E-commerce online shopping

E-commerce online shopping 

Amazon homepage  

This is a screenshot of the amazon homepage. I chose amazon to analysis their website because their are the worlds largest online retailer and I have found them to be reliable on their products and their return system. I have screenshoted the amazon homepage which shows the latest deals and offers on their products. Also they promote the newest products on the homepage because it is easy for the customers to see it and would be attracted by it. Overall the website is very easy to use and is arranged in sections like electronics, books and sports equipment etc. Also if you are looking for a specific product their is a search box which i have played around with and is very accurate and efficient.    

Singing in

To sign in or register to amazon, you have to go to the top hand right corner and click where it says customer sign in. To register you have to type your full name email address and password. They tell you to type in the password twice because this will prevent fraud or any mistake that could have been made. Once you have followed these steps you are registered.  To sign you have to type in your email address and password and this will lead you to your profile where it shows your latest purchase and recommendations.

Once you have chose the product that you want to buy then you have to select your phone number and  delivery address, this is the address that your product will come to. You must make sure that you put the right address down otherwise the products that you ordered will go to the wrong place.

In this screen shot I am purchasing a DVD. Firstly you have to click on the product that you want to buy then add it to your basket where you can continue with this purchase. 

Once you are at checkout and dispatched your product that you want to buy you have to choose your delivery options. You have an option to have a super saver deliver, which is free and takes 3-5 business days and first class which is next day delivery.

Doing business on the web 2.0

Doing business on the web 

High quality internet access

Tasks that need high quality and fast internet access are:

• Listening to internet radio 
• Downloading MP3
• Downloading videos buying a basket of 100 goods from an online grocer
• Downloading videos
• Looking up information 

Investigating local government online: Bedford Borough council 

http://www.bedford.gov.uk


The purpose of this website is to "improve local quality of life. Working together with our partners as part of the Bedford Borough Partnership, we are determined to make the Borough a better place to live, work and visit."  This website is designed to keep people that are living in Bedfordshire with the latest news with present and future plans that the government are going to introduce. Also it gives advice on benefits that you are entitled to and provides you with advice if you want to start up a business. Furthermore there is a section on education stating the term updates and  you can find out about Children's centres, schools and special education needs. 

A benefit for the government for having this website up is that they can hear the consumers opinions and views so that they can shape the government upon these factors. Also they can embrace diversity and strive to meet the particular needs and aspirations of all. Benefits for the consumers is that they can find where they are parking zones and find out about public transport like train or bus times. Also they can find out the history of Bedfordshire, major events and culture. 

The Target market for the website is the people of Bedfordshire because it affects them in one way or another. For example the planned roadworks for 2013 will affect the people driving to work, school or their loved ones as they will  be using them. Bedfordshire borough council has selected their target market to be over the age of eighteen as you can pay bills regarding your council tax and mortgages.   

Live chat 

Adding live chat to website is very useful and it helps in increasing online sales and maximizing return on investment. Just by adding live chat to your website will not work the main thing is to provide 24/7 support to your website visitors. Live Business care providing such services at very nominal prices.Live chat is helpful especially when it comes to customer services in a website. A visitor usually wants a fast reply and a site that offers reliable live chat will surely get an increased online sales and more visitors. Nobody wants to get their time wasted so if a person wants to get a live chat in his site, better make sure that it is functional and not SPAM.  A  survey by Andersen Consulting, nearly 62 percent of Internet consumers said they would buy more products online if live customer support were available.


 However A live chat support option is likely to encourage visitors to your website to ask questions that could easily be answered elsewhere. Some customers will be likely to ask for information that's freely available in the "FAQ" section of your website. This will tie up staff resources and add to your server costs through increased bandwidth use. moreover you would have to employ an additional member of staff to respond to live chat questions if you run a small business, so you'll have to make the job part of an existing worker's responsibilities. Dealing with support inquiries could take a member of staff away from other duties. If the staff member who deals with support questions is ever away from a computer when a query comes in, your company could end up looking unprofessional if a customer is left waiting.The fact that the use of live support is still fairly nascent means there are relatively few reliable statistics about its success in different business sectors.



http://www.iped-uk.com/Live-Chat.html

Tesco horse meat: Positive press

Horse meat scandal-Bad press for Business?

