Evaluating the Effectiveness of E-commerce Websites (ISY10058)

This report presents a critical evaluation of six e-commerce websites categorized as content providers, community providers, and market creators. The analysis examines websites such as ACM and The Northern Star (content providers), Alibaba and Graysonline (market creators), and Forums.Whirlpool and Meetup (community providers). The report delves into each website's business objectives, success indicators (e.g., website features, content), strengths, and weaknesses. It includes comparisons between websites within the same category to highlight key differences and performance metrics. The evaluation covers various aspects, including profitability, customer service, and operational efficiency, providing a comprehensive assessment of each website's effectiveness in achieving its business goals. The report is a detailed analysis of the e-commerce websites and provides insights into their functionalities.

Running head: ELECTRONIC COMMERCE SYSTEM
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE SYSTEM
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The report deals with the different categories of E-commerce business that are present and the
different websites that are under these categories. The report deals with the business
objectives of the websites. The report also focuses on the indicators that are used to achieve
the business goals. The report also discusses about the strength and weaknesses of the e-
commerce websites.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................5
Discussions.................................................................................................................................5
ACM...........................................................................................................................................5
Business Objectives...............................................................................................................6
Indicators for business objectives..........................................................................................6
Strengths and Weaknesses.....................................................................................................7
The Northern Star.......................................................................................................................8
Business objectives................................................................................................................8
Indicators of Business objectives...........................................................................................8
Strengths and weaknesses......................................................................................................9
Comparison..........................................................................................................................10
Alibaba.....................................................................................................................................10
Business objectives..............................................................................................................10
Indicators of Business objectives.........................................................................................11
Strength and Weaknesses:....................................................................................................11
Graysonline..............................................................................................................................12
Business objectives..............................................................................................................13
Indicators of business objectives..........................................................................................13
Strengths and Weaknesses...................................................................................................13
Comparison..........................................................................................................................14
Forums.Whirlpool....................................................................................................................15

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Features................................................................................................................................15
Business goals:.....................................................................................................................15
Advantages of the website:..................................................................................................15
Drawbacks of the Website...................................................................................................16
Meetup......................................................................................................................................16
Business Objectives.............................................................................................................16
Indicators of Business objectives.........................................................................................16
Strengths and Weaknesses...................................................................................................17
Comparison..........................................................................................................................18
Conclusion................................................................................................................................18
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................19

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Introduction
The report deals with the evaluation of the electronic commerce systems. E-commerce
also known as electronic commerce is the procedure of buying and selling of products by the
means of electronics such as the internet or the applications in the mobile. E-commerce refers
to transactions that are electronic as well as online retail. There are various advantages of e-
commerce. The electronic commerce improves the image of the organization. Electronic
commerce helps the company to giver better services to the customers. Electronic commerce
minimized the work of paper.
The report focuses on the critical evaluation of the six websites that belong to three
different categories. The categories of electronic commerce are content provider, community
provider and market creator. The report has a detailed discussion about the business
objectives of the website. The report also focuses on the indicators for the success factors and
the objectives of the business. The report focuses on the comparison on the websites
belonging to the same category. The report also has a detail discussion about the strengths
and weaknesses of the website.
Discussions
Category 1: Content provider
Under the category of content provider, the two websites are northstar.com and
acm.au. These websites are used to provide content to the customers.
ACM
The association for computing machinery is an international society for computing. It
was founded in the year 1947. It is also world’s largest educational and scientific society for
computing. The ACM is professional membership group that is non-profitable. The

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headquarters of ACM is in New York City. The ACM is a company for scholarly and
academic interests in computer science.
Business Objectives
A business objective is a step that is measurable people take to accomplish the goals.
Goals happen to be general but objectives are specific. The business objectives of a company
give a picture of how it plans to accomplish its goals. The business objectives of the ACM
Company are as follows:
The purpose of this company is to advance the science, construction, development and
the applications of machinery that are new for reasoning, computing and the handling of
information. The association is an international educational and scientific organization. They
dedicate their work in advancing the art, engineering, science and application of information
technology, serving public and professional interests by fostering the interchange of
information that are open and by promoting the professional that is highest and the standards
that are ethical. ACM strengthens the collective voice of the profession through leadership
that are strong, promotion of the standards that are highest and the recognition of excellence
that are related to technology. ACM gives support to the professional growth of the members
by giving opportunities for learning that are life-long, professional networking and the
development of career.
Indicators for business objectives
The ACM digital library platform is ACM’s own system of proprietary that is
developed wholly, hosted and maintained by ACM. This system is built on source technology
that is open in collaborations with the volunteers from the community that is scientific and it
contains many of the powerful features of search.
 Integration that are seamless between guide index and DL

