BUS 270

Project #1

Kurt Wolpert

Kellie Rendzikowski

Ryan Mahrle

Devin Mullane

Table of Contents

1. Title page (1)

2. Table of contents (2)

3. Search engines (3)

4. News services (4)

5. Predictions (4-5)

6. B2C evaluations (5-7)

7. B2B (7-8)

8. Predictions #2 (8-9)

9. Executive summary (9)

10. References (10)

11. Individual Evaluations (11)

Search engines

Google, Ixquick, and HotBot are compared in Table 1. Google was the easiest site to navigate. It had an easy lay out and the pages weren’t too cluttered with other stuff, and the information you wanted to find was right there. Also at the bottom of the page you could click another page number you wanted to go to instead of having the option of just going to the next page like Ixquick and HotBot had.

Ixquick had the most content on it pages. Each link had stars next to it, rating the sites. This could help someone out a lot, instead of wasting time clicking on pointless sites. Also it had another spot on its page for related searches that could help you narrow your search down even more.

All three sites had spots for customer service on their homepage. Google’s site was the most helpful. The only thing you had to do was click on About Google, and it gave you a bunch of different categories that came up on the page. Some were FAQ, Feedback, and a spot to contact Google. HotBot’s site was also good for customer service. It gave a link for customer service and it also stated their privacy policy.

HotBot was useful because at the bottom of each page it gave links to also search Google and Ask Jeeves, incase you didn’t find what you needed on HotBot. Ixquick was helpful too because it gave each link a rating by using stars. This is helpful because you can see what sites are good instead of just clicking on one and realizing it does not have the material you are looking for on it.

Table 1

Search Engine Rankings

Evaluative Criteria	Google	Ixquick	HotBot
Ease of Use	4	3	3
Content Scope	4	5	3
Customer Service	5	3	4
Exclusiveness	4	4	4
Usefulness	4	5	5

Totals 21 20 19

Scale: 5 is best

News Services

Three online news services including www.bizjournals.com, www.msnbc.com, and www.cnn.com were compared and ranked using 5 criteria; ease of scope, content scope, customer service, exclusiveness, and usefulness. Of the three services, www.msnbc.com scored the highest overall ranking in terms of what it offers its subscribers.

www.bizjournals.com offers a wide array of free email services including a solutions newsletter, daily updates on business related issues and industry topics. One thing www.bizjournals.com doesn’t do that www.cnn.com and www.msnbc.com does is offer a weather report. Bizjournals does not offer news unrelated to business, in addition to not offering a weather report. www.msnbc.com also offers more features than the other two web sites compared here. Some of these features include; Tech. / Science, Travel, Opinions and local news, just to name a few. www.msnbc.com and www.cnn.com have a live link one can click on to contact each of these websites if necessary, which is an option www.bizjournals.com does not offer its subscribers.

All three news services offer exclusive information to their subscribers, and seem to have an equal ranking in terms of usefulness. However, www.bizjournals.com focuses more on business news and related issues compared to the other two sites that include both national and world news in addition to business related material. www.msnbc.com was ranked only one point higher than www.cnn.com because the former news service also offers “The Week In Pictures.” This is a live link one can click on to view pictures taken around the world in a slide show form regarding recent news.

Based on the criteria, www.msnbc.com offers the most to an individual.

Table 2

News Service Rankings

Evaluation Criteria	Bizjournals	MSNBC	CNN
Ease of Scope	4	5	5
Content Scope	3	5	4
Customer Service	3	5	5
Exclusiveness	5	5	5
Usefulness	4	4	4
Total	19	24	23

Scale: 5 is best

Predictions:

The Internet will make the lives of people and business people a lot easier in the future. It could also make people a lot lazier. It will be easier for businesses to have meetings outside of work and get things done at home. Home shopping has already become a big thing, but will be come bigger in the future. People will just go online and shop instead of going to the store.

The internet will continue to grow as availability becomes greater, prices get lower, and more / better services are provided to consumers. Presently, we can access the internet on our mobile phones or handheld pda’s, and soon new products will be developed where we might be able to be exposed to the internet and all the information it can provide anytime anywhere. Services that are currently considered “the best” will go through changes and develop. Ipredict that consumers will more likely start to buy internet service through telephone companies utilizing DSL connections as opposed to cable companies that offer cable connections through a cable modem (Anderson, Szalai -2004).

B2C

Automobile research and purchase sites

Based on the provided evaluation criteria, the results of the evaluations for Edmunds, Cars, and Carsmart are as follows: For ease of use, Carsmart is the best of the three because it has a navigation bar on the left that makes it very easy to locate the information or service that you are looking for. Each site, in general, has the same amount of content, ranging from automobile quotes, to articles related to cars. Each of these website’s privacy policies are very good. They cover just about everything that needs to be, and they each do it very thoroughly. Edmunds and Carsmart have an advantage over Cars in the customer service area because they offer free insurance and financial quotes from outside companies. They also provide the opportunity to compare results from these companies. This also helps these two sites in exclusiveness, since Cars did not offer this feature on its homepage. The marketing techniques used by these three sites were all fairly good and all approximately on the same level.

Table 3

Automotive Rankings

Evaluative Criteria	Edmunds	Cars	Carsmart
Ease of Use	4	3	5
Content Scope	4	4	4
Privacy Policy	5	5	5
Customer Service	4	3	4
Exclusiveness	4	2	4
Marketing Techniques	3	3	3

Totals 24 20 25

Scale: 5 is best

Discount Retail Sites

For ease of use, each website is set up very well. They each have a detailed navigation bar that helps to find specific areas of interest. The content scope of Amazon and Overstock is very good. These two sites contain products that range from apparel and accessories to travel services. Shopping-Bargains, on the other hand, seems to be concentrated mainly on products from department stores. There are other services available, but they are not as predominant. Amazon has the most detailed privacy policy. The other two were very brief. Overstock has a specific link dedicated to customer service, so this is the best website for that. The other two sites offer certain options, such as personal accounts and web searches that could be helpful as well. Amazon has the best marketing techniques because they give the opportