Web-Based Tools for Electronic Commerce free essay sample

Expertise and staffing problems can be avoided by client company †¢ Design problem can be minimized because server firm provides fundamentalpromotional features to sell productDisadvantages include possible limitations on availability and bandwidth whenmultiple customers  are stacked on  a single T1  line. Figure 3-1  on page 76compares the costs and services associated with web hosting. In making the server decision, â€Å"Scalability†, which is the potential for rapidexpansion of  the e-commerce  system, should  be of  paramount concern. Webserver performance measurements and evaluations including both hardware(computer) models, software such as the O/S involved, as well as benchmarks ofperformance will permit comparison shopping and more bang for the buck by theclient firm. Figure 3-3  on page 79 presents  Mindcraft web  server performancereports as an  example of the  capacity for  comparison-shopping. The results ofbenchmark tests demonstrate that there are measurable differences in serverperformance that a web site manager must consider before purchasing or leasinga web  server. We will write a custom essay sample on Web-Based Tools for Electronic Commerce or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Those differences include  the speed and  efficiency with whichstatic web pages can be handled, through put time from request to performance,and maximum capacity for requests. Web Server Software Feature Sets Web Server software features such as security, FTP, search capacity and dataanalysis  should be  analyzed  in terms of user  needs. Search enginesand indexing programs are a component of the web package, which should alsobe considered in terms  of their security  aspects. Data analysis features can yieldinformation on the number and frequency of visit to the web page as well as anaccumulator of marketing information. CS160  Chapter  3:  Web-based  tools  for  Electronic  Commerce 3-4 Site management considerations include authoring tools such as Microsoft Frontpage 2000, as well as script checking, HTML validation, web server log fileanalysis and identification of orphan pages, broken links, error-prone pages etc. Authoring issues involve construction of both static and dynamic web pagesusing web editors and extensions to customize the Web site to the user’s needs. A distinction is made between a web server, that handles web pages in general,and a commerce server that deals with the purchase/sale arrangements ofproducts. Web Server Software and Tools Web server software and tools are divided into two markets-intranet servers andpublic Web servers. Figure 3-8 on page 89 displays a pie graph showing therelative market  share of  installed public  web server  software. Apache HTTPserver software dominates 56% of the market because it is free, efficient and IBMlicensed it  for its  own Websphere application server  package. Microsoft Internetserver’s package, which is also free, has only 23% of the market perhapsbecause it only runs with Windows NT. Netscape Internet server is popularsoftware, which  is a descendant of  the original  web server  program. O’Reilly’sWeb Site Professional Server software may have the most sophisticated featuresrelated to e-commerce,  however it currently costs $799 to license it. The abilityof this software to easily insert database information would make it very useful toa firm with rapidly changing prices or other market conditions. Other Web Server Tools Other web server tools such as portals, search engines, push technologies andintelligent agents are issues for consideration in the acquisition of a commercialWeb site. Web portals are customizable home bases from  which users do  theirsearching, navigating, and other web-based activity. All search engines contain three components; a spider, an index and a searchengine utility  program. A spider  searches the web to find  pages, or updateexisting pages. The index  is a  catalog of  everything that the  spider locates. Thesearch engine’s utility program, upon request of the client, searches millions ofpages to identify matches and then ranks them in order of each link’s relevance.