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 Comprehensive database of the profiles of the authors that includes bibliometrics of every
author nearly in the field.
 The citation pages are exportable in the endnotes, ACM ref formats and BibTex.
 Extensive use of DOIs with the references and the links of the references are given
through CrossRef.
 The authentication of IP and Domain Name Look Up for the customers of the institutions.
 Supports shibboleth and Athens authentication
 Navigation that is powerful and search that is powerful
Strengths and Weaknesses
Every company has some strengths and weaknesses. They work on the weaknesses to
convert it into their strengths. The strengths of the ACM Company are that it has the
capability to help influence and work on the efforts that involves the profession that is related
to computing. The publications of the company are quite helpful and everything can be
known in computing. The ACM work on several topics that are important such as the history
of computing the accreditation of programs. There are group for the students where the
student gets engaged and participate in the programming contests that are sponsored by
ACM. The big strength of ACM are that a person can get engaged with the other
professionals across the world. This organization gives opportunity to the members to speak,
write and to improve the skills of professionalism.
The weaknesses of ACM are that it relies on the volunteers to make the company
work. So, depending upon the level of engagement of volunteers, an area of specialization of
computing can or can be a sub-unit of ACM.

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The Northern Star
The Northern Star is a newspaper of Australia serving the states of New South Wales
and Lismore. APN News & Media own this newspaper. The newspaper of The Northern Star
is circulated to the state of Lismore and the communities that are surrounding. The newspaper
has been digitised as a part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program project of the
National Library of Australia. A content provider website works for the people of Australia.
Business objectives
The business objectives of the Northern Star E-newspaper are as follows:
 Staying profitable: Staying profitable means that the cost of revenue is more than the cost
of ding the business. The business objective of the Northern Star is to make profits from
the people of Australia. Nowadays, people read e-newspapers rather than the newspapers
that are provided to the houses. Therefore, the profits are more.
 Productivity of resources and people: the training of the employees, maintenance of the
equipment all go into the company’s productivity. The objective of the Northern Star is to
provide all the resources to the employees so that they can remain productive.
 Excellent services to the customers: Excellent services to the customers help the Northern
Star to retain their clients and to generate the revenue that is on repeat. Keeping the
customers happy should be the primary objective of the Northern star newspaper.
Indicators of Business objectives
The business objectives of the Northern Star newspaper should be based on the
features, function and the content of the e-newspaper website. The features of the Northern
Star newspaper are as follows:
 The customization of the homepage is very important in the Northern Star newspaper.
 The breaking news that should be snackable.

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 Social news board should be present on the website to increase the amount of clients of
the Northern Star newspaper.
 There should be articles embedded in the Northern Star newspaper.
 The important news in the Northern Star newspaper should be highlighted and there
should be sharelines in the Northern star newspaper.
Strengths and weaknesses
The strength and the weaknesses of the Northern Star newspaper are as follows:
 The Northern Star has a number of outlets in every state. It is supported by a distribution
network that is strong and it makes sure that the products are easily available to the
customers,
 The Northern Star has a cost structure that is low and helps it to produce the products at a
cost that is low and then sell its products at a price that is low. It makes is affordable to
the customers.
 It has a very strong relationship with the dealers. The dealers not only provide them with
supplies but it also focuses on promoting the products of the company.
 It has a large base of asset that provides it with better solvency.
The weaknesses of the Northern Star are as follows:
 The Northern Star is spending huge amount of money on the research and development
but it is spending less amount of money on the innovative products.
 The building of the industry by the company is adding up the costs that are unnecessary to
the company.
 There is lack of financial planning in the company that is related to the flow of cash. It
leads to a situation where there is not cash flow and it leads to unplanned borrowing of
money.

