E-Commerce. Critical Risk Factors and Key Factors for Success

Table of Contents

List of tables

List of Abbreviations

1 Introduction

2 The structure of the project

3 Foundation
3.1 What is e-business
3.2 What is e-procurement
3.3 Definition and types of e-commerce
3.3.1 B2B (Business-to-Business)
3.3.2 B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
3.3.3 C2B (Consumer-to-Business)
3.3.4 C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)

4 E-commerce
4.1 The Beginning of e-commerce
4.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of e-commerce
4.3 E-Commerce platforms
4.3.1 Magento
4.3.2 OXID eSales
4.3.3 xt:Commerce
4.3.4 Shopware
4.4 Market share e-commerce platforms
4.4.1 Popularity comparison
4.4.1.1 Comparison of the e-commerce platforms in the past 6 years
4.4.1.2 Comparison of the e-commerce platforms in the past past 12 months..

5 Key factors for success in e-commerce
5.1 Critical Risk Factors in e-commerce
5.1.1 Availability
5.1.2 Performance
5.1.3 Scalability
5.1.4 Security
5.2 Key factors for success in e-commerce
5.2.1 Delivery of site objects
5.2.1.1 Make use of truthful headlines and strong hooks
5.2.1.2 Readability of the content
5.2.2 Usability
5.2.2.1 Importance of usability
5.2.2.2 Improving the usability

6 Final Conclusion and revalue
6.1 E-commerce Platform
6.2 Key factors for success in e-commerce

Sources

List of illustrations

Illus. 1: Summary e-business

Illus. 2: Magento Demo Shop Frontend Modern Theme

Illus. 3: OXID eSales CE Frontend Demo shop Azure Theme

Illus. 4: xt:Commerce 4 Frontend Demo Shop

Illus. 5: Shopware 4 Frontend Demo Shop

Illus. 6: Google Trends Search Pattern in the past 6 years

Illus. 7: Google Trends Search Pattern in the past 6 years as a Pie Chart

Illus. 8: Google Trends Search Pattern in the last 12 months

Illus. 9: Google Trends Search Pattern in the last 12 months as a Pie Chart

Illus. 10: Customer Conversion Rate by Page Load Time

Illus. 11: Why didn’t the user buy

List of tables

Table 1: Summary advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce 8

List of Abbreviations

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

1 Introduction

Since the first appearance of the Internet to the public mass in the early 1990s, many enterprises and ent repreneurs tried to use this technology for the advantage of their own business. What was seen as a revolutionary step in business management is now a daily part of managing a business. The use of the Internet has grown significantly in a short period of time, to be more specific in numbers, the number of users from 1995 till 2011 has grown approximately from 16 million to 2.251 million users and is still growing. That is a significant growth of 14068.75%.¹

Since then the web presentation has evolved from a simple text into a much more complex information tool. Users of the Internet are now able to communicate, interact and share information with each other. This development has opened up many opportunities for entrepreneurs. To name a few advantages: gaining new customers, generating contacts, introducing your brand and products and of course increasing your revenue and profit has become fairly easy.

This kind of practice could also be defined under the term “electronic commerce” also known as e-commerce and e-comm. To define it more correctly, the term e-commerce is the buying and selling of products, services and information over electronic systems such as the Internet.

Even though this very useful information tool is available to us, the Internet doesn’t always mean success and pr ofit gains. On the contrary, introducing your company brand, services and or products in an improper and unpr ofessional way could lead to reputation loss, which also can lead to revenue and profit loss. Sometimes it can even lead into losing your most loyal customers. Furthermore the rivalry between businesses on the Internet is so immense that if your brand is not introduced correctly, visitors may prefer your rivals. Just to name a few bad e-commerce examples: citydeli.com, rzent.co.nr, arngren.net, and lingscars.com.

The purpose of this project paper is to summarize the “key factors for success in e-commerce” for anyone who thinks of stepping into the online business branch. This can be used as a guideline to save time, verify the usefulness and/or the attainability of the desired results.

2 The structure of the project

In the third section “Foundation” of this thesis, the definition and purpose of an e-business will be explained and what the differences between e-procurement and e-commerce are will be made clear. Also it will describe the main types of e-commerce which exist.

In the fourth section of this thesis “e-commerce”, i t will be e xplained what the term e-commerce means, how it started and there will also be a small summarization of the e-commerce history. Furthermore there will be a r eview of the consumer behavior and the technologies which made e-commercing possible. This section will also include the advantages and disadvantages of an e-commerce, which software will help you set up an e-commerce and what popularity it has in Germany.

In the fifth section of this thesis the “key factors for success in e-commerce” will be thoroughly handled. This meaning what an e -commerce environment needs to have and which risk factors an e-commerce brings with it. This section will also contain information about the effects, the usability, and the readability. Also it informs about the way your e-commerce environment delivers its objects to your customers.

Lastly, in section six of this thesis, the sections four and five will be shortly resummarized, with the intention to make some points cleared out. Also each summarization will contain a conclusion written below it. As the ending of this thesis a short closing remarks will be given to this project paper

3 Fundation

3.1 What is e-business

In order to explain what e-commerce is, a brief explanation of the meaning “electronic business” is needed. Electronic business, also known as e-business or an i nternet business, stands for businesses run on the Internet, or for utilizing Internet technologies to improve productivity or profitability of a business. The term e-business in a more general meaning can be used to describe any form of business that utilizes a computer.²

Illus. 1: Summary e-business 1

Source: IAW

http://123management.nl/0/010_strategie/a120_strategie_10_push_perspectief.html date(15.09.2012)

The term e-business as illustrated above consists out of the collaboration of e- commerce and e-procurement. In this collaboration the e-procurement system covers mainly the Supply Chain Management and the e-commerce deals with the consumer demands of goods.

3.2 What is e-procurement

Electronic procurement also known as e-procurement is an important part of many B2B business models. E-procurement by definition means, the purchase and sale of supplies and s ervices over the Internet, such as the World Wide Web.³ A good example for an e-procurement web site is Alibaba.com where users can look for buyers and or sellers of goods and services. Depending on the approach of the buyer or seller, they can specify or suggest a price.

3.3 Definition and types of e-commerce

E-commerce by definition means buying and selling of products, services and information over electronic systems such as the Internet. In this thesis however we will mainly cover the World Wide Web. The e-commerce can be broken into four main categories: B2B, B2C, B2C, and C2C.

3.3.1 B2B (Business-to-Business)

The definition of B2B stands internationally for Business-to-Business in which companies trade with each other. Some examples of a B 2B are: manufacturers to distributors and wholesalers selling to retailers. Pricing in this sector is mainly based on quantity of order.

