CH1 eSHOP - Copyrected

8/2/2019 CH1 eSHOP - Copyrected

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DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN E-COMMERCE STORE

BY

ADELEYE DANIEL ADEBAYO

08CH07817

2012


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CHAPTER ONE

1.0INTRODUCTION1.1BACKGROUND INFORMATIONWith the changing complexities on how consumers purchase goods today, traditional shop

owners and retailers are searching for mechanisms that will allow them to remain competitive

against large merchants in todays high-speed very competitive business climate. They are

interested in exploiting the potential to automate their internal procedures and promote their

products to a wider audience. (www.shoppingmate.org, 2009)

In recent years, the growth of technology has made many processes easy to conduct, helping

to reduce stress as well as saving time. One of the many benefits of technology is the internetwhich has helped to bring the world to a point of contact where different persons and

organization can interact and transact. Various activities such as researching, communication,

advertising, marketing, e.t.c. are done on the internet.

Electronic commerce or e-commerce refers to a wide range of online business activities for

products and services (Anita R., 2000). It also pertains to any form of business transaction in

which the parties interact electronically rather than by physical exchanges or direct physical

contact. (Hitesh K., et al.,2011). E-commerce is usually associated with buying and selling

over the Internet, or conducting any transaction involving the transfer of ownership or rights

to use goods or services through a computer-mediated network (Mesenbourg T., 2001).

Though popular, this definition is not comprehensive enough to capture recent developments

in this new and revolutionary business phenomenon. A more complete definition is: E-

commerce is the use of electronic communications and digital information processing

technology inbusiness transactions to create, transform, and redefine relationships for value

creation between or among organizations, and between organizations and individuals

(Emmanuel L, et al., 2000). The business-to-customer aspect of e-commerce is the most

visible business use of the World Wide Web.

Business-to-consumer e-commerce, or commerce between companies and consumers,

involves customers gathering information; purchasing physical goods (i.e., tangibles such as

books or consumer products) or information goods (or goods of electronic material or


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digitized content, such as software, or e-books); and, for information goods, receiving

products over an electronic network (Emmanuel L., et al., 2000). E-commerce is fast gaining

grounds as an accepted and used business paradigm with more functionality for performing

commercial transactions over the web.

While the appropriate policies are in place to facilitate e-commerce, lack of trust is still a

barrier to using the Internet to make online transactions (Emmanuel L., et al., 2000). Some

consumers are still somewhat fearful of sending their credit card numbers over the Internet

(Andam, Z., 2006). The interception of transactions, and in particular credit card details,

during transmission over the Internet is often a major obstacle to public confidence in e-

commerce. Ensuring security of payments and privacy of online transactions is key to the

widespread acceptance and adoption of e-commerce. (Andam Z., 2006).

An effective e-commerce site assumes the customers perspective rather than the companys

perspective, providing substantive information or value to the visitors rather than providing

online corporate brochure often referred to as brochure ware.

The objective of this study is to develop an effective and efficient e-commerce website where

any product such as clothes, laptops, phones, books, etc) can be bought from the comfort

of the home through the internet. It allows customers to browse through a catalogue and

select their products of interest, place order and make payments electronically with multiple

payment methods among others. It provides a user-friendly navigational scheme, making

registration, login, and checking out processes easy, also ensuring a high level of security and

privacy management.

1.2STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMEven with the advent of e-commerce and the lots of benefits accompanied with it, there are

still issues that needs to be addressed or in making e-commerce widely acceptable.

Information security when using e-commerce is the major problem. According to a

commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting in 2009, when determining if

consumers will continue shopping at an online store, 74% of online shoppers want assurances

that the information they enter into the site is secure. This has also increased from the 2006


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study, when only 62% of shoppers said that information security was an important factor

(Forrester Consulting, 2009).

Consequently, the following research question suffices: what are the relevant security

requirements that must be considered for effective design of an e-commerce site that

enhances the wide acceptance of consumers to shop online?

1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The aim of this study is to investigate the relevant security requirements that can be catered

for in the design and development of a well and highly secured ecommerce site that enhances

the wide acceptance of customers to shop online.

The following objectives have been formulated to achieve this aim:

1. To review e-commerce systems offered as a replacement for traditional paymentsystem.

2. To review the various threats and risks faced with e-commerce sites.3. To review the various security mechanisms available.4. Based on a thorough literature review, to identify a number of relevant additional

security requirements that can be catered for in the design and development of a well

and highly secured e-commerce site. To design a security model with some features

that caters for this identified requirements.