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Comparison
ACM Northern star
It is a digital library website that is used for
educational purposes
It is an online newspaper service in Australia.
This website is use for educational purposes
by teachers, research scholars and the
students
This website is used by everyone for reading
the news from any hand held devices
ACM has much strength like it influence
other people to work while the weaknesses
are it relies on the volunteers.
The strength of this website it is affordable to
the customers and the weakness is it lacks
financial planning.
Category 2: Market Creator
The websites that falls under this category are the graysonline and alibaba.
Alibaba
Alibaba is Chinese multinational company that specializes in retail, e-commerce and
technology. It was founded on 4 April 1999 in Hangzhou. The alibaba company provides
business to consumer, consumer-to-consumer and business to business sales services through
web portals as well as services of electronic payments, search engines related to shopping and
services of cloud computing.
Business objectives
The Alibaba is a multinational company. It has several objectives of business to
increase its profits and to give excellent services to the customers.
The objectives of business of Alibaba are as follows:

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 The goals is to catch more of the customers to increase its profits
 To increase more of its traffic
 Best services to the customers for making the customers happy.
 Shipping time of the products to the customers should be minimum
 To increase the number of reviews
 Customer follow up is very important and the Alibaba group does it.
 Reduce the number of items that is refunded.
Indicators of Business objectives
The indicators of the objectives of the business depend on the features and the
functions of the website. The features and the functions of the Alibaba website include:
 The answers about the products of Alibaba can be answered just in seconds. It gives
excellent services to the customers.
 Each in every product in Alibaba is track able. There are maps in the company that will
show the location of the order instantly.
 The purchases from alibaba can easily be shared. There are comment boxes where the
customers can post images or videos or words of the items that is purchased.
 Alibaba gives a feature of live stream shopping where items can be purchased from social
networking sites such as Facebook.
 Internal remarketing is another useful feature of Alibaba. It is the feature where each of
the products that the customers have viewed is remembered by the system .When the
home page is opened the customer can see the products that was viewed yesterday.
Strength and Weaknesses:

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Alibaba has much strength in the world of Ecommerce but it has few weaknesses. The
strengths of Alibaba are:
 Scale of operations: One of the important strength of Alibaba is the scale of operations
and the market in which it operates.
 Market share: The market share of the Alibaba Company is huge and its rival is much
away from it. One of the essential strength of alibaba is the dominance of market share
due to the backing of the manufactures that are solid.
 Good relationship with partners: Alibaba gives an environment that is conducive to the
people that participate in scripting the success of Alibaba. The consumers, merchants and
the dealers get access to the schemes of financial, platforms that are scalable and the
storage in the cloud.
The weaknesses of Alibaba are as follows:
 Discounts are very high: The alibaba company does not sell the products at fair price to
the seller is a weakness of alibaba.
 Too many sellers: Alibaba has a large number of sellers registered in their websites. This
has resulted in a large number of sellers that are now competing in the market. This one
of the weakness of Alibaba.
Graysonline
GraysOnline is one of the largest industrial, auto and commercial businesses of
auction in Australia that offers a wide range of auto, industrial, commercial and consumer
goods directly from the distributors and manufacturers. For the buyers, the company offers
wide range of quality business and products of the consumer online.

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Business objectives
The goal of the company is to how the digital ability can drive growth. The first goal
of this website is to reach the customers especially the ones that have the difficulty to access
and costly to serve and are not valuable enough to pursue within a company’s business model
that is already existing.
The second goal is to take the costs out of the customers that are serving. The third
goal of the company is to create a customer experience that is differentiated to capture the
share of the market.
Indicators of business objectives
The features and the functions that has led the company to its objectives of business are :
 It provides ubiquity in order to increase the sales.
 It ensures security and global reach
 The websites is very interactive.
 The website strikes an information density balance.
 The website has a good search engine optimization and layout tools for reporting.
 The website is an easy to use checkout.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of GraysOnline are as follows:
 The website is time saving.
 The website has no boundary and can be used by anyone.
 The website does not have any time constraints.
 The website helps to compare between the prices of the products.
 The business is quite cost effective.

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The weaknesses of GraysOnline are as follows:
 The main weakness of the website is the security issues.
 The website takes longer time for delivery.
 The products of the e-commerce are limited.
 The shopping costs of the website are more.
 The website gives fewer discounts and bargaining occurs.
Comparison
Alibaba Graysonline
It is a shopping website that is based in China It is an Auction website that is based on
Australia
The features and functions of Alibaba is
more
The features and functions of this website is
good but not more than that of Alibaba.
The strength of Alibaba is that it has good
relationship with the customers and the
weakness is that it gives high amount of
discount to the customers.
The strength of this website it is time saving
and does not have any constraints of time and
the weakness security issues and takes longer
time for delivery.
Community Provider
There are two websites under the community provider. They are as follows:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au and http://www.meetup.com. These website are used to
provide community services to the common people.