3.3.2 B2C (Business-to-Consumer)

B2C is an i nternational indication for Business-to-Consumer in which companies sell directly to the consumer. This could be t hrough a c atalog utilizing shopping software such as a webshop.

3.3.3 C2B (Consumer-to-Business)

C2B is the abbreviation for Consumer-to-Business which is internationally used. In a C2B business model a consumer or an end user offers a product or service to an organization, which can use this to complete a business process. Photographers and designers are known for using websites like Fotolia.com and Istockphoto.com to offer their images and services to other businesses.

3.3.4 C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)

C2C is an international indication for Consumer-to-Consumer in which consumers offer goods and services to other consumers. A good example of this is eBay where users can offer their item for auction.

4 E-commerce

4.1 The Beginning of e-commerce

Over the past 22 years the Internet has changed the way we buy and sell products and services amazingly. Back then in the 1990s nobody would have ever come to the thought of shopping online, many even ridiculed this thought. But in the modern society we live in today, it has become an i mportant part of our daily lifestyle, where many would not know what to do if e-commerce wasn’t there. It has become such an ease to research something on the Internet that most consumers cannot decide whether to buy or not, before doing any research on the Internet.

In 2010 a study case by Compete has proven that eight out of ten consumers purchase

something online at least once a week.⁴

According to the study case done by Pew Internet & American Life Project two third of the online Americans say they have bought something online.⁵

But if we extend the definition e-commerce to include researching products and services online, then the number of e-commerce users globally, easily exceeds 80 percent.⁶

The history of e-commerce is short but very impressive. In a short amount of time of a few decades the capabilities of networking and computing technology has improved exponentially. Computers from all around the world are now connected to a g lobal information network, which has created a w hole new world of intellect, financial and social intercommunication. The first signs of e-commerce go as far back as the 1960s. Even back then businesses were conducting electronic transactions over computer networks. But at that time this process was fairly slow and expensive.⁷

By the early 1980s, individual computer users had discovered the use of e-mails and were participating in all kinds of activities like newsgroups and sharing documents over different networks. This was also made possible by companies like CompuServe, which was one of the first popular network services for home computer users. In the mid-1980s CompuServe also offered a service called Electronic Mall, where users could make direct purchases from over 100 online merchants. Although the Electronic Mall was not a success as the company expected, it still is one of the first e-commerce examples as we know today. This was mainly because many back then preferred using the phone or other traditional ways for acquiring their goods and services.⁸

In 1990, a researcher named Tim Berners-Lee at CERN which is one of the largest and most respected centres for scientific research,⁹ proposed the use of a hypertext-based web in which users can navigate at will. He called it the WorldWideWeb (W3).¹⁰

The first widely distributed Web browser named Mosaic was introduced in 1993 to the

public mass and right after that, in 1994, the Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released, which included a security protocol called SSL (Secure Socket Layer). This protocol allowed users to send and receive encrypted messages in an online transaction. This could be s een as a big achievement for the e-commerce as we know today, for it ensured that information like names, addresses and c redit card numbers could be encrypted as they passed over the Internet.^{11 12}

Around 1994 and 199 5 the companies “First Virtual Holding” and “ CyberCash” introduced there first third-party services for processing online credit card sales, which at that time was one of the most popular.¹³ Meanwhile a company called VeriSign had started focusing on c ertifying e-commerce servers for proper encryption and secure connection. The company VeriSign gained a lot of financial help on this subject from corporations like Visa International, Mitsubishi Corp., and A meritech Corp. who were also interested in finding a solution to the security problem on the Internet.¹⁴

In the mid-1990s Amazon and eB ay, two of the most influential e-commerce businesses we know today started offering electronic transaction, which were one o f the first among the others.¹⁵

With Amazon, one of the most famous e-commerce companies, Jeff Bezos who is the founder of Amazon, went into a new , strong and effective e-commerce market. He realized that the shipping of books were cheap and easy to order.¹⁶ In July 1995, Jeff Bezos sold his first book on A mazon.com and within the next 30 days Amazon was selling books to online shoppers in all 50 states of the U.S. and 45 other countries.¹⁷

Amazon had s uccessfully set the standard for a c ustomer-oriented e-commerce website. Users could browse by category and search for available books.

But eBay went even a step further and made it possible for the Internet users to sell their own goods on t he Internet themselves. There was no need t o be an ex isting business to sell things online anymore. All users had to do w as, post their goods, describe it briefly, and somebody would buy it.¹⁸

4.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of e-commerce

Starting your own business is very expensive and in most cases the rivalry is unfortunately very strong. That is why many entrepreneurs prefer to start an e-business and see if business is working for them. Having an e -commerce offers many advantages to businesses and customers, but it can also cause many problems. The pros and cons of an e -commerce can vary for every e-business, this is mainly the cause of the company running the e-commerce, for example some businesses offer very good support on the internet while others have poor services. Some deliver on schedule while others are always late, but in general every e-commerce comes with the same advantages and disadvantages. To see the main advantages and disadvantages of an e-commerce see the table below.

Advantages of e-commerce Disadvantages of e-commerce

Faster buying and selling procedure. Anyone can start a business, good or bad.

And there are many bad sites that sell their goods for a very high price.

Your business is 24 hours and 7 days a No guarantee for product quality. week available.

Global reach to customers. Achieving a certain trust in customers is

very difficult. Customers have to feel confident that the payment process is safe.

Low cost for processing. With an e-commerce there is no direct

interaction with customers, which makes it

difficult to create customer loyalty.

Easy to start and managing possibility. Security issues. Hackers may try to breach your e-commerce through known

security issues.

Customers can browse and search your Corporate vulnerability. Information about items more easily. catalogs, product details and other business related information are also accessible to your competitors.

Better service, less chance in discrimination (as in outfit, looks or skin color) by personal is much lower.

Higher margins and more pricing freedom, because of low costs. Productivity gains, as in marketing products, and answering technical questions online.

Comparing products and or services are much easier.

Table 1: Summary advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce^{19 20}

4.3 E-Commerce platforms

There are various types of e-commerce platforms to choose from, paid and non-paid versions. Many just randomly pick an e-commerce platform, but little do they know that in order to gain a good start, you need to have a set of defined numbers of criteria to match your needs. For example if one onl y needs a e -commerce to display his products, which is less than 50 items, he or she could better go for light-weight e-commerce platform which is not all to heavy on performance issues. In this section we will introduce four e-commerce platforms, which can help you set up a good starters-up webshop and a brief history of the e-commerce platforms.

