Spare Hub E-Commerce Website: A Comprehensive Business Report

This report proposes an e-commerce website solution for Spare Hub, an automobile spare parts company, aiming to expand its market reach globally. The project utilizes a Content Management System (CMS) like Drupal to develop an interactive and responsive website, reducing development time and costs. The report analyzes issues such as marketing, payment integration, and inventory management, offering recommendations like social media marketing, integration of multiple payment methods, and real-time RFID tagging for inventory. The findings highlight the importance of addressing these challenges to ensure the website's success. The report recommends further research to give the company a competitive edge in the market.

Running head: SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
Spare Hub E-Commerce website
Student’s name
Institution Affiliation(s)

SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Findings...........................................................................................................................................3
Marketing Issue............................................................................................................................3
Payments and shipping issue........................................................................................................4
Inventory management issue........................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
Recommendations............................................................................................................................4
Marketing issues..........................................................................................................................4
Payments and shipping issue........................................................................................................5
Inventory management issue........................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6
1

SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
Executive Summary
The development of technology and its use in business have led to a high demand in e-
commerce services. The purpose of this project is to come up with an e-commerce website for an
automobile spare parts company. The report analyses some of the issues that companies are
facing in regard to e-commerce and provides a number of recommendations to deal with these
problems. The project emulates a content management system methodology with the use of the
Drupal website builder tool to develop an interactive website. The methodology is advantageous
as it reduces both the time and cost of developing this website.
2

SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
Introduction
The report is aimed at proposing a marketing strategy to expand the marketing needs of
an automobile company by coming up with a highly interactive and responsive e-commerce
website which will enable the company to sell their automobile parts internationally. The
development of this website will be accomplished by using a Content Management System
(CMS) such as Drupal website builder together with a pre-processing scripting language such as
PHP and database programming language such as MySQL (Idris & Esumeh, 2015).
Customer data will be stored in Warehouse databases and inventory, which will be linked
to the website to provide an uninterrupted and automated flow of data. By carrying out this
project, the company might use it as a foundation that customers can consult when they need
information regarding their products and services. The next sections of this report will provide
both the findings and recommendations of this project.
Findings
Drupal is selected as the content management tool for creating this e-commerce website.
The builder provides website templates reducing the amount of time spent creating a website
from scratch. Also, the cost of developing and designing the website is considerably reduced
while at the same time providing a sufficient layout to start the business as soon as possible. The
tool allows for customization of these templates to suits the business needs of any organization
(Sabou, Avram, & Zima, 2017).
Marketing Issue
Marketing issues such as the popularity of the website and customer awareness of the
existence of this company exist. Many spare parts customers have little or insufficient knowledge
about the products that the company offers. To handle these problems, the company will have to
3

SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
use paid promotions to enhance the popularity of the website and rank it higher when one is
searching online for automobile spare parts (Singh, Kushwah, Das, & Johri, 2015).
Payments and shipping issue
It is difficult to integrate all the possible methods of payments when starting an e-
commerce website such as this. Therefore, this company will have to deal with integrating
payment methods as early as possible to allow customers to be flexible or choose the method of
payment that they are comfortable with.
Inventory management issue
Listing and tracking of automobile spare parts in the inventory is a complex process, and
regular updates and check-ups will be needed until the website can come up with an automated
way of tracking the inventory (Kim & LaRose, 2017).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the report provides a proposal for an e-commerce interactive website
solution to sell automobile parts globally. The report establishes that the best methodology to be
used is a content management system that is offered through Drupal builder tool. The tool
reduces both cost and time for website development while at the same time customizing the
requirements of the business. E-commerce websites pose a number of challenges to the
automobile industry, such as marketing and payment options, among other problems. Thus
further research on how the company will gain a competitive edge in the market niche over its
competitors is required.
4

SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
Recommendations
Marketing issues
Social media marketing through the use of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will be
instrumental in marketing the website. Also, paid promotions through other websites will be
needed to solve marketing issues.
Payments and shipping issue
The Drupal tool helps to integrate multiple payment methods such as PayPal, Visa cards,
among others. The company may also choose to partner with multiple delivery services such as
postal corporation and courier services companies.
Inventory management issue
To solve the inventory management issue, a real-time RFID tagging solution could be
used in the warehouse to track the various spare parts.
5

SPARE HUB E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
References
Idris, A., & Esumeh, E. (2015). The Top Five Challenges of the Web to Achieve e-Commerce
Success: A Literature Review. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 3, 54.
Kim, J., & LaRose, R. (2017). Interactive E-Commerce: Promoting Consumer Efficiency or
Impulsivity? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(1).
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2004.tb00234.x
Sabou, S., Avram, B., & Zima, L. A. (2017). The Impact of the Problems Faced by Online
Customers on Ecommerce. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Oeconomica, 62(2), 77–88.
https://doi.org/10.1515/subboec-2017-0010
Singh, B., Kushwah, S., Das, S., & Johri, P. (2015). Issue and challenges of online user
generated reviews across social media and e-commerce website. Communication Automation
International Conference on Computing, 818–822. https://doi.org/10.1109/CCAA.2015.7148486
6