Executive Summary
The report is broken into four different parts. The four parts will look at B2C sites, B2B sites, search engines, and e-commerce.
This report will take a look at two B2C cites, Paypal and Coast to Coast Fulfillment. Paypal is a site that allows customers to send and receive money to anyone that has an email address within the fifty-six countries they operate in. Coast to Coast Fulfillment receives orders from companies and then processes the orders and ships the product to the customer.
The next part of this report explains what makes the best B2B sites. Key elements are required to be considered the best and the top sites know how to make their customers happy. Some of best B2B sites are Hewlett Packard, American Express, and Nextel Communication. All these sites are user friendly and have good customer service parts on their web sites.
The third part compares the top two search engines, Yahoo! and Google. The easier the search engine is to maneuver through the more likely people will use it and continue to use it. Yahoo! is made easy because the site is not case sensitive. Yahoo! is not perfect and some sites that come up during a search require someone to pay in order to receive information. Google just like Yahoo! is not case sensitive.
Finally, the project examines e-commerce. E-commerce is growing fast and looks like it has no plans on stopping. There are many trends and risks involving e-commerce, all of which businesses and customers must be aware of. A trend among e-commerce is free shipping. A risk that someone may take is putting their credit card number on the internet.
Coast to Coast Fulfillment vs. Paypal
Coast to Coast Fulfillment is a full-service third party product fulfillment house. They pride themselves processing orders for their clients and ship them to their customers. Since this is what they pride themselves on they can do it a lot quicker and cheaper that their clients can do it. They receive orders, process payments, pick, pack, and ship products, provide data management, e-fulfillment house, direct mail, retail support solutions, customer service, account billing, and support services for b2b and b2c clients.
Coast to Coast also provide back-end services for their clients and their clients customers. All the while they are doing this they remain an invisible outsourced extension of their clients. They also provide complete product fulfillment services for merchandise ranging from consumer electronics, DVD’s, CDs, videos, coupons, catalogs, topical medications, collectibles, housewares, electronics, catalogs, computer software, apparel, and promotional items.
Coast to Coast also provides virtual client services to the nation’s largest retailers. They do this by receiving orders, handle all accounting and retail store billing operations, prepares products to conform to wholesale buyers specifications, schedule trucking, and shipping services. Some of the retail stores that coast to coast currently service includes Bed, Bath, & beyond, CVS pharmacies, Fingerhut, Home Shopping Network, J.C. Penney, Kmart/Sears, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom’s, Target, and Wal-Mart. Some of coast to coast client list also include:
Coast
to coast offers three ways for you to get a quote. The first way is to call
them; all it takes is a few minutes for them to help you find the best solution
for you. The call is toll-free and they are open Monday through Friday from
8:00am to 5:00pm
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PayPal is an online service that allows individuals and businesses to send and receive money from 56 countries and regions that accept PayPal. All you have to do is enter the recipients email address and the amount you want to send. PayPal is most commonly used for paying for eBay items, sending money to friends and family, and for other online purchases. PayPal can even be sent in many different currencies. Some of the currencies include Euro, Yen, Australian Dollar, Pound Sterling, and Canadian Dollar.
PayPal also allows you to request money or receive money from 56 different countries. To request money all you have to do is enter the recipients e-mail address and send an invoice or a personal bill including the amount you are requesting and instruction on how to pay using PayPal. Organizations also use PayPal to request money for different charity benefits.
PayPal also includes security for merchants. They pride their selves on using state-of-the-art encryption so that your personal data is not just available to anyone. They protect against fraud and they also shield you from liability. PayPal also allows their customers to earn cash back. Its shipping center allows you to calculate your shipping cost, pay for shipping and insurance and create and print a packing slip. Another feature is the auction tools for eBay which include adding paypal to your listings, protection programs, receiving and managing payments, and shipping and tracking.
PayPal also offers:
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A Look into the B2B Market
How does a company stand apart from another company? A company can stand out by putting their website ahead of the competition. This day is age almost everything anyone needs can be found or bought on the internet and companies are well aware of this growing trend. Companies know that in order to stand out their website need to be the best. What makes the best business to business site? A number of different components including easy to maneuver through, offering more resources, and are making an effort to find out what customers want by doing surveying . NetMarketing 100 had determined that top 100 business to business sites based on these components and many more.
Ranked among the top site was Hewlett Packard. All of their products are laid out by groups allowing for businesses to easy locate what suits the company. Hewlett Packard site allows buyers to chat online with technician after the sale. An online chat right after the sale would give the customer a chance to ask any questions they may have come up. This way is quicker than say an email and may even be faster than a phone call. Hewlett Packard does business all over the world. The site will let a customer choose a language from a menu making it easier for businesses all over the world to use the site. The top ranked site of Hewlett Packard is user friendly and most important has strong customer service options.