4.3.1 Magento

The e-commerce platform Magento formerly known as Varien is grounded by the company Magento Inc. in 2001 Los Angeles US. Before the release of the Magento 1.0 in 2008, the Magento community already had tens of thousands of members registered in their community even before any real programming was started. This was a g iven prove for the company Magento that there was a high demand for a better and m ore customizable e-commerce platform and a need f or more advanced implementation contingency by developers and merchants. After the developments at the Magento inc. they released their first Magento platform, which amazingly became a huge success. With success growing the demands also became bigger, larger merchants were asking for more, for more support, warranties and s o on. To provide these extra services Magento offered the Enterprise Edition in 2009. But the real success behind the Magento platform is that the platform was developed to be an open source and it was developed using other open source techniques. Their main achievement was that the architecture of the platform was extendable.²¹ Meanwhile the company Magento offers 4 different editions for the right business needs; these are the Community Edition for the developers, the Enterprise Edition for medium to large businesses, the Enterprise Premium Edition for large business and the Magento Go as a hosted solution for small and micro merchants.²²

A demonstration of the Magento Community and t he Enterprise edition is available under the following link http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo (date 16.09.2012).

[This image has been removed.]

Illus. 2: Magento Demo Shop Frontend Modern Theme

Source: Screenshot http://demo.magentocommerce.com/ (Date 16.09.2012)

Magento also offers a connection to the backend of the demo shop, so that the user has an opportunity to gain a first impression of the platform. In the backend of the Magento platform, the user can collect data about his sales, newsletter, and customers. The user also has the possibility of making basic to advanced changes to the shop, as in editing and adding products to making changes to the shops design.

4.3.2 OXID eSales

In 2008 t he company OXID eSales AG released its first e-commerce platform OXID eShop Community Edition under the GPL 3.0 license developed and grounded in Freiburg Germany. Today it is one of the leading e-commerce platforms in Germany and has over 15.000 members worldwide.^{23 24} The OXID eShop CE is based on PHP

5.2 and higher and uses MySQL 5 for its data storage.²⁵ The platform was developed in strict Object Oriented Programming and has a test coverage of over 90 Percent.²⁶ The entire platform is module based. This makes it easier for third parties to extend the standard functionality of the shop.²⁷ The main reason why the OXID eShop is so popular is that it comes with a l ot of additional features, which many e-commerce platforms do not have yet.²⁸ A few examples of these key features are: the shop owner’s ability to set custom payment, shipping methods, promotion tools, discount managing tools and customer communication.²⁹ OXID eShop comes in three editions: the Community Edition, the Professional Edition, and t he Enterprise Edition.³⁰ The Community Edition is offered as a free software under the GNU GPL 3.0 license.³¹ The other two editions require a commercial license, besides that they have the same range of functions as the Community Edition, additionally they come with some extra functions like the WYSIWIG editor.³² The Enterprise Edition on the other hand has extra support, services and features multi-client capability as in sub shops.³³

A demonstration of the OXID eShop Community Edition is under the following link

http://www.oxid-esales.com/en/products/facts/oxid-eshop-community-edition/product- information.html (date 16.09.2012). [This image has been removed.]

Illus. 3: OXID eSales CE Frontend Demo shop Azure Theme

Source: Screenshot http://demoshop.oxid-esales.com/community-edition/en/home/ (Date 16.09.2012)

Like the Magento platform OXID eSales also offers a connection to the backend of the demo shop, so that the user has an oppor tunity to gain a first impression of the platform. In the backend of the OXID demo shop the user can collect data about his sales, customers, manage his extensions and has access to his content management system. The user also has the possibility of making basic to advanced changes on the shop, as in editing and adding products to making changes to the shop’s design.

4.3.3 xt:Commerce

In the year 2003 the company xt:Commerce GmbH released its first e-commerce platform called xt:Commerce Version 3 under the GPL license. The xt:Commerce Version 3 is based on one of the earlier e-commerce platforms; the osCommerce. However the major change in the xt:Commerce platform was the integration of the Smarty Template Engine, which separated the presentation (HTML/CSS) from application logic.^{34 35} With gaining popularity and m ore demands the xt:Commerce

GmbH released its second e-commerce platform in 2010; the xt:Commerce 4, which was formerly known as xt:Commerce 4 Veyton, is a complete redesigned e-commerce platform and is only available under a commercial license.³⁶ One of the most important changes in xt:Commerce 4 is the new extendibility feature, making it very easy for developers to create plugins and for shop owners to upgrade their platform with one click.³⁷ Just like the OXID and M agento platform, the xt:Commerce also comes in 4 editions; these are the Professional, the Professional+, the Multishop, and the Ultimate edition. The differences between these various editions are that the editions Professional+ and higher come with additional add-ons; these are the coupon plugin, feedback from users, and the PDF Invoice plugins.³⁸ As the name of the Multishop edition already states, the editions Multishop and U ltimate also support sub-shops, allowing the user to create multiple shops under different domain names. The main difference between the Multishop and the Ultimate edition is that the Ultimate edition comes with an unlimited license for sub-domains while the Multishop only allows up to 3 sub-domains.^{39 40}

A demonstration of the xt:Commerce e-commerce platform can be find under the following link http://www.fwpshop.org/showcase/shopdemos (date 18.09.2012).

[This image has been removed.]

Illus. 4: xt:Commerce 4 Frontend Demo Shop

Source: Screenshot http://www.fwpshop.org/showcase/shopdemos (Date 16.09.2012)

To gain a first impression of the backend of the xt:Commerce platform the address above also contains a link to the admin panel. In the backend of the xt:Commerce the user can, just like in the OXID and M agento version, collect data about his sales, customers, manage his extensions and has access to his content management system. The user also has the possibility of making basic to advanced changes on the shop, as in editing and adding products to making changes to the shop’s design.

4.3.4 Shopware

The Shopware AG grounded in the year 2000 is a German software manufacturer of online shop systems.⁴¹ Their first e-commerce platform Shopware Version 1.0 was released in the year 2004, which was like other modern e-commerce platforms, developed to be m odular. The Shopware e-commerce platform is available in open- source and commercial license. In the year 2012, after a s eries of awards and innovation price winnings, the e-commerce platform went through additional updates. The new platform had completely revised its template engine and was provided in open-source. In a short amount of time of 5 months, the e-commerce platform grew an additional of 3.500 new shops.⁴² The company currently has acquired over 8000 e-commerce installations and over 300 distribution partners making it one of the most successful software manufacturer today in Germany.⁴³ One of the main reasons why the Shopware e-commerce platform has become such a success is because, just like the Magento, OXID and xt:Commerce, it offers lots of additional features. It has a very clean analytic tool and allows developers and owners in extending their shops fairly easily. And with their new release of Shopware 4, they added an additional 300 e xtra functions to it, making it a strong competitor in the e-commerce software manufacturer world.⁴⁴ The Shopware 4 comes in three types of editions; these are the Community Edition, the Professional Edition, and the Enterprise Edition. The Community Edition is released fully open-source and under the license AGPL 3.0, which is free of use.⁴⁵ The Professional Edition is released under a c ommercial license, offering a warranty, support for 6 m onths, a staging-system and a free first installation.⁴⁶ The Enterprise Edition however is available in two different packs; these are the Enterprise Business and the Enterprise Cluster.⁴⁷ The Enterprise Business pack offers support, extra sub- shops capability, special services and comes with pre-installed premium plugins; like the newsletter, the bonus system and the ticket system(CRM).⁴⁸ The Enterprise Cluster edition is an extended version of the Enterprise Business pack; it contains many extra’s like the manufacturer helping you with setting up the best possible environment for your e-commerce and offers a personal contact person for the best possible support.⁴⁹

A demonstration of the Shopware 4 platform can be find under the following link http://www.shopwaredemo.de/ (date 19.09.2012).

