e-Business Features

The consumer is king. This statement is especially true in the e-business realm. For instance, if you were to visit an offline bookstore to do your holiday shopping, you might browse through the aisles for a few hours, pick out a few books you wanted to buy, and take them to the cashier to pay for them. If you asked the cashier whether the bookstore offered gift-wrapping or shipping services, the response from the vendor would probably be “no, we don’t provide those services.” You would be satisfied with this and make the purchase anyway. You would then take the gifts home, wrap them, and ship them to their various destinations. If you are making the same gift purchases in an online bookstore, you expect to be able to have them gift-wrapped and delivered to any address you desire. It defeats the purpose somewhat if you have to pay to have the books
delivered to your address, only to turn around and pay to ship them someplace else. If you are purchasing the books as gifts, you want to have them gift-wrapped. Again, it defeats the purpose if you have to have the books sent to your address so that you can gift-wrap them and then reship. Online it’s a whole different world. Consumers have higher expectations. Often they shop online for the convenience and expect the online merchant to meet all their needs. Consumers expect the online merchant to deliver what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. If you don’t provide what they want the way they want it, another vendor is just a click away.
Not all possible features of an e-business site are applicable to every business, but if you intend to be competitive online, you must give your consumers what they are looking for. You might have something they want, but if they cannot conduct transactions easily on your site and competitors offer more point-of-sale service, people will leave your site and shop at another site that is easier to buy from. This section focuses on some possible e-business features that you might want to include on your site. Decide which features are most applicable to your business and implement them into your e-business system. I will explain all detailed e-business features that you might want to include on your site.
Just wait my next posting...