Supermarket chains like Tesco, Iceland, Lidl, and Aldi were forced to remove their beef burgers because they contained horse meat. However most Britain's do not care that it's a foreign meat but it had been a horse.The UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) ordered tests to check whether a drug given to horses which can be dangerous to humans - known as bute (phenylbutazone) - had entered the food chain.

 The equine industry in Britain is worth 7 billion pounds.  However in most european countries  horse meat is regarded the same as cow meat but in Britain horses are regarded as a man's friend. Nevertheless 8,000 horses are slaughtered in a year and are shipped to other countries for consumption. 

Tesco apologized by publishing an apology in the national papers.

Tesco promised refunds to customers who had bought the contaminated products, which it identified as Tesco Everyday Value 8 x Frozen Beef Burgers (397g), Tesco 4 x Frozen Beef Quarter Pounders (454g),and a branded product, Flamehouse Frozen Chargrilled Quarter Pounders.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/horse-meat-found-in-tesco-burgers-1536247

The DNA tests found horse in the following products: Tesco Everyday Value Beef Burgers 29.1% of horse meat. The news comes at a bad time for Tesco which is attempting to convince customers about the quality of its products and services after losing market share to rivals. It has admitted the management took its eye off the UK stores during its push for overseas expansion. Nearly £300 million has been wiped off the value of Tesco after a number of its burgers were found to contain horse meat.  

UNIT 1.5: E-BOOKS

E-books

An e-book is basically an electronic version of a book. It is simply nothing more than a electronic file containing the text of an existing book. E-books come in a variety of formats each with its own purpose, features and particular benefits. Some books are made to be like paperbacks, but available on a computer or possible a PDA. The purpose of this is to be able to carry a library of books on a  E-reader. However other e-books intentions are to show a film clip to accompany to a textual description, or play music file to accompany a piece of music. 

Text e-books

Text document based e-books are the most simplest forms of e-book. All that is needed is to write the text in a text editor or scan it into text from paper using a text converter  the file format is simply a text format, so basically it is simply in a linear form in the one document. Although this may be extremely simple it has the advantage of being very easily searchable and portable to any platform.

Word e-books

word document books are created using simple word-processing software and most of the time it is stored in a single word processing document file which manages the content and layout  in a format within the file. Also it is possible to put hyperlinks within the document, which makes it possible to have multimedia content in the e-book. Although multimedia content is usually large, especially when images are put in. Because of this it is not generally not used as a finished format, nevertheless this format can be used in environments where everyone shares shares the same Microsoft office where a number of authors might be required to collaborative simply on a project.  

Adobe PDF e-books 

Adobes portable document format (PDF) are stored in a single PDF file. This file has been extremely successful because virtually all the computers and software manuals are now published and distributed in this format. The majority of the websites that allows downloads of articles, newsletters,and reports will use PDF for such documents. It is also a growing medium for fully fledged e-books.
PDF has a number of features that make it essential for the presentation of textual material.  A PDF file is designed to store the text and layout in a device independent manner so that the original full colour.

Website e-books

One of the most important and flexible format of e-book is that created as a website in HTML or XHTML format. Websites allows videos, images, sounds, movies and animations and can shifted around quite simply to wherever and whenever you want to be, this format allows the richest and most flexible multimedia experience. As the website is a collection of files it is more complicated to put into a single fire. The disadvantage of this is that it adds another stage to creating the e-book, and resulting file might be quite large. Also as it is an Exe. file some firewalls do not trust the content when an attempt made to deliver the file   as .exe files are commonly used to hide viruses and Trojan horse programmes .

Value of e-books 

E-books Offer the readers unlimited books on a e-reader wherever they are. Unlike paperback books e-books can be can be searched by keyword, and organised by chapter page, topic or any method the author decides would be useful. Also the size and font can be changed for the viewers preference. and even the text can be read aloud. E-books can be faster to produce and amend the than conventional books, and thus reference books can be kept to update more easily. As the costs of storage and distributions are so low,e-books can be substantially than paperbacks and often, especially where there are no copyright issues, they are free.