[This image has been removed.]

Illus. 5: Shopware 4 Frontend Demo Shop

Source: Screenshot http://www.shopwaredemo.de (Date 19.09.2012)

Like the previously mentioned e-commerce platforms the Shopware platform also offers a connection to the backend of the demo shop; so the user has an opportunity to gain a first impression of the platform. In the backend of the Shopware demo shop the user can collect data about his sales, customers and manage his extensions. The user also he has access to his content management system. Furthermore the user has the possibility of making basic to advanced changes on the shop, as in editing and adding products to making changes to the shop’s design.

4.4 Market share e-commerce platforms

In the previous section four e-commerce platforms were introduced. In the following section we will take a look at the statistics and see which e-commerce platform is the most popular amongst them and is preferred the most by shop owners. To scale the popularity of the e-commerce platform a basic analysis will be done on searches entered on Google.

4.4.1 Popularity comparison

4.4.1.1 Comparison of the e-commerce platforms in the past 6 years

Illus. 6: Google Trends Search Pattern in the past 6 years in Germany Source: http://www.google.com/trends (Date 19.9.2012)

In the graph above we can see the search patterns of the four e-commerce platforms (OXID as blue, Magento as red, xt:Commerce as yellow and S hopware as green) generated in Germany by Google Trends in the past 6 years. As shown above in the search volume index the xt:Commerce used to be one of the big players in the e-commerce world but started losing its popularity with OXID’s new platform release in the year 2008. As indicated in the graph, the Magento platform is by far the most popular e-commerce platform and OXID is the second biggest player in Germany. The graph also indicates that the Shopware’s new e-commerce platform is slowly rising in popularity and t hus pushing the xt:Commerce platform almost out of the scene. The news reference volume part of the graph represents the amount of references each e-commerce platform acquired. To illustrate the graph in a more clearer way, below is the graph illustrated again as a pie chart.

Illus. 7: Google Trends Search Pattern in the past 6 years in Germany as a Pie Chart

Source: own graphic - created with the statistics from illus. 6

This chart is to illustrate the average popularity stand of the four e-commerce platforms in the past 6 y ears. This chart was created with the information out of the graph in illustration 6. This chart clearly shows that in the past six years the Magento platform was the most popular of them all, containing nearly 58 percent of the searches while the OXID e-commerce platform is right behind it with a share of 25.4 percent. The xt:Commerce follows up with a good amount of 14.1 percent and Shopware with around 3 percent.

4.4.1.2 Comparison of the e-commerce platforms in the past 12 months

Illus. 8: Google Trends Search Pattern in the last 12 months in Germany Source: http://www.google.com/trends (Date 19.09.2012)

The graph above displays the search patterns of the four e-commerce platforms (OXID as blue, Magento as red, xt:Commerce as yellow and Shopware as green) in the past

12 months in Germany. Comparing the graph above with the graph in illustration 6 we can see that Magento has successfully maintained its leading position and OXID gained a fair amount of popularity. However the most interesting about this graph is that the xt:Commerce is nowhere to be seen, thus meaning its popularity shrank dramatically in the past 12 m onths. The graph also shows that the Shopware’s e- commerce platform has become a good competitor in the e-commerce sector and i s slowly but progressively gaining in popularity.

Illus. 9: Google Trends Search Pattern in the last 12 months in Germany as a Pie Chart

Source: own graphic - created with the statistics from illus. 8

This chart showcases the average amount of popularity stand of the four e-commerce platforms in the past 12 months. This chart was created with the information out of the graph in illustration 8. This chart clearly shows that in the past 12 months the Magento platform was the most popular of them all with a near 61 percent of the searches and the OXID e-commerce platfom following right behind it with a share of 29.4 percent. As shown in the previous graph in illustration 8 t he Shopware has gained almost 10 percent in popularity as xt:Commerce has lost an tremendous amount in comparison to the three other e-commerce platforms.

5 Key factors for success in e-commerce

5.1 Critical Risk Factors in e-commerce

In this section of the thesis, information about the critical risk factors in an e-commerce environment will be explained. These critical risk factors could damage your business and may result into losing your most loyal customers. Preventing these critical risks in an e-commerce environment is one of the main key factors for success. Preventing risks associated with availability, performance, scalability and security should be

18

prioritized in building an e-commerce environment. These factors should be addressed

whether the e-commerce is run by a small business, or a large enterprise.⁵⁰

5.1.1 Availability

In short, availability means having the ability to handle interference and still being able to continue operations.⁵¹ This means to be pr epared for any kind of faults in your e-commerce platform and having a backup plan in case something goes wrong. Many e-commerce owners are unaware or uninformed about these threats, so they are unprotected against certain issues.

Being prepared means if your platform were to encounter an issue with an update, a service failure, or because of a ha rdware problem, your e-commerce platform is still able to serve your customers. If not, having a ‘sorry’ page, which explains that the shop is currently undergoing updates will help keeping the trust of your customers.⁵²

Interferences can be caused by many things, and not necessarily being an hardware or software problems. One of the most unexpected problems an e-commerce owner can experience is that its site visit rate exponentially being raised. Causing your shop to become unavailable and to shut down. For situations like these not to happen, it is important to address these availability concerns with your hosting provider and maybe even giving them the authorization to upgrade your hosting plan if needed. By understanding these risks and potential threats, the e-commerce operator can actively build trust to the customer and maintain a good e-commerce experience with the visitors.⁵³

5.1.2 Performance

A stable and an r eliable e-commerce environment is a v ery crucial key factor for success in e-commerce. If a site is not to respond or is not responding in a reasonable and acceptable amount of time or if it makes the browser keep freezing, the visit on the site will cause an unwanted effect, causing visitors to leave and maybe not come back again.⁵⁴ The effect of the website speed on visitors is a very crucial issue that should matter every e-business owner. In a recent study released in march 2012 it was revealed that a delay of just one second page-load could cause up to seven percent loss in customer conversion.⁵⁵

