Web Decisions 
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About usBuying and selling goods and services
on the Web -
e-commerce
Using the Web to buy and sell goods and services is the next step up from marketing your business on the Web. All of the questions asked relating to marketing your business still need to be asked. However, an e-commerce solution is somewhat more complex to design, develop and run, so more care is required in the understanding of the requirements of the solution.
In order to build a good e-commerce solution, one needs to understand the various aspects of doing business over the Web. There are five key components of an e-commerce solution:
- Relationship - managing the relationship with the customer. This is normally more relevant to solutions that sell to consumers, though may be used in other instances.
- Content - management and presentation of content.
- Transaction - services that provide transactional capability to a solution, such as order managers, baskets and product catalogues.
- Integration & automation - services that manage workflow, process automation, message interchange and facilitates interconnection between applications, also known as Enterprise Application Integration.
- Enterprise Platform - provides things like session services, data services, messaging services, security services, network services, business intelligence services.
We have developed a number of e-Commerce solutions for clients, and had five years experience in designing and building e-commerce solutions before we formed Next Curve.
In 1999 Steve published a paper on Internet Shopping. Although some of the technical information in this paper is now dated, there is much that is as relevant today as in 1999. A section of the paper entitled 'What makes a Good Shopping Site' has been republished here.