5. To design a security model with some features that caters for this identifiedrequirements.

6. To develop an e-commerce site based on the security model designed.


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S/N OBJECTIVES PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

1 To review e-commerce systems offered as a

replacement for traditional payment system.

y Literature review

2 To analyse the various threats and risks faced

with e-commerce sites.

y Literature review

3 To review the various security mechanisms

available.

y Literature review

4 Based on a thorough literature review, to

identify a number of relevant additional

security requirements that can be catered for in

the design and development of a well and

highly secured e-commerce system.

y Literature Review

y Requirement Elicitation

5 To design a security model with some features

that caters for this identified requirements.

y Theory Review

6 To develop an e-commerce site based on the

security model designed.

y Use of appropriate developmenttools

1.4RESEARCH METHODOLOGYA review of existing literature has been adopted for this research. The approach involves a

detailed desk and library research and surfing of the internet to gather features from online

websites to help in the review of e-commerce systems, the various trends of e-commerce

systems, and the various risks and threats faced by existing e-commerce sites.

A formal design model will be built using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) which

enablesspecifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artefacts of the software


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system, as well as for business modelling.The use case diagrams will be used to capture thesystem requirements. The class diagram and collaboration diagram will be used to design the

various entities and their interaction within the system. The sequence diagram, activity

diagram and state diagram will be used to model the activities and the business logic of the

system.

The development tools on which the software would be developed include:

y Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) andJavaScript: Scripting languages to be implemented in the design of the web

applications interface included in the system.

y Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP). This is the server-side scripting language. It is secureopen source and cost effective. It gives basic platform to projects like shopping cartsand shopping software. It is easy to deploy and produce project effectively. It can be

used to build a flexible framework which can be extended and modified for the

purposes of any e-commerce site.

y MySQL: The back-end Database Management System to provide multi-taskingfeature and multiuser access to the databases included in this system. MySQL is open

source database system. The database software can be used and modify by anyone

according to their needs. It is fast, reliable and easy to use

y Apache http server: Web Server holding a PHP processor module for interpreting thePHP requests sent to the server, and for the deployment and testing of the web

application. Apache's modular architecture allows you to build a server that is "made

to measure". Apache runs on a wide variety of operating systems, including all

variants ofUNIX, Windows 9x/NT, MacOS (on PowerPC), and various others

1.5SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDYThis study will enhance the development of an e-commerce site that ensures secure

transactions and the maintenance of data security to a relatively high level by implementing it

at database level. This allows only authorized users access to confidential client information.


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1.6LIMITATIONSThe challenges militating against the accurate conduct of the study include:

y Consumers choices differ on what products and services to be bought. Due to timeand resources, this project has been limited to some products.

y The application is not accessible to everyone. It can be deployed on a web server sothat everybody who is connected to the internet can use it.

y Credit Card validation is not done. Third party proprietary software can be used forvalidation check.

y The system is not configured for multi- users at this time. The concept of transactioncan be used to achieve this.


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REFERENCES

Concept and Project Objectives. Retrieved January 2012, from

http://www.shoppingmate.org/project_obj_act.html

Anita Rosen, The E-commerce Question and Answer Book (USA: American Management

Association, 2000), 5.

Hitesh Khurana, Manoj Kr. Goel, Hardeep Singh and Leena Bhutani, E-Commerce : Role ofE-Commerce in Todays Business, 2011

MK, Euro Info Correspondence Centre (Belgrade, Serbia), E-commerce-Factor of

Economic Growth Retrieved February 18, 2012.

from http://www.eicc.co.yu/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsstart3end5

Thomas L. Mesenbourg, Measuring Electronic Business: Definitions, Underlying Concepts,

and Measurement Plans, 2001

Emmanuel Lallana, Patricia J. Pascual, and Zorayda Ruth Andam, SMEs and E-commerce:

The Philippine Case; Cf. SMEs and E-commerce: The Case of Indonesia, prepared for The

Asia Foundation by Castle Asia

Definition adapted and expanded from Emmanuel Lallana, Rudy Quimbo, Zorayda

RuthAndam, ePrimer: An Introduction to eCommerce (Philippines: DAI-AGILE, 2000), 2.

Forrester Consulting. eCommerce Website Performance Today: an Updated Look at

Consumer Reaction to a Poor Online Shopping Experience, August 17, 2009.

Online Consumer Behavior. Retrieved January 2012, from http://www.x-

cart.com/articles/design_development.html

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CH1 eSHOP - Copyrected