Illus. 10: Customer Conversion Rate by Page Load Time

Source http://blog.tagman.com/2012/03/just-one-second-delay-in-page-load-can- cause-7-loss-in-customer-conversions/ (date 22.09.2012)

In the graph above we can see that the peak of conversion rate lies around two

seconds this means that a customer expectation of a page load speed lies around 1-2 seconds. This confirms the findings of KISSmetrics, which stated that an average user expects a page to load in two seconds and every second after that could lead to seven percent in losing conversion rate.^{56 57} Performance of the entire e-commerce environment should be considered thoroughly, as every weak link can cause the response to be delayed.⁵⁸ A statement in a KISSmetrics Infograph explains that 1 second in delay could potentially cost around $2.5 million in lost sales every year if the e-commerce site is making $100.000 per day.⁵⁹

5.1.3 Scalability

The scalability of the e-commerce environment could mean different things to different merchants. For example an experienced merchant can make a better prediction of the traffic he will receive each season, as a new merchant has no experience in this field and has to take an different approach.⁶⁰

One of the most important questions one can ask to an e-commerce platform or environment is how many connections can it handle, which is very difficult to answer without doing some performance tests, because every environment has its own physical and s oftware limits. To measure your systems scalability and per formance there are different tools available on t he Internet, like the httperf offered by the company HP on hpl.hp.com and the tool WebPageTest available on webpagetest.org, which helps to test the performance of your e-commerce platform. Another important way to measure the e-commerce scalability is to view the results from an end user’s perspective, as the end user’s experience is the most important factor that will help you measure an e-commerce systems scalability, testing the hardware alone is not enough.^{61 62 63}

5.1.4 Security

Security is one of the most important factors for success in e-commerce, mainly because of the vulnerability of the user data available. Protecting your user data is a very crucial factor, because as development in e-commerce platforms increase, the development in e-crime also known as electronic crime develops. And having your customers information stolen, which contains information like name, address, phone number, email address, and ev en more important credit-card, debit-card, online banking, and other payment information, could lead to a very bad reputation loss.⁶⁴

5.2 Key factors for success in e-commerce

This section of the thesis will contain the key factors which will can help you in setting up a good e-commerce environment for your customers. Even though defining the quality of a website is very difficult, the visitors can sense when it is missing. For thisreason alone, a set of defined criteria is very crucial in building an e -commerce environment that delivers what your customers are looking for. It is highly recommendable that these key factors are made use of, when defining your criteria for an e-commerce environment.

5.2.1 Delivery of site objects

The Internet users of today have experienced so much that their expectations have grown drastically. One of the most crucial things in an w ebsite is the delivery of site objects, this can be anything like text, videos, logos, navigation and other images.

5.2.1.1 Make use of truthful headlines and strong hooks

The headline in a pag e has to create an c ertain amount of interest for the visitor in order for them to read it or stay on the page. The hook in the headline is the key part to grab people’s attention, it indicates the purpose of the story. Having an interesting headline helps in having your visitors read the story, but it also represents a promise. The content has to deliver what your headline is creating in expectations.⁶⁵

5.2.1.2 Readability of the content

Having readable content makes the stay of an user more comfortable. The text on the site has to be c reated with the readability, style and or iginality in mind.⁶⁶ The information processed by the user is affected by the readability, it is important that your users are able to read your content and absorb it easily.⁶⁷

Readability of the content consists out of the following points:

1 User-Friendly Headers

Headers in an c ontent area have to be different of size, so that users can differentiate it with the content. The size of the header has to be well thought, as a header that is too big or too small can disrupt the flow of an content.⁶⁸

2 Scannable Text

Scannable text means that the content consists of good use of headers, hierarchy

and focus point. The size and position of the header, body text, text contrast and the focus point all influence the scannability of the text.⁶⁹

3 White Space

The right use of white space in a content-heavy layout, improves the readability of the content. White space helps to create offset and help the user read through large amount of texts.⁷⁰

4 Consistency

Consistency of the content means the right use of hierarchy to make the layout user-friendly. This can be achieved by making all the objects, headers, phrases, lists and other texts of the same importance in the hierarchy with the same size, color and font.⁷¹

5 Density of Text

The density of text means the number of words used in one area. The density of text has a strong effect on the readability of an page. Having the right balance of words in an area helps both the readability and scannability.⁷²

6 Emphasis of Important Elements

Making important elements in an c ontent emphasize contributes in making the content more readable and scannable. This means making important headers, phrases, quotes, and l inks stand out from the rest by using different size and color.⁷³

7 Organization of Information

Organization of information means the proper guide through content, and making the information easier to find for users.⁷⁴

8 Clean Graphical Implementation

Having some sort of visual support for your content can help to increase the readability of the content. For example enhancing the text with the use of images, icons, graphs or illustrations which suits the layout of the site is highly advisable, for it increases the reading flow of the content.⁷⁵

5.2.2 Usability

5.2.2.1 Importance of usability

The usability of an e-commerce website is a critical key factor for having success on the Internet. In a study by iPerception released in 2009, it was indicated that near 40 percent of potential buyers leave the site without any purchasing anything. These numbers were based on the feedback of 360.000 visitors done on various e-commerce websites.⁷⁶

Illus. 11: Why didn’t the user buy

Source: http://usability-blog.be/ecommerce-websites-slechte-usability/ (date

22.09.2012)

In the illustration above we can see that the highest ranked reason why the users would leave without making any purchases, is because the users were not able to find what he w as searching for. Interestingly though, the usability is only ranked at third, which can only be partly true. A major factor for the “didn’t find what I wanted” is the usability and this will be explained why. In a study by Jakob Nielsen it was discovered that the users success rate only was around 56 percent on various e-commerce sites.⁷⁷

He also states on his website that casual users have poor searching skills, so it is more likely for them to leave rather than reformulate their query.⁷⁸ If we would to be count these 44 percent unsuccessful rate on to the usability, the usability would quickly jump up to the first place.

5.2.2.2 Improving the usability

Improving the usability of an e-commerce website is not an easy task, it is time consuming and c an create unwanted expenses for starting companies. But it still is a very important key factor to consider, if you want to keep your customers loyal. The improvement needed to an e-commerce website may differ per website, but in general there are a set of usabilities an e-commerce website needs in order to keep make a site user friendly.

