Throughout the lifetime of a website it is important to keep some basic properties in tact.

1. Security: The first and foremost thing in e-commerce is security. At an e-commerce enabled website users do purchases, transfer of funds, sales etc. A customer purchases a watch or a music system and in the process he provides his credit card details. Another person might visit his bank website to transfer money to his friend’s account. One can sell his personal belongings in an internet auction. In genaral, customer wants to be sure that he connected only to his bank website (and not to a spoofed website). Banks have to be sure that correct customers are using the facilities and ask for authentication. In addition to addressing security issues in the construction of a website, it is also important to tell the cyber buyers/sellers how secure their details are. These aspects should be addressed in the beginning of the website design itself.
2. Consistency: The look and feel on all pages in a web site should be consistent. For example, product prices can be shown in same color and font everywhere for ease of use.
3. Usability: Ease of navigation through the site, product purchase, obviousness, simplicity and clarity bring more usability to a site.
4. Availability: Website should be accessible 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. An online shop on the web should always be open to customers. Additionally, it is not uncommon at websites, not finding a page that a hyperlink leads to (within the same site). It is also important for all pages to be intact at a website all the time.
5. Maintainability: After deploying the website, inserting a page and deleting a page should be easy. Though providing many hyperlinks improves information approachability it should not pose problems to maintain the website. When a page is referenced by too many pages, deleting that page calls for updation of many other pages.

One must have a feedback mechanism to find what users feel about the site. The fact that some portions of the site have obvious pitfalls (like spelling mistakes, incorrect/broken links), non-availability of some information at the site, the user thought he placed order and not sure of it etc. cannot be captured by the webserver log files.

The web site represents its organisation. It is important to ensure that the representation of the various parts of the organisation is appropriately done on the web site. For example, the internal procurement group or stores department of an organization has less priority in comparison with sales or customer services department. The pages, ‘sales’ and ‘customer services’ might have links to ‘stores department’ page or stores might not even be represented on the site at all. An organisation might want to give utmost importance to advertise its new products on its site and some other organisation might give it to the services available to its customers.

Search option is very important to a site. A user wants to buy a particular brand watch or a shirt. He would not want to go to products, then check for watches or shirts in the products. He would perhaps want to enter the brand and product name in the search and order right away if available. Otherwise he might go to some other website to purchase. A good search facility can save customer’s time and hence fetch popularity for the website, which will consequently improve the business.

Help option very much facilitates the users. For example, a cyber customer wants to quickly know how to order a product and it is neither obvious to him nor he can find it through search, but the facility is available. Then help can be of use to him. In a way search and help go together.

Interviews with the users or customers of a website can help in knowing their expectations or requirements. Similar exercise can be done within the organisation to find how various business units want to reach the customers and public.

Development of a website is not a one time task. Dynamism of a web site to effectively advertise about the new products of a company to its customers without changing the critical features of the site is also important. Also, it should permit frequent product and price changes on a real time basis.

Personalisation of a web site to customer’s interests and background can improve the effectiveness of a website. For example, a bank might show the links to ‘Agricultural Loans’ if the customer is a farmer and ‘Industrial Loans’ if the customer is an industrialist.

For some customers textual details of a product are enough, for a few others only a small picture of a product is needed additionally, and some others might be keen to see the animation of a product. A website should be able to cater to a variety of customers’ tastes without loosing performance.

Performance is a very important feature. For example, speed at which a page is loaded after clicking a link. Also, if a customer has to wait for long to know that the order he placed is accepted, it would be a frustrating experience for him. Or the customer wants to see the details of a product and it takes a long time to display (because of a big image or multiple images), he might prefer not to purchase.

Following standards is another crucial point in building a website. Different customers use different browsers. Some might use Internet Explorer and some others might use Netscape. Some could still be using older versions. To reach maximum number of customers it is important to strike a balance between various options in the tools available to build a web site. Use of a latest technology can improve the website effectiveness, but, many users might not have latest browser to be benefited.

