This module discussed issues pertaining to using the Web for e-commerce.
You have discovered the tools you need to build an e-commerce Web site and how they work.
E-commerce requires choosing a specific business model and implementing the right technology to handle customer needs.
You have also learned about technology to facilitate the back-end needs of an e-business, such as merchant systems. At the end of it all, you have figured out what global issues need to be addressed when building an e-commerce site.
You should now be able to define the following:
- How businesses are using the Internet for various types of electronic commerce
- How B2B sites operate
- How B2C sites operate
- How C2C sites operate
- How the Web is being used to mediate the actions between the buyer and seller
- The infrastructure required to implement e-commerce
- Issues associated with conducting global business on the Internet
In this module, you were introduced to the following terms:
- Business-to-business (B2B): An e-commerce site that sells primarily to other businesses. The goal of a business-to-business (B2B) Internet site is to automate aspects of its supply chain activities.
- Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): EDI enables computers from one company to query and transmit purchase orders and invoices to another company's computers.
- Firewall: Security mechanism that protects the secrecy and integrity of an enterprise's data. The proprietary information is kept in an area physically separate from other information accessible through the network.
- Business-to-consumer (B2C): An e-commerce site that sells primarily to consumers.
- SSL (Secure Sockets Layer): A security technology for transmitting private documents over the Internet using authentication for servers and browsers.
- Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): An e-commerce site wherein consumers are the sellers and the buyers.
- Customer relationship management (CRM): As the name implies, managing customer relationships by integrating sales, marketing, customer support, engineering, and quality assurance through software and/or a process.
- Merchant system: Payment systems that are made up of merchant servers and merchant software for handling Web-based purchases. A component of the merchant system is a merchant account at a financial institution, which is required for credit card transactions.
In the next module, you will learn about HTML.