1 Identify users by email address and not username

It is advisable to use email addresses to let the user sign in, instead of username. This mainly, because most customers tend to change their personal information frequently. Using the email address as the username may help to secure the users forgetting his/her login name. It is important to make the signing in process for easy, and in case a user would forget his username he would have to make a lot of efforts in order to sign in.⁷⁹

2 Simplify the checkout process

The ordering process for a casual customer can in some cases be rather complex, as it can contain too many information at one place at a time. For this reason it is recommendable to simplify the checkout process. Most large e-commerce companies like Amazon, Zalando, Neckerman and Otto split their checkout process in 3-5 steps. Each step containing its own key information. An good example for this is having step 1 to be the something like the basket summary containing the prices and taxation, step 2 the delivery options, step 3 being the payment method and step 4 the ordering page. Also having some kind of navigation and or breadcrumb at the top also contributes to the usability of the site, the customer is then able to see in which step he or she is located and can navigate in the steps.⁸⁰

3 Highlight required fields

Have your important fields in a form highlighted, having a form come back again can work very frustrating for the user and is definitely not helping you in gaining more customers. Having an asterisk (*) near the important fields or having the field name in a different color like red can indicate that this is a required field.⁸¹

4 Assure the users of their private information

Assure your users stay to be safe, for many users still don’t feel safe or comfortable doing online shopping. In this case saying so is not enough, because assuring the safety of a user is like giving the customer a promise. If there would to happen

something unexpected, it could damage your company’s reputation for good. Indicating your site has been tested by an emblem from one of the web security companies like VeriSign and Trusted Shops can help putting your customers at ease.⁸²

5 Don’t make users scroll

In a study by Jakob Niels “Prioritizing Web Usabiliy” he explains that most users on the internet are too busy to really dig in an actual information available. He also explains that the majority of the tested users did not scroll more than half of the other 65 percent of the page that were longer.⁸³ This means that the user is more focused on the page above, meaning that the most important information of the page content should be positioned at the top. This could be information like price, weight, release date, product image, purchase button, and navigation.

6 Build customer loyalty

Having loyal customers comes with many advantages with it, simply because a loyal

customer trusts the business more and is prepared to pay more if needed. Having loyal customers helps in building an successful e-commerce business.⁸⁴

Benefits that come with loyal customers are:⁸⁵

- They buy more and are prepared to pay more if needed
- They make word-of-mouth advertisement
- They forgive much faster when mistakes happen
- Loyal customers can offer suggestions for improvement as they understand the process better

6 Final Conclusion and revalue

6.1 E-commerce Platform

The Internet offers many various e-commerce platforms, this makes it difficult to choose right one out. Every platforms comes with its own key features and is priced differently, this meaning it is important to choose your e-commerce platform carefully. Some e-commerce platforms require large amount of space and r esource from your server, meaning the cost in operating the e-commerce site could double. The e-commerce platforms are all priced differently and mostly based on the popularity, meaning if there is a high demand for this platform it will cost more and presumable will undergo faster development and better support then others. Conclusion: Choosing the right platform for your e-commerce business can help you in setting up a good start. Popularity and rate of development are some points one should be aware of before choosing his e-commerce platform, mainly because the popularity of the e-commerce platform tells something about the development and support. Another reason why the popularity of an e-commerce platform is important, is that more web developers may support the platform and will offer additional modules and plugins for the e-commerce platform, like other payment solutions and other additional features.

6.2 Key factors for success in e-commerce

Setting up an e -commerce environment is not an eas y task and c an surely be t ime consuming. When developing an e-commerce environment, there are a couple of key factors one should be aware of, in order to create a successful e-commerce business where the customers feel at ease and will make purchases without any second thoughts.

The following key factors should be taken in account in an e-commerce business:
- Availability
- Performance
- Scalability
- Security
- Delivery of site objects
- Use of truthful headlines and strong hooks
- Readability of the content
- Usability

Conclusion: Customers have high demands for an e-commerce environment, if they feel uncomfortable with the site being it in security or the usability of the e-commerce site, you will not gain the maximum potentiality through an e-commerce site. Users unconsciously pay a lot of attention to the performance of the site, which means if the site even has a delay of one s econd, potential customers might leave your site. Your e-commerce site needs to provide useful information about its content to its user in the best possible way, meaning that the header and the key information of your page have to stand out from the rest.

Closing remarks

The Internet is evolving with a great speed, allows businesses to do more and offers many possibilities and advantages, if handled with the right techniques and methods. The key factors for success in e-commerce handled in this project paper should be considered for use, whether it is a sole proprietors or by a large enterprise. These key factors will help in building a good functional e-commerce environment with a s trong usability in thought and should be us ed as a foundation stone for your e-commerce environment.

Sources

Bibliography:

Nielsen, J., Loranger, H. (2006). Prioritizing Web Usability. In J. Nielsen, H. Loranger, Prioritizing Web Usability (pp. 45-46). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Internet sources:

Borders, B. (2009, January 18). 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content. Retrieved September 22, 2012, from Copy Brighter Marketing:

http://copybrighter.com/9-essential-elements-of-high-quality-web-content

CERN. (n.d.). CERN in a nutshell. Retrieved September 09, 2012, from European

Organization for Nuclear Research: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/About- en.html

Dunn, T. (n.d.). Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site. Retrieved September 24, 2012, from Webcredible: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly- resources/web-usability/ecommerce-usability.shtml

Ecommerce-Land. (n.d.). History of Ecommerce. Retrieved September 14, 2012, from Ecommerce-Land: http://www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html

29

EDI, 1. (n.d.). EDI 101 \ History. Retrieved September 09, 2012, from 123 EDI:

http://www.123edi.com/edi-history-101.asp

eSalesTrack. (n.d.). Advantages and Disadvantages of Ecommerce. Retrieved

September 15, 2012, from http://www.esalestrack.com/blog/2008/09/advantages-and- disadvantages-of.html

FundingUniverse. (n.d.). CompuServe Interactive Services Inc. History. Retrieved

September 2012, 9, from FundingUniverse: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company- histories/compuserve-interactive-services-inc-history

FundingUniverse. (n.d.). VeriSign Inc. History. Retrieved September 12, 2012, from FundingUniverse: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/verisign-inc- history/

Gromov, G. R. (1995). The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. Retrieved September 9, 2012, from NetValley: http://www.netvalley.com/intvalweb.html

Groning, M. (2009, March 18). 10 Principles For Readable Web Typography. Retrieved September 23, 2012, from Smashing Magazine:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/18/10-principles-for-readable-web- typography/

Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. (n.d.). Welcome to the httperf homepage. Retrieved September 22, 2012, from hp: http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/httperf/

Horrigan, J. (2008, Februar 13). Online Shopping. Retrieved September 9, 2012, from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project:

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/Online-Shopping/01-Summary-of- Findings.aspx

iPerceptions. (2009 , October 16). iPerceptions Releases E-Commerce Industry Report Q2 2009. Retrieved September 23, 2012, from iPerceptions:

http://www.iperceptions.com/news/iperceptions-releases-e-commerce-industry-report- q2-2009/