Doing business on the web- Growing the customer base

Doing business on the web  

The growth of internet sales has also led to the growth of new companies who are collecting information from  consumers to spot trend in the retail market.We have seen that most of the increases in retail sales is through internet sales.
In the 12 weeks to 22 January 2012, Tesco's share dropped to 29.9%,
Morrison s' share slipped from 12.4% to 12.3%
Meanwhile, low-cost chains also saw their share of the market grow, with Aldi up from 3.1% to 3.5% and Lidl up from 2.4% to 2.5%.

Internet sales have tripled in the last 6 years whereas the high street shops are being hit by large tax increases and slower sales. As more people are shopping using their laptop,tablets and mobile phones online sales have hit a boom. Traditional high street stores have closed in record numbers over the last year. In 2012, 52 chains comprising almost 4,000 individual shops collapsed, the highest number since 2008. More closures are predicted in 2013. According to the Royal Mail’s poll, 64 per cent of small and medium-sized online retailers expect sales to continue to improve in 2013, despite a competitive consumer environment.

Benefits of online grocery 

one of the biggest benefits of online shopping is that one does not have to go to the supermarket to buy their food. Instead, they can order food online and have it delivered to their door. This is especially useful for people who work long hours and is Independence for: the elderly, the housebound, those laid up with the flu, times of transportation troubles and who are therefore too busy to go shopping. Also it is time efficient and you will be saving petrol, making it environmentally friendly. Another benefit of buying food from an online store is that families, couples and individuals can save money on their weekly food bill. This is due to the fact that online stores often give their customers discounts for shopping online. Also, since people are not wandering down aisles stocked with appetizing food products, they will not buy anything on impulse, therefore saving money. Finally it is much easier to find specific foods on the internet. Instead of running up and down aisles looking for specific items, customers can now type whatever they are looking for in the search option on the website.

Drawbacks of online grocery shopping

Online grocery stores tend to charge very high rates for shipping small items. When a person only purchases one or two products, it is not worthwhile to pay up to 10 pounds for shipping.
These shipping costs are discounted for people who buy a lot of groceries at once.
Large families, as well as people who like to stock up on food will benefit from this.
Online stores encourage people to be at home during delivery, as they will simply leave the food on the doorstep if nobody is at home.This leaves the food at risk of being stolen, eaten by animals or even getting melted in the sun. Another drawback of purchasing food online is that if an item on a grocery list is sold out, the store will make a substitution for the product.Those who want very specific products should go in to the store and purchase them.



Tesco's sell a variety of products including groceries to electronics and is the biggest supermarket in the UK with 6234 stores worldwide and 72 billion group sales. Their website is broken down into sub categories  ( Food, phones), the colour scheme is blue and white in the traditional Tesco colours.  

The website is targeted at pensioners and 40-50 year old. Pensioners may not physically be able to go shopping so therefore they can have easy access to a computer and do online shopping. Usually 40-50 years are in full time employment and have families,so it would be convenient to shop online. 

Strengths 

• The website is very is to access via search engines like bing and google, all you have to do is type in Tesco's and it will be on the top of the page. 
• Also it is simply to use with it being sub categorized Food, entertainment. This allows a user to go directly to a specific product which overall saves time and effort.

Weaknesses 

• There are no options to change languages for people that who are not able to read fluently in English, so they won't be able to access Tesco's online shopping. 
• When you click on a a category it sends you are redirected to a different place, this may confuse customers and make them think that they are not on the Tesco website. 



Unit 2: Information on modern organasations

Information on modern organisations

Many companies fail because they didn't capitalise on e-commerce side of the company and did not have a business strategy. This was evident because during the recession companies that did not have a clear strategy using ICT  inevitably failed. HMV and Blockbuster are classic examples of this, and in this blog I will go in a deeper analysis and evaluation of why they went bust.

Organisations can be categorised in three main types of organisation that can be readily identified:

Commercial organisations

These are what we would normally call businesses. They trade in a competitive market with the main objective is to survive and make profit and growing the business. The smallest of these businesses are sole traders like a stall on your local market or windows cleaners; the largest are international companies like coca cola or Ford motor company. 

public organisations

 

 These organisations are funded by taxation and are controlled by directly or  indirectly by the government. Theses include: direct government bodies such as government departments and the civil service; local government, public educational bodies such as school, colleges and universities; the health service; the armed forces and the emergency services.  

non-profit or charitable organisations

 

These organisations raise their finance from donations or grant funding and use the funds to raise a particular cause or issue, they provide employment and incomes for the organisations administrators. There are many types of these organisations like private education and health care fields, many of whose organisations are set up as charities.     

