BAD220 Discussion 3: e-Commerce

Pick an e-commerce site such as amazon.com. Analze the site and remember to comment on the work of at least two other students.

1. Which site did you pick? Have you used the site? Have you ever bought anything from this site?

2. What do you believe are the strengths and weaknesses of the site?

3. Choose one item from the list of Product Browsing and Search or Payment/Checkout or Shipping or Administration & Integration in the reading for this discussion (Link to reading).

4. Explain the features of your site for that item. For example, what methods of shipping does your site support and what does your site charge for shipping.

5. What three skills do you think were the most important in building your particular site? Consider skills used in building (developing) the site. Not skills in using the site. See the example answer below.

6. Why did you pick these skills above the others (Note: This is a somewhat unfair question because more than three skills are important building a significant e-commerce site. However, you are required to express your opinion anyway!)

Example:

1. I choose northshorechoral.org and I have used it to purchase concert tickets

2. The site is good at explaining the mission and purpose of the group. It is weak in e-commerce because it only sells tickets to three concerts per year.

3. (color and size variation). This means can a product have different sizes and colors.

4. Concert tickets do not have different colors and sizes. They do have different prices such as for students and seniors. The site handles this by having a separate product code for each variation. Therefore, once a product such as Student Ticket to the June Concert is selected, there are no variations.

5. I think the three most useful skills for this site are interviewing and design, html, and connecting to paypal. Interviewing members of the Board and determining what should be on the site is a critical skill. Using html to implement the site and its links is important. Finally, being able to connect the ticket sales to PayPal and setting up a business PayPal account was important.

6. My opinion is without the three skills I picked the site would not exist as an e-commerce site. Other skills such as taking pictures for the site and writing the content are also important but I was only allowed to pick three skills.