KISSmetrics. (n.d.). How Loading Time affects your Bottom Line. Retrieved September 2012, 2012, from KISSmetrics: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-

content/uploads/2011/04/loading-time-sml.jpg

30

Lamond, K. (1996). Credit Card Transactions. Retrieved September 2012, 12, from

Virtual School:

http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/ElectronicProperty/klamond/credit_card.htm

Limited, C. C. (n.d.). History of SSL. Retrieved September 10, 09, from Extended Validation SSL Certificate: http://www.evsslcertificate.com/ssl/ssl-history.html

Magento. (n.d.). Compare Editions. Retrieved September 12, 2012, from Magento: http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/compare

McGuigan, B. (2012, 09 27). What is eBusiness? Retrieved September 15, 2012, from What is eBusiness?: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-ebusiness.htm

Meg. (2012, February 03). A History of Magento. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from Orange Collar Media: http://www.orangecollarmedia.com/a-history-of-magento

Miniwatts Marketing Group. (n.d.). Internet Growth Statistics. Retrieved September 30, 2012, from Internet World Stats: http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm

New Digital Group Inc. (n.d.). All About Smarty. Retrieved September 17, 2012, from Smarty: http://www.smarty.net/about_smarty

Nielsen, J. (2001, August 19). Did Poor Usability Kill E-Commerce? Retrieved September 23, 2012, from useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010819.html

Nielsen, J. (2011, October 24). E-Commerce Usability. Retrieved September 23, 2012, from useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ecommerce.html

Norris, A. (2010, August 27). Eight out of Ten Consumers Shop Online at Least Once a Week. Retrieved September 9, 2012, from Marketwire:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Eight-out-of-Ten-Consumers-Shop-Online- at-Least-Once-a-Week-1310629.htm

Null, C. (2007, April 2). The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time. Retrieved September 10, 2012, from PCWorld: http://www.pcworld.com/article/130207/article.html#netscape

Ouchi, M. S. (2005, July 10). Amazon at 10: Will it keep clicking? Retrieved September 14, 2012, from The Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2002371700_amazon10.html

OXID eSales AG. (2009, January 01). Commercial Open Source Software f ü r

Enterprise L ö sungen. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales:

http://blog.oxid-esales.com/2009/10/commercial-open-source-software-fuer-enterprise- loesungen/

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). Community. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.oxid-esales.com/de/community.html

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). OXID eShop 4. 7/5. 0: Roadmap. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.oxid-esales.com/en/products/facts/preview.html

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). OXID eShop Community Edition 4. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales AG: http://www.oxid-esales.com/en/products/facts/oxid- eshop-community-edition/product-information.html

OXID eSales AG. (2008, June). OXID eShop easy Featureliste. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.werbefranken.ch/pdf_dokumente/oxid-eshop- easy-featureliste.pdf

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). OXID eShop Enterprise Edition. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.oxid-esales.com/en/products/facts/oxid-eshop- enterprise-edition/product-information.html

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). OXID eShop Professional Edition. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.oxid-esales.com/en/products/facts/oxid-eshop- professional-edition/product-information.html

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). Systemvoraussetzungen f ü r OXID eShop Community Edition. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.oxid- esales.com/de/produkte/facts/oxid-eshop-community- edition/systemvoraussetzungen.html

OXID eSales AG. (n.d.). Ü ber OXID eSales. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from OXID eSales: http://www.oxid-esales.com/de/ueber-oxid/oxid-esales/unternehmen.html

Prestipino, P. (2008, September 15). Five Tips For Improving Ecommerce Website Usability. Retrieved September 24, 2012, from Website Magazine: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/five-tips-for-improving- ecommerce-website-usability.aspx

32

PwC. (n.d.). Understanding how US online shoppers are reshaping the retail

experience. Retrieved September 9, 2012, from http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/retail- consumer/publications/assets/pwc-us-multichannel-shopping-survey.pdf

Quittner, J. (1999, December 27). 1999 Person of the Year. Retrieved September 14, 2012, from Internet Archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000408032804/http://www.time.com/time/poy/bezos5.htm l

Rackspace US Inc. (2012, September 11). Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment. Retrieved September 22, 2012, from Rackspace: http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/critical-risk-factors-in-an-e- commerce-environment

Ramaswami, R. (2005, January 12). Eight Reasons to Keep Your Customers Loyal. Retrieved September 25, 2012, from Multichannel Merchant:

http://multichannelmerchant.com/opsandfulfillment/advisor/Brandi-custloyal/

Sawhney, M. (n.d.). Advantages And Disadvantages Of E-commerce. Retrieved September 15, 2012, from Manjeet Singh Sawhney:

http://www.manjeetss.com/articles/advantagesdisadvantagesecommerce.html

Scherbaum, A. (2010, March 17). Erfahrungen mit xt:Commerce 4 Veyton. Retrieved September 17, 2012, from 4tfm: http://4tfm.de/veyton/xtcommerce-veyton-onlineshop- 761.html

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Die Shopware Professional Edition. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/die-shopsoftware/shopware- professional-edition/

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Die Shopware Community Edition. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/die-shopsoftware/shopware- community-edition/

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Enterprise Business. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from

Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/die-shopsoftware/enterprise-business/uebersicht/

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Enterprise Cluster. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from

Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/die-shopsoftware/enterprise-cluster/uebersicht/

33

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Enterprise Edition. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from

Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/die-shopsoftware/shopware-enterprise/

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Shopware Vier. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/shopware-4/

Shopware AG. (n.d.). Ü ber die Shopware AG. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from Shopware: http://www.shopware.de/ueber-die-shopware-ag/

TagMan. (2012, March 14). Just One Second Delay In Page-Load Can Cause 7% Loss In Customer Conversions. Retrieved September 22, 2012, from Tag-Man: http://blog.tagman.com/2012/03/just-one-second-delay-in-page-load-can-cause-7-loss- in-customer-conversions/

Vaswani, V., Kamath, H. (2009, April 1). Six Easy Steps to Start Selling Online with OXID eShop. Retrieved September 16, 2012, from Sitepoint:

http://www.sitepoint.com/six-steps-start-selling-online/

WebPagetest. (n.d.). Website Performance and Optimization Test. Retrieved September 22, 2012, from WebPagetest: http://www.webpagetest.org/

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Business-to-business. Retrieved October 28, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-business

Wikipedia. (n.d.). eBay. Retrieved September 14, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

Wikipedia. (n.d.). E-procurement. Retrieved September 15, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-procurement

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Shopware. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from Wikipedi: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopware

Wikipedia. (n.d.). xt:Commerce. Retrieved September 17, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xt:Commerce

xt:Commerce GmbH. (n.d.). Plugins Shopsoftware. Retrieved September 17, 2012, from xt:Commerce: http://www.xt-commerce.com/shopsoftware/funktionen/plugin- system.html

xt:Commerce GmbH. (n.d.). Shopsoftware. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from xt:Commerce: http://www.xt-commerce.com/shopsoftware.html

34

xt:Commerce GmbH. (n.d.). xt:Commerce Merchant. Retrieved September 18, 2012,

from xt:Commerce: http://addons.xt-commerce.com/de/Shopsoftware/xt:Commerce- VEYTON-4.0-Merchant.html

xt:Commerce GmbH. (n.d.). xt:Commerce Ultimate. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from xt:Commerce: http://addons.xt-commerce.com/de/Shopsoftware/xt:Commerce- VEYTON-4.0-Ultimate.html

[...]

