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Web site requirements to consider for e-business sites.
Your site must tackle a wide range of scenarios and customer solutions. Before describing the components of a site, let's review an example that reveals
some of the key requirements that need addressing, and the variety of services that satisfy these requirements.
Prospects might browse through a product catalog. The catalog might include a broad range of content: pictures of products, descriptions, inventory
status, price, perhaps even comments contributed by other customers. The content might be drawn dynamically from multiple sources, such as a document object store for
photos and rich text, and a relational database for price and inventory information.
Regular customers might wish to be notified of new catalog
material whenever certain types of products are added. This requires automatic delivery of new information without the customer having to take any direct action, and is provided by push supporting functions that use Web browser and server capabilities.
When a visitor selects an item to purchase, a credit card number must be
transmitted securely and an account must be debited correctly. If this item is digital information then the intellectual property rights associated with the purchased item should be enforced appropriately. Security and transaction services provide the base for this type of support.
Also, when a visitor selects an item to purchase, the order could be routed to a credit officer for exception handling, then simultaneously to
existing inventory and billing systems which do not have to be reimplemented. In some cases, there may be a need to reach systems beyond the enterprise, such as a bank
clearing center in a credit card transaction. Collaboration services support the routing and connectors provide linkage to the existing applications and external services.
Some prospects may browse but not purchase anything. However, by capturing
any kind of visitor data (e-mail address, phone number, home/work address), it is possible to process this interaction as a sales lead. The lead can be passed to fulfillment staff for traditional,
paper-based catalog or promotional
mailings. It can be included in an e-mail campaign to invite the prospect to visit the Web site again. It can be utilized in a business intelligence system along with other data so that the marketing staff can create new offerings and
programs, or it can serve as input in a redesign of the Web site itself. These workflows are supported by collaboration services.
Customers might use a Web browser to check on the status of a particular order that they placed earlier. This content is stored in a relational database
and accessed through one or more transaction processing systems.
Other customers may have comments or complaints. They have the opportunity to fill in a form describing their situation. Based on the content of the
submission, the form can be automatically routed to the appropriate customer service representative, taking advantage of
workflow capabilities.
A business' employees may
have a need to directly contact specific customers,
suppliers or business partners to solicit their feedback, and route it directly to other employees who can best deal with it. This communication can be handled by the e-mail capabilities of the mail and community services which support Internet messaging as well as value-added private networks, and which also support multiple mail protocols, since outside parties will likely be
using a variety of different mail products.
If we can be of any help to your company, contact us!
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