Blockbuster

The DVD and rental company had 528 stores across the country and 2 million customers. A company that once dominated the industry was preordained to extinction because they did not see that driving to a shop and renting a movie was not as easily accessible as downloading it online.

 

Retail consultant said: "There are shifts in the market place all the time. Blockbuster had a window of opportunity 5 years ago to respond to changes in the market perhaps buy a streaming service and perhaps build on their strong band.

The main lessons that you can take away from Blockbusters failure is that it doesn't matter how successful you are today, tomorrow is not guaranteed. With technology evolving rapidly businesses have to adapt and have a clear strategy Here are my thoughts how Blockbuster could have survived:

 

Purchased Neflix in 2000, this may not have been an option if blockbuster had asserted itself and modified its strategy

 

Opened kiosks much earlier and began closing stores, this would have reduced capital costs and improved convenience

Used Neflix’s early model of subscriptions and distribution through mail

Entered the on demand space much earlier, before Netflix and lovefilm took over the market .

HMV

HMV is looking to follow in the footsteps of blockbuster, HMV a market leader in the entertainment industry, sales fell dramatically to 13% to £288 million in six months to the end of October.

HMV opened its flagship in 1921 in oxford street in London and now they have over 240 stores and are at the risk of losing those shops because they have not put enough onto their website. The demand for online is increasing, extenuating this fact music fans in Britain have streamed audio tracks more than 3.7 billion times last year. Furthermore digital albums sales increased by 14.8% to 30.5 million last year. However in store sales have been been at a deficit, sales of album on CD by 19.5% last year to 69.4 million. The growth of digital downloads, the recession and competition from supermarkets were all eroding its business performance.By far the biggest impact, however, was the explosion in popularity of mail order websites such as Play.com, Amazon, and Tesco.com. For almost a decade these companies exploited a loophole in EU tax rules to ship DVDs and CDs at VAT-free prices from the Channel Islands – thereby undercutting HMV.

civil rights

Civil rights 



"Civil rights" are the rights of individuals to receive equal treatment (and to be free from unfair treatment or "discrimination") in a number of settings -- including education, employment, housing, and more -- and based on certain legally-protected characteristics

The more data there is on people, and the more technology is used to monitor and control people in order to keep society safe as a  possible, then the more likely is that people's right to privacy and civil rights as a whole may be compromised. There are many ways that your information is stored, the most common are compulsory id cards. One aspect that makes id cards so controversial is that they will be linked to a national database that will be capable of storing a great deal of information about each individual and it can be linked to your driving license number, national insurance number, NHS number etc
Here are some advantages and disadvantages of having an id card. 

Advantages

• One advantage of having an identification card is that it makes things easier when you need to take care of important affairs. For example, if you're applying for vouchers to help you pay your bills, your identification card allows the clerk to easily find background information on you. Or if you're an employer, a copy of a job candidate's ID card will help you do a more detailed search of that person's history.

Disadvantages

Identity theft is one major drawback of having an ID card. For example, if you renewed your ID card but you threw your old one away without cutting it up, a thief who often goes through old trash bags may run across your card and use it to open new bank or credit card accounts. If this happens, you'll have to spend huge amounts of money and time rebuilding your financial history.

 

 

Bridging the gap

Bridging the gap 

There have been lots of initiatives to bridge the gap sponsored by the national government, local government, private industry, and charities. In this post I am going to evaluate them to give a flavour of the breadth and range of initiatives in this area in the UK.  

UK online 

UK online was started in 2001 and funded by the government as a project to give computer access to people in the community and to help them develop ICT skills so that they can be employable. Currently they have over 6000 UK online centres located in schools,libraries and community centres. They have a network of 3,800 community based UK online centres across England, provide products on out ww.learnmyway.com website, run marketing campaigns, offer training and project opportunities and administer grant funding to help their centres help more people make the most of online life. 

Facts about UK online 

• 3,800 partner centres
• UK online centres in 84% of deprived wards
• One-third of our customers have no formal qualifications
• Over 7 in 10 users are socially excluded
• Over 50% receive some state benefit
• Around a quarter earn less than £10k a year
• 50% of users don't own their own home and 23% live in social housing
• 25% are responsible for children
• One-third of users consider themselves to have a disability or mental health issues
• 29% are unemployed and 33% are retired.
• One-quarter of centre users are from non-British ethnic backgrounds
• 90% of visitors access online government services in a UK online centre
• 60% of customers progress to take up further education, Information, Advice and Guidance opportunities, volunteering placements or employment
• 96% of people who use the centres rate the service as good to excellent

Community Access to Lifelong Learning (CALL)

CALL is a huge programme that was heavily invested with 200 million capital investment to cover development and running costs . These centers were aimed at providing access to technology and skills development for businesses and the general public. The voluntary sector was heavily involved in establishing and running these centers.  Furthermore this programme enables libraries, schools and other lifelong learning institutions to become connected with the internet and provide access to all groups within society, with the hope of providing particular benefits to socially excluded people who otherwise has less access to online learning opportunities.

Learning is likely to be ever more important to the UK’s prosperity.  The types of jobs we are doing are changing, as are the skills we need to do them, and access to learning will help people to meet the rapid changes required. With that into account CALL aims to improve "access to lifelong learning for adults through the use of ICT, with a particular focus on socially excluded adults and those in disadvantaged communities" and  "further develop the creation of community-based content to encourage people to use ICT and encourage them into lifelong learning"

Tackling the divide on the ground

Tackling the divide on the ground 

Broadcasting

Digital broadcasting is both an empowering technology and of the political barriers that sometimes is a main factor between the digital divide between the rich and the poor. Satellite broadcasting allows geographically remote areas to receive news and information that was not previously available. In rural Asia they used to have low quality terrestrial broadcasts provided on unreliable equipment, however now they have High quality sound and images and a range that was previously unimaginable. Densely populated cities, Jungles and mountains are all traversed better with wireless technology than with expensive cable.

Greater Bandwidth

• Signals broadcast digitally have the advantage of greater bandwidth than analog transmissions. High-definition television is only available with a signal that's broadcast digitally. This is not the only format supported by digital media. High-definition and standard-definition digital signals are broken up into one of five signal patterns to accommodate multiple aspect ratios. This translates to a crisper picture for the consumer, regardless of the size of his digital television.

Automatic Tuning

• A consumer need not worry finding the resolution that is appropriate for her television. Digital signals automatically tune to the proper format resolution. This alleviates consumer anxiety surrounding electronics. With the assurance that their television is going to work no matter what bandwidth their signal is working at, consumers are free to purchase for the aesthetic and technical value of the given television, whether that be plasma, LCD or others.

Multiple Reception Outlets

• There are multiple ways to receive a digitally broadcast signal. The most common way is through a cable connection commonly referred to as "digital cable." Users are also able to receive the signal via satellite with the use of a dish. Advances in technology have also allowed digital broadcasting to run through DSL Internet connections and through mobile phones. There are now many televisions built with this desire in mind, many including hookups to accommodate a computer-to-television entertainment systems.

http://www.ehow.com/list_5959086_advantages-digital-broadcasting.html

  Mobile phones

Mobile phones have helped poverty-stricken nations like rural Pakistan and Bangladesh because it allows people to stay in touch in remote locations. Furthermore the mobile phone users in Pakistan and Bangledesh will double next year outnumbering fixed-line customers for the first time and marking a new era of communications.

Governance

A main factor in the digital divide comes in the form of the government of the under-served countries.Studies show that over 40 per cent of the world population does not have the opportunity to learn how to use a computer.  For example the state is only telecommunication provider, charges monopoly prices for its services and prevents other organisations providing competitive services. Also importing hi tech technology causes problems like high tariffs and strict regulations. This is where a government strategy is needed to deal with this problem.  Successful strategies of this nature have occured in the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan where they have set up a free trade zone which is encouraging ICT investment throughout the middel east, Asia and Africa.