---

¹ Cf. Miniwatts Marketing Group (n.d.) Internet Growth Statistics.

² Cf. McGuigan, Brendan (2012) What is eBusiness?.

³ Cf. Wikipedia (n.d.), E-procurement.

⁴ Cf. Norris, Anne (2010), Eight out of Ten Consumers Shop Online at Least Once a Week.

⁵ Cf. Horrigan, John (2008), Online Shopping.

⁶ Cf. PwC (n.d.), Understanding how US online shoppers are reshaping the retail experience.

⁷ Cf. EDI (n.d.), EDI 101 \ History.

⁸ Cf. FundingUniverse (n.d.), CompuServe Interactive Services Inc. History.

⁹ Cf. CERN (n.d.), CERN in a nutshell.

¹⁰ Cf. Gromov, Gregory R. (1995), The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History.

¹¹ Cf. Null, (2007), The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time.

¹² Cf. Limited, Comoda CA (n.d.), History of SSL.

¹³ Cf. Lamond, Keith (1996), Credit Card Transactions.

¹⁴ Cf. FundingUniverse (n.d.), VeriSign Inc. History.

¹⁵ Cf. Ecommerce-Land, (n.d.), History of Ecommerce.

¹⁶ Cf. Quittner, Joshua (1999), 1999 Person of the Year.

¹⁷ Cf. Ouchi, Monica Soto (2005), Amazon at 10: Will it keep clicking?.

¹⁸ Cf. Wikipedia (n.d.), eBay.

¹⁹ Cf. Sawhney, Manjeet (n.d.), Advantages And Disadvantages Of E-commerce.

²⁰ Cf. eSalesTrack, (n.d.), Advantages and Disadvantages of Ecommerce.

²¹ Cf. Meg (2012), A History of Magento.

²² Cf. Magento (n.d.), Compare Editions.

²³ Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), Community.

²⁴ Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), Über OXID eSales.

²⁵ Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), Systemvoraussetzungen für OXID eShop Community Edition.

²⁶ Cf. OXID eSales AG (2009), Commercial Open Source Software für Enterprise Lösungen.

²⁷ Cf. Vaswani, Vikram; Kamath, Harish (2009), Six Easy Steps to Start Selling Online with OXID eShop.

²⁸ Cf. OXID eSales AG (2008), OXID eShop easy Featureliste.

²⁹ Cf. Vaswani, Kamath (2009), Six Easy Steps to Start Selling Online with OXID eShop.

³⁰ Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), OXID eShop 4. 7/5. 0: Roadmap.

³¹ Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), OXID eShop Community Edition 4.

³² Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), OXID eShop Professional Edition.

³³ Cf. OXID eSales AG (n.d.), OXID eShop Enterprise Edition.

³⁴ Cf. Wikipedia (n.d.), xt:Commerce.

³⁵ Cf. New Digital Group Inc. (n.d.), All About Smarty.

³⁶ Cf. Scherbaum, Alexander (2010), Erfahrungen mit xt:Commerce 4 Veyton.

³⁷ Cf. xt:Commerce GmbH (n.d.), Plugins Shopsoftware.

³⁸ Cf. xt:Commerce GmbH (n.d.), Plugins Shopsoftware.

³⁹ Cf. xt:Commerce GmbH (n.d.), xt:Commerce Merchant.

⁴⁰ Cf. xt:Commerce GmbH (n.d.), xt:Commerce Ultimate.

⁴¹ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Über die Shopware AG.

⁴² Cf. Wikipedia (n.d.), Shopware.

⁴³ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Über die Shopware AG.

⁴⁴ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Shopware Vier.

⁴⁵ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Die Shopware Community Edition.

⁴⁶ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Die Shopware Professional Edition.

⁴⁷ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Enterprise Edition.

⁴⁸ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Enterprise Business.

⁴⁹ Cf. Shopware AG (n.d.), Enterprise Cluster.

⁵⁰ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵¹ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵² Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵³ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵⁴ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵⁵ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵⁶ Cf. TagMan (2012), Just One Second Delay In Page-Load Can Cause 7% Loss In Customer Conversions.

⁵⁷ Cf. KISSmetrics (n.d.), How Loading Time affects your Bottom Line.

⁵⁸ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁵⁹ Cf. KISSmetrics (n.d.), How Loading Time affects your Bottom Line.

⁶⁰ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁶¹ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁶² Cf. Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. (n.d.), Welcome to the httperf homepage.

⁶³ Cf. WebPagetest (n.d.), Website Performance and Optimization Test.

⁶⁴ Cf. Rackspace US Inc. (2012), Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment.

⁶⁵ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁶⁶ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁶⁷ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁶⁸ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁶⁹ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁷⁰ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁷¹ Cf. Borders, Brett (2009), 9 Essential Elements of High-Quality Web Content.

⁷² Cf. Groning, Matt (2009), 10 Principles For Readable Web Typography.

⁷³ Cf. Groning, Matt (2009), 10 Principles For Readable Web Typography.

⁷⁴ Cf. Groning, Matt (2009), 10 Principles For Readable Web Typography.

⁷⁵ Cf. Groning, Matt (2009), 10 Principles For Readable Web Typography.

⁷⁶ Cf. iPerceptions (2009), iPerceptions Releases E-Commerce Industry Report Q2 2009.

⁷⁷ Cf. Nielsen, Jakob (2001), Did Poor Usability Kill E-Commerce?.

⁷⁸ Cf. Nielsen, Jakob (2011), E-Commerce Usability.

⁷⁹ Cf. Prestipino, Pete (2008), Five Tips For Improving Ecommerce Website Usability.

⁸⁰ Cf. Dunn (n.d.), Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site.

⁸¹ Cf. Dunn (n.d.), Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site.

⁸² Cf. Dunn (n.d.), Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site.

⁸³ Cf. Nielsen, Jakob; Loranger, Hoa (2006), pp. 45, 46.

⁸⁴ Cf. Ramaswami, Rama (2005), Eight Reasons to Keep Your Customers Loyal.

⁸⁵ Cf. Ramaswami, Rama (2005), Eight Reasons to Keep Your Customers Loyal.