It is important to make sure that the names of the hyperlinks mean what they are intended for. Looking at a link named ‘What is New’, customers might think that it is a link to the recent updates in the web site. But in reality, it could be a link to ‘new products’ of the company.

Correctness of links is quite important. In an e-commerce enabled website if a link to a product is wrong then it can result from fun to disaster. Imagine clicking on a link to ‘summerware’ and getting the page of ‘sanitaryware’.

Also if the cost of a watch is 1000 rupees and at the website its cost is wrongly typed as 10000 then no one might buy that watch. Or if it is 100 rupees numerous orders might flood the website. One should realise that in cyberworld such messages travel at lightening speed!

The contents of the web site should be up to date. For example, an advertisement ‘Our new product X will be launched on 31 January 2000’ should be updated by 1 February 2000. Even in March 2000 visitors to the site will not be happy to see outdated advertisement. And also it represents the promptness of the organisation. In other words, timely maintenance is important.

Giving right classification of products is also important. At the site of a clothes shop, it is easy for customers to choose if classification is "men’s ware and women’s ware" rather than pants, shirts etc.

More versus less: Caution should be exercised while giving many details of a product. Website of a toy’s shop might want to give 3D animation of a toy by default to attract customers. But, browser might take a lot of time to load it and discourage the buyer. One should remember that attractive graphics presentation is not the only thing that customers look for. Forcing a customer to read too many details to purchase an item, can discourage him.

For huge sites a site map (that provides a bird’s eye view of the site) could make navigation easy for the visitors of the website.

Culturability of a website helps in reaching many more customers. If the website supports users in many languages (English, French, Hindi, Tamil etc.) then it can reach many more customers. For example, the website of a shop in Canada could benefit more by providing English & French versions of its site. Also, if the colour schemes and the figures (fashions etc.) used on the website of a shop can reflect the culture of the user, it could attract many more customers.

Usability is another important aspect of a web site. It should be possible for customers to choose a product and place order for it with least possible effort. i.e. customer need not click mouse often, type too much, answer many questions, search a lot for it and so on. Additionally,

If a customer buys often from your website then a facility to issue e-coupons (like in a super store) and redeem those coupons can add value to your e-commerce site.

Web server log files give us good inputs to analyze traffic on a web site. We can identify most frequently visited areas of the site as well as least frequently visited areas of the site. It helps us to analyse the reasons for the popularity of certain areas. We can also reason for why some parts of the site are not frequently visited and find ways to attract customers (users) to those areas. In otherwords, the strengths and weeknesses of the site can be found.

But webserver log files donot tell you what motivated the customer to visit that page or the value he gained by it.

Search log files indicate which items are searched for often. A number of users might be reaching a page directly through search and it takes many clicks to reach that page if one has to go through the home page. Then it might be worth keeping a direct link to it in the home page itself.

To start with, the development of a website is somewhat analogous to construction of a big building. We will tell the arhitect about our requirements like the arrangement of rooms etc. The architect draws a neat picture of how the building would look like. We review and verify with the construction engineer if such a building is possible. Or what should be the dimensions of walls and pillars to have such a building. Then we will arrive at the final design and go for the construction.

1. Requirement Analysis: Like in any software project, requirements analysis is the important first step. The software systems for inhouse automation like billing, human resources, invoice processing, help desk etc. in general have no direct contact with customers. Interviewing users to know their requirements and meeting those requirements is relatively easy. Implementation of requirements like an attractive GUI can be deffered if the organisation does not like to invest. The technological and financial limitations within the organisation can be explained to the users and requirements can be defined and their scope can be restricted.

In an e-commerce application it is not possible to completely know the requirements of all the customers and meet all of them. The tastes of the customers are varied and satisfying all is indeed difficult. Our ability to build a website satisfying the needs (which are not completely known) of all our customers is a challenge. A customer wants a cyber shop that can provide what he wants and he cannot be told to buy what a cybershop can provide for him.

