DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

1.1 Introduction

An Organizational E-Commerce Website Design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modelling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via internet in the form of technologies (such as mark languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The intent of web design is to create a website (a collection of electronic files residing on one or more web servers) that presents content (including interactive features or interfaces) to the end user in the form of web pages once requested. Such elements as text, forms, and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs) can be placed on the page using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) usually requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into the web pages by using HTML or XHTML tags.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

The Internet-based organizational electronic commerce environment has been widespread developed, which provides consumers with a convenient platform to search for information, interact with retailers and purchase products online. According to data collected in 2013, Nigeria has owned around 8.7 million internet users. That corresponds to over 94% of the population, which makes Nigeria become one of the greatest countries in the world in terms of internet use (E-commerce News, 2016). Furthermore, the report brings up the fact that the dominating categories of products that are traded online in Nigeria are travels, clothing and shoes, but also electronics and entertainment/media and it also mentions Adlibris, Cdon, Ellos and H&M as some of the most popular stores for online shopping within the different categories. Besides, the product categories earlier mentioned as the leading ones, there are those which are not yet there due to low consumer adoption. One of those is the grocery segment, which hence makes this to an interesting area for further development.

Improvements in the various browsers compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance of XHTML and XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements. The latest standards and proposals aim to leading to the various browsers’ ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on the end-users input or interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time database modifications, etc.) content can be changed on the client side (end-users computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, Jscript, Action script, media players and PDF reader plug-ins, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (PHP, ASP, PERL, ColdFusion, JSP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually in complex applications. With growing specialization within communication design and information technology field, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics.

Internet today has a great importance in a lot of people's everyday lives, not least for pleasures such as shopping. Among Swedish consumers online shopping is something frequently used, and statistics from 2016 show that nine out of ten Internet users have at some time used Internet for a purchase (E-commerce News, 2016). A huge amount of previous research focused on some fashionable industries such as clothing, cosmetics, books, electrical appliance etc, which are frequently ordered products (Young Kim, E. & Kim, Y, 2004; Bian, Q. & Forsythe, S, 2012). Compared to these types of products, online grocery shopping has not grown so big and few previous literatures has been explored in this field, which arises our interests in devoting a not so developed area. The low level of consumer adoption makes it interesting to explore different factors that could affect consumers’ choices on online grocery shopping in Nigeria (Sullivan, P. & Heitmeyer, J, 2008; Bakewell, C. & Mitchell, V, 2003; Belleau, B.,et al, 2007), however, the range of previous research target is broad and in this study, the authors aim to narrow the range of explored group. Therefore, Swedish families with children constitute the target group for this study. The characteristics of families with children would have distinct buying intention compared to other type of groups as the desired need for them would change.

This study could generate relevant knowledge for grocery retailers, since offering online grocery shopping could be a new way for retailers to make money. More knowledge about what their potential customer’s value could therefore help them boosting their sales and profitability. This arouses an interest for taking the understandings about consumers’ online grocery shopping preferences one step further.

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1.3 Statement of the Problems

Investigation reveals the following problems of the existing Organizational E-commerce website;

1. Lack of inadequate facilities for shopping, customers have to visit shops within the store premises to purchase an item and inadequate attention will be giving to them because of crowd due to the manual of selling grocery.
2. The customers have to queue for a long period of time before getting their desired product or goods from the grocery seller, which makes shopping within the store very stressful.
3. Most of the customers prefer shopping outside the grocery store, maybe where they come from they have not witness queuing to shop,
4. The customers have to spend all their time just to purchase an item in the store shop which is not right, all because of the manual approach towards grocery shopping.

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1.4 Aim and Objective of the Study

The aim of this new design is to develop online software that will eradicate the problems or the existing Organizational e-Commerce Website System stated above. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were considered:

1. To design application software that will be used to purchase an item online by the interested personnel.
2. To design application software that will update new products like grocery items and other related items online.
3. To design software that will be used to make series of grocery shopping online by the several personnel.
4. To implement an automated system for the grocery store Organizational E-Commerce Website.
5. To design software that will be used to research about products and make purchases for desired item.

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1.5 Significance of the Study

The importance of this study is to use object oriented development processes and techniques in the E-commerce online grocery store system. Formal analysis and design were used to give adequate understanding to the object-oriented technique used. The major quest is to ease the problem and stress encountered in customers grocery shopping experience and keeping records of stock list, customer lists, sales volume, and summary report.

This project will be of benefit to:

1. Enterprises.
2. Shopping Malls/Supermarkets.

Besides, the study will serve as reference material for subsequent researcher in the field or related topics.

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1.6 Scope of Study

This research work will concentrate on the design and implementation of an Organizational E-Commerce Website. The study covers only e-commerce online grocery store, marketing, and delivery of purchased products.

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1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

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1.8 Definition of Terms

E-commerce: Electronic commerce, commonly written as e-commerce, is the trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet.

Electronic data interchange (EDI): Electronic data interchange (EDI) is an electronic communication method that provides standards for exchanging data via any electronic means.

Merchant: A person or company involved in wholesale trade, especially one dealing with foreign countries or supplying goods to a particular trade.