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Forums.Whirlpool
Features
It is completely an independent community website. The main motive of the website
is to make people aware regarding the status of the Internet in Australia. It was designed in
1998 and now it becomes a premium resource for the Australian to portray news as well as
information. It is considered as the greatest technology associated Discussion Company of
the Australia. The main features of the website is that it portrays all the hardware and
software devices and technology status in Australia
Business goals:
The Whirlpool discussion forums focus on delivering information regarding the
internet status in Australia. The business aims to raise the awareness regarding the internet
status of the Australia.
Advantages of the website:
The concerned website is beneficial in many ways:
 People can gather information regarding the trending broadband, mobile phones, IT
industry, computers and various companies providing the internet to the local people of
the Australia.
 The website presents a clear difference between various organizations and systems which
help the people to take an effective and efficient decision regarding implementation of
new systems or broadband

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Drawbacks of the Website
 Besides delivering a clear discussion of the services, the website does not deliver any
contact number of the organization that does not allow the users to contact directly with
the officials of any organization or service provider.
 The webpage of the concerned website is quite complex and it is too difficult for new
visitor to search or analyze the desired factor. Thus, the website needs to be redesigned
and the complexity should be reduced such that the webpage become user friendly.
Meetup
Meetup is a service that is used to organize the groups online that hosts events in-
person with interests that are similar. CEO Scott Heiferman and four of its co-founders
founded Meetup in 2002
Business Objectives
The business objective of meetup is Independence. The people can independently meet
people without anyone between them. The second business object of the company is
community. There are different types of communities in meetup and the perception of this
website is to make new connections. They are doing the business of love. Through making
meet new people, they are earning huge amounts of profit from the clients.
Indicators of Business objectives
Meetup is a online meeting website where people can meetup and share their views
and common goals with each other. The indicators of the business objectives include the
features and functions of the website. The features of the website include:
 Polls: The polls allow the user to collect the feedbacks that are anonymous in order to
plan the meetups and then learn more about the members.

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 Sharing of files: The meetups allow files to be shared with one another such as music or
writing materials. The organizers that are there can upload membership documentation
that are relevant and then send a link for the files that are individual to their members.
 Printed materials for the custom meetup group: The materials that are printed make it
easy for the members to find the users at the meetups and can be a help in promoting the
IRL of the meetup group of the user. The user can customize, print and download name,
postcards and many more through the page known as promote page.
 Check in through mobile web: The requested feature of the meetup is exclusive to the
web of the mobile and the users of the android allow the user to check the members into
the meetup of the user as soon as they arrive.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Meetup is an online meeting site where people meet and share their experiences. It
has several strengths and weaknesses.
The strengths of Meetup are as follows:
 The business model of meetup is very unique that is different from other dating or meetup
website that are present.
 The interaction in the meetup website is face to face. The meetup website is realistic in
nature and not like other virtual websites.
 It is more intimate than the other social networking sites like facebook.
 Meetup has several communities that cannot be found on other meeting websites that are
present.
The weaknesses of meetup are as follows:
 There is very little advertising and awareness about the services of meetup. Little less can
be known about meetup through its advertisements.

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 Takes the effort to go put and meet new people. It is very tiring to go and meet people
outside. It is an essential weakness of the meetup website or the company.
Comparison
Forums.Whirlpool Meetup
This website is used for the making the people
aware about the internet status in Australia.
This website is used for meeting different people
on the internet
The goals of its business are to make the people
of Australia use the internet and to make aware
about the status of Australia.
The goals of business are to make different
people meet with each other face to face and also
on the internet.
The strength is that people can gather information
and make new internet connections in Australia.
The weakness is that it does not provide any
contact number.
The strength of this website is that it is more
realistic and intimate than social networking
sites. The weakness of this website is that it has
very little awareness about the meetups.
Conclusion
From the report, it can be concluded that the different e-commerce websites have
different business objectives, strengths, and weaknesses. The report deals with the evaluation
of various e commerce websites. The report focuses on the business goals of the websites.
The report discusses about the indicators that are used to achieve the business goals. The
report also discusses about the strengths and the weaknesses of the e-commerce websites.

18ELECTRONIC COMMERCE SYSTEM
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