In the case of an inhouse software system, if there is a maintenance problem employees (who are the users) can be asked to adjust their timings to complete the tasks. On the other hand, an e-commerce site should be available all the time to a cyber buyer, lest, he might go to some other shop, merely by clicking his mouse.

It involves interviewing the departments of an organisation to know how they want to reach their customers and expecting the customers’ expectations from the organisation.

For every requirement the buyer and seller points of view must be considered for better under understanding.

2. Design: This phase involves arriving at a design that meets with the requirements. Also deciding the consistency aspects for common look and feel through out the website. The design should be such that access to all the facilities should be same at the website irrespective of the browser used by its customers. OVID is one of the techniques to design an easy to use GUI.
3. Construction of Working Skeleton: Instead of constructing the whole site at once, building a working skeleton quickly will help in knowing various problems and conveniences with navigation and usability. For example, instead of showing all the pictures and text, one can merely indicate what to expect in which place.
4. Usability test (Phase I): The skeleton can be shown to a few sample customers and reviewers to know if the hyperlinks indicate what they are intended for, navigation is easy, the orgainisation of the website is fine etc. It also involves preparation of a good questionnaire before asking the reviewer and users to test. At this stage, nagivational difficulties or ease will be known.
5. Incorporating the Feedback: The design and skeleton can be modified to incorporate the results from the usability tests.
6. Final website construction: In this phase, the website construction is completed with all the textual, audio and visual features.
7. Usability test (Phase II): In phase I, the things that are expensive to change at a later time are tested. In phase II the usability test is for items that are relatively easier to change. Tthe users or reviewers will express if they are happy with the look and feel, performace (quick loading of product details) is reasonably good, requirements are completely met with etc. The correctness of various hyperlinks and scalability of the site to a number of hits can also be checked at this stage.
8. Trial live run: Before finally releasing the website, it is better to keep the site live, then watch for comments in the feed back and metrics. Any final fine tuning can be done just before final release.
9. Final release: The launch of an e-commerce enabled website is only the beginning of a long lasting maintenance exercise. Collection of various metrics with the help of tools listed below on a periodic basis will help the organisation to change with the ever changing requirements and expectations.

Relative popularity: We can find out the total number of visits to each page and compute the relatively popularity. An analysis can be carried out to improve the popularity of the pages at the lower end of the list.

Click Balance analysis looks at the pages visited prior to and following the visit to the page in question. If several users did not visit any other page after visiting a particular page P (inspite of P having links to many other pages), we can analyse the reasons behind it.

There are four general shopping steps in an online store:

1. Product Impression: the view of hyperlink to a Web page presenting a product
2. Click: through: click on the hyperlink and view the Web page of the product
3. Basket insertion: placement of the item in the shopping basket if interested, and
4. Purchase: the purchase of the item – completion of a transaction

We can have the following metrics for measuring merchandising effectiveness.

Look-to-click rate: A web page has links to various products and details (either visual or textual). Of those links, some are clicked more often than others. It is important to know, of the n number of links given to m number of products, why certain links are hit more often than others. Look-to-click ratio tells us the success rate of advertisements and the way we present our products. A product link might be hit more because of an attractive visual link or it is kept at the top of the page or it has simple textual link and was visible first even before the visual links got loaded.

Click-to-basket rate: This metric tells us about how many customers bought a product after vieweing its details.

A customer in a clothes shop might look at many shirts and not buy even one shirt. It is good for the merchant to know why a customer did not buy, so that the drawbacks can be overcome to improve business. Of the 100 customers who saw various shirts only 10 might have actually done the purchase. It is useful for the merchant to know the fact that only 10% of the customers actually bought, so that he can make the 10% to 20% in a target time frame.

If a customer clicked link to a product it is equivalent to seeing the product. After viewing the product information, if he did not click to buy the product there could be several reasons. Product is not displayed properly or did not have the features he wanted. If the click-to-buy rate is very poor for a product then merchant and website maintenance person should take action to improve it.

