead Bar selects Business-to-Consumer model for the web site. This model shall allow Bead Bar customers to buy products from Bead Bar online storefront and also allow customers to become intermediaries by opening franchise studios with a web site linked to the Bead Bar web site. Bead Bar web site shall have a provision to allow new franchise register their private information and apply for franchise by selecting the products they would want to sell in the studio. The bricks and clicks model of the franchise web site shall allow the customers to find a Bead Bar studio in the local area and then find the list of products available in the studio on the web site before visiting the studio.

The customer may get information about the product stock and price on the franchise web site. The franchise shall have access to the web site to update the stock information through secure login on a SSL connection. Bead Bar shall accept orders from customers and franchise through the online purchase orders. The purchase order shall have a provision to specify the type of customer as direct sale or franchise in order to apply the applicable discounts and delivery policies.

An e-commerce web site shall help Bead Bar increase its sales in many ways such as:

Global reach ability increases number of franchise and customers, opening new studios at distant places shall enable customers to touch and feel the product before purchase.
Always open shop, e-commerce web site provides consumers convenience of shopping any time 24 hrs, 365 days.
A value chain is created by disintermediation process, if earlier Beads Bar was selling its products through studios or individual & wholesale dealers, now it can sell its products directly to customers through on-line e-commerce web site.
The Instant Messaging eliminates irritability and delay in customer request processing vis-a-vis e-mail or telephone conversation.
Bead Bar may also add the feature to enable customer to order customized product by selecting desired product characteristics.

Technology used to build e-commerce web site

The e-commerce web site shall have the following components:

Products

All products that are sold by the Bead Bar shall be displayed on the e-commerce web site. A standard product template shall be used to display the information such as product features, picture, cost and stock availability. The HTML, WML and XML markup languages shall be used to display the web content. The e-commerce web site shall use MySQL database to record the product, customer and sale information. Scripting language ColdFusion shall be used to integrate the product database with the web site since it has a better performance as compared to PHP (.Net Comparison Chart, 2004).

Processes

The Electronic Data Interchange processes that shall be included in the e-commerce web site are:

Instant Messaging to provide online customer support.
Shopping Cart to allow customers to create their account and select products to buy.
In order to support franchise registration Bead Bar shall have an online form for registration of the franchise.

Electronic Funds Transfer processes implemented on Bead Bar are:

Records for all sales shall be maintained in the database for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Calculation of tax, delivery charges and audits are other important processes that shall be implemented.
Checkout mechanism with electronic payment through third party merchant service PayPal (Heng, 2007).

Delivery

Proper packaging to ensure that product is not damaged during transaction, insurance and on-time delivery of product is crucial for the success of the on-line business.

Web site traffic generation

The web site traffic is generated by advertising about the Bead Bar products in the Usenet news groups such as rec.craft.beads, rec.craft.jewelry and misc.business.small. Beads bar shall invest in online advertising such as Google Ad words and sponsored advertisements. By including a link to the franchise studio web site on the Bead Bar web site, the probability of new customers in remote locations is increased. Bead Bar shall also provide banners for affiliates to link to Bead Bar web site.

Affiliates who create revenue for Bead Bar by directing customers from their web site to Bead Bar web site shall receive a certain share of the revenue earned through the directed customer purchase. Banner advertisements of products sold shall also be displayed on the Bead Bar web site and franchise web site. Important discounts and festival offers shall also be displayed from time-to-time. Viral marketing shall be implemented by including a ‘Recommend this product’ button in every product web page. Also the Bead Bar products shall be advertised by talking about the products in various news groups.

Electronic Payment Capability

In order to simplify security measures, Bead Bar shall use third party merchant services for accepting electronic payment. Bead Bar has decided to use PayPal service for financial transaction, PayPal allows users to register credit card and provides a secure transaction. PayPal is a popular and trusted financial transaction service. At a later stage Bead Bar may get a merchant account and have a provision to register credit card information and use digital card or smart card on their own web site with VeriSign 128-bit SSL Certificate.

Encryption

Encryption is used to conceal the information exchanged between the user web browser and the web hosting server (Feature: Apache and Secure Transactions, 1997). Secure communication is required for information transferred in online customer registration forms, purchase orders, payments, e-mail and Instant Messages exchanged. In order to establish trust with the customer a VeriSign digital certificate shall be obtained for secure IM on SSL connection. The messages sent and received on IM shall be encrypted with the key provided by VeriSign (Hord, n.d.).

References

.Net Comparison Chart (.Net vs. Coldfusion, PHP, JAVA). (2004). PromoteWare. Web.

Farstad, Bard. (2005). Build an eCommerce Website with eZ publish. sitepoint. Web.

Feature: Apache and Secure Transactions. (1997). Apacheweek. Web.

Heng, Christopher. (2007). Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website. Thesitewizaed.com. Web.

Hord, Jennifer. (n.d.). How Electronic Payments Work? Howstuffworks. Web.

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