American Express was ranking the best in financial services/insurance. American Express allows the customers to access business accounts. Many businesses are letting customer access their accounts on the web site, which allows for the customers to feel more in control. By having customers feel more in control the customers may do further business with that company. American Express has a section on retirement plan and financial education services. This section of the site helps businesses figure out how to plan for financial challenges that may be present in the future. American Express wants to help out other businesses and makes that clear on the site. With many extras on the site it makes it more interesting and offers more to other businesses that other companies may not yet have available on their sites. American Express wants to stay on top of the financial service/insurance and with their site I’m sure they will stay on top for a long time.
Among the leader is telecom service is Nextel Communication. What makes Nextel Communication of the best business to business telecom service site? The growing trend among businesses with web site is being able to manage accounts. Nextel’s site allows a customer to know exactly how many minutes the customers has used or how many minutes are left on the plan. This features is extremely important to a company with an account at Nextel because the company will know exactly what the bill will be before it arrives at the office. The customer will also be able to change a phone plan to better suit the company needs. Nextel knows how to make customers happy and this is why their site is among the best.
In
conclusion, having a strong web site in the business to business market will
put a business a step ahead of the competition.
Business to business is the biggest market so businesses should want to
be the best. User friendly sites, more
resources, and understanding what the customer wants are a few ways to make a
strong impression. Hewlett Packard,
American Express, Nextel Communication, and
The Best of Search Engines
Search engines these days control the web. Whether they are similar or not, they all have a common goal, and that is to provide the searchee with the resources that will lead to the information in the best user friendly fashion. One of the most important characteristics that a search engine can obtain is being “user friendly”. The ease of use of the design and layout of the engine is crucial. Simplistic forms of engines are more and more sought after because of the ease of use. Yahoo! and Google are two of the top search engines. Although they are one of the top engines, they both still have strengths and weaknesses that make users either approve or disapprove of the sites.
Yahoo! Is one of the best known and most popular search engines used to this day. It was originally used strictly for a subject directory but as people caught on there was a demand for a bigger and better engine. It later was turned into not only a subject directory but a search engine and a portal.
Yahoo! Is one of the largest and most used search engine because of its larger than normal database. It is able to sift and sort through much more documents than other search engines. Yahoo! is so simplistic that case sensitivity is not of importance. Upper or lower casing will not result in any less or more hits when searching the web. The design layout of Yahoo! is extremely easy to conquer. Its one simple page that is not clustered with tons of ads and attention getters that clusters all together to make things confusing. Rather than being too much to look at, it is simple and to the point.
Although Yahoo! is extremely easy to use it does too have its weaknesses. First of all, it lacks some advanced search features such as truncation and no automatic plural search or word stemming is available while searching with this engine. Another draw back to Yahoo! is the fact that they search a lot of pay sites, that may ask for some payment for their services. Yahoo! also requires the inclusion of http:// when searching for links. This often times makes things confusing and less user friendly.
Google, Yahoo!’s rival, is another search engine that is frequently used by millions of people daily. Google is so sophisticated that it is the only search engine that searches for characters. For instance, when searching for numbers, it starts looking for the common $ sign as a reference. Google is also linked with different databases such as: News, and Froogle. Just like Yahoo!, case sensitivity is of no importance, you will get the same results when searching whether or not you capitalize your words or phrases. Just like the design of Yahoo!, Google is just as easy to use. It’s simplicity eases your way through the internet making your searches simple and quick.
Draw backs of Google include the fact that it is limited to search features, such as no truncation and no nesting just like Yahoo!. Link searches must be exact and are often times incomplete. Although case sensitivity isn’t important, often time’s searches for plural/singular forms, synonyms, or grammatical variations can mix searches up or make them incomplete. Results from Google are sorted by relevance, whether it is determined by Google’s page rank analysis or by links from other pages, your not guaranteed to get exactly what you are searching for.
Although there are many other different search engines out there on the web, these two definitely are the best but just like everything they have their draw backs that may need a little work but everything is always improving and being brought up to date. The ease of searching the internet is a remarkable key in today’s world which makes finding information quick and easy.
The Future of E-Commerce
Potentials
To predict the future of electronic commerce, or e-commerce is almost too hard to do. But by looking at the past and seeing how far e-commerce has come in the past 10 years, to say the sky is unlimited would be an understatement. It used to be that every aspect of business was done face to face, but with the development of the Business to Consumer aspect of the internet, e-commerce has been booming. Not just e-commerce websites in general, but more importantly, profitable websites are becoming more evident. It used to be that around one-third of the top 40 e-commerce websites were profitable, that is now up to around 65%. The industry is growing and I do not see it slowing down anytime soon.