Basket-to-buy rate: After clicking ‘add to basket’ button, by looking at the terms and conditions for purchase the buyer might not place the order and delete it from the basket. The reasons could be many. Buyer is not happy that secure connection does not exist to provide credit card details or order cancellation facility does not exist or he does not like that it will be delivered after a week (and he wants it next day) or merchant webserver got disconnected and logged him off.

For a given product if basket-to-buy rate is quite low then it is more important for the merchant to improve the rate.

Look-to-buy rate: A merchant’s website might have n links to products. Of these, only m links resulted in final purchase. Link A has resulted in purchase all the time. Link B has resulted in purchase only half the time. Link C never resulted in a purchase. Then we can improve links B & C.

Hyperlink effectiveness: This metric gives us the ROI (Return On Investment) made on a hyperlink. i.e. looking at the link, clicking to see its details, putting it in the basket and buying have taken place. The ROI is the total amount of sales generated through all such ‘look-to-buy’ scenarios.

1. A tool to beautify and validate the syntactic correctness of HTML code and check for standards (if the code would work the same way on several browsers) will reduce development effort.
2. An intelligent report generation tool to find the merchandising effectiveness (i.e. from look-to-click, click-to-basket, basket-to-click, look-to-buy metrics) for a single product, for a class of products, for all products etc. is very important and useful.
3. A deployed website can have links to many other websites. Over a period of time those referenced websites might cease to exist. A tool to automatically and periodically check this correctness part of the site will be of great use for maintainance.
4. While constructing a webiste, renaming a file will call for renaming of all links to that file. After fully developing a website, whenever a page is deleted, all links to that page should be removed. A tool can save a lot of effort and reduce errors as well both during developement and maintenance.
5. After a site is launched, a tool for various metrics collection (like which page is visited most, which page is visited least, which topics are searched most, how many hits per day, pages not visited at all, are there frequent visitors, how many suggestions are received through feedback) is of immense use to the owner of the site.
6. An advertisement about the launch of a product on 31 July 2002 needs to be updated after the launch of the product. There could be several parts of a website which need modifications at a specified date. A tool to remind the website owner on a timely basis about such changes will make maintenace comfortable.
7. Many websites generally provide a site map. A number of minor changes done over a period of time could have changed the site map itself. But the page showing site map might be old one. A tool to automatically maintain the site map can also be helpful.
8. An intelligent tool to test the usability of a website automatically will save a lot of effort in the usability testing phase of a website development.

In a typical purchase scenario buyer places the order. Seller processes those orders. The seller recovers the cost of the item(s) through a standard payment processing. And, seller also updates his stock of goods. These four different steps in a purchase can be mapped on to four parts of an e-commerce system.

1. Order Capture
2. Order Processing
3. Payment Processing
4. Stock Control

Steps 1 and 2, are internal to an organisation, since reciving purchase order and processing are done internally. Whereas for payment processing (cheques, credit cards etc.) the merchant system will have to interact with customer’s bank and merchant’s bank. Stock control involves updating the merchant stock database and placing a request to his supplier to pile up more stock. These four steps also point to the interfaces that one should think of, while designing an e-commerce website. Many merchants might have software systems already in place for steps 2 to 4. A particular project might involve developing code for step 1 (i.e. on line order capture) and integrating it with the existing stock management system etc.

1. Fourth conference on Human Factors and the Web, June 5, 1998, Basking Ridge, NJ, USA. (http://www.research.att.com/conf/hfweb/)
2. E-Commerce Intelligence: Measuring, Analysing and Reporting on Merchandising Effectiveness of Online Stores, Stephen Gomory, Robert Hoch, Juhnyoung Lee, Mark Podlaseck, Edith Schonberg. (http://www.ibm.com/iac/)
3. Designing Software Using OVID, Richard Berry, Scott Isensee, John Mullaly and Dave Roberts. (http://www.ibm.com/ibm/easy/)
4. Client-Centered Strategies for E-commerce success, Wing Lam, IT Pro magazine, September/October 1999, 45-51.

January 2000