Trends
Everyday the world of e-commerce is changing. There are always new trends to be seen in the world of e-commerce. One of the biggest trends lately has been the emergence of free shipping on goods. This is being done to spark the market and get the consumer to buy. A lot of times companies will run a free shipping promotion around the holiday times when consumers are willing to buy more. Some companies will put a minimum purchase on the sale. For example, www.Amazon.com had a $50 minimum purchase. If you spend over $50 you would get free shipping, anything under that amount would be charged the regular fees. While other companies like Barnes and Nobles offered free shipping on all products.
Another trend that has come and gone is the News companies making there information visual for paid customers only. A lot of the companies doing this only make half of there news paid for and the rest open to the public. It is just another way to make a dollar in the e-commerce universe. While some companies are making money others are not. A lot of the midsize online retailers are struggling to make a profit and are becoming bankrupt. This is creating more profit for the larger online retailers. This is just another trend in the world of e-commerce.
Risks
The fact that the world of e-commerce is becoming so big is evident. But with that come several risks. There are not only risks for the business, but also for the consumer. For a consumer you have to worry about the fact that you are putting your credit card information on the internet. Although it is becoming more and more secure, the hackers are always out there. And there is the risk of the item getting lost during shipping. You don’t really want to pay $100 for a product to have it lost during shipping.
The risks are also evident in the business’s respect. One of the biggest risks is the ability to not finish the sale. 75% of shoppers abandon there carts without making a purchase (www.Bizzrate.com). Also Forrester reported that “27% of web transactions are lost at the pay screen.” This is because there is no salesperson there to assist and finish the sale. Also a risk that has been around is the appearance of fraudulent coupons. Some people may try to use a coupon more then one time and sometimes they succeed in the effort. This is a big hit to companies. Another big risk is the fact that the market is starting to be overtaken by the large companies. This is also what is happening in the regular economy. There are a few major corporations who are starting to squash the smaller ones. This is causing many smaller dot com retailers to close there doors.
Self-Evaluation
Self-Evaluation:
My name is Twanna Jones and my part of the project was to go to two B2C sites
and describe what these services have to offer, including features and
performances.
The sites that I visited were paypal.com and ctcf-inc.com. These two sites
showed me how much behind the scene work has to be done in order to run a good
business. These B2c sites help cut most of that work in half. These sites allow
money to be transferred without the worry of something happening by going
through the mail. If I was ever going to start a business I would definitely
use paypal or ctcf-inc
Self-evaluation by Amber Decker
Through this project I’ve gain an understanding that the web sites I use in my personal life have a great effect on the business to business market. Businesses need to use the resources that other businesses are willing to give them. I never thought that the feature on sites that allow for customers to manage their accounts would also be used my businesses. My group over all worked pretty well together. For this project I was in charge of bringing the project together. By taking on this reasonability I feel that I improved on my communication skills. I had to keep in touch with my teammates to make sure everyone stayed on track and that I received everyone’s part of the project with enough time to put it together. It will be interesting to see how my group comes together for future projects.
Self-Evaluation
Self-evaluation
Cory Westmoreland
During this project, I felt that my team did an excellent job communicating and dividing the work evenly and making sure everyone did their own part. I, myself had a few difficulties with my computer in the fact that it crashed and now has to be sent into Hewlett Packard to get fixed and I’m not expected to get it back for 3-4 weeks. So during our project that was the only problem I had with the project. Although I had that bad experience, I was able to learn a lot about different types of search engines. For instance, I always used proper grammar and I found out that it isn’t necessary to do so.
Self evaluation
Brian Pacynski
During this project I have learned a lot of new things about the world of e-commerce and teamwork. I have really never done a team project before so this is a new thing for me. I see that working on a team is very beneficial because there is a lot of diversification and many different opinions. I think in the future our team will communicate a little better and become more hands on together. For this project however it was not that necessary to do that because it is a lot of personal thought and views put into your own part of the project. On the side of the project I have learned a great deal about the world of e-commerce and what it is doing. I never really understood how big it was. But some of the numbers thrown at me were just out of this world. This was a very good project to start the class on and I am excited to tackle the next one.
References
http://home.americanexpress.com/home/mt_personal.shtml
www.business.com/directory/index.asp
www.btobonline.com/netmarketing200/2003/index.cms
www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/google/review.html
www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/yahoo/review.html
http://www.resourceshelf.com/archives/2004_01_01_resourceshelf_archive.html#107402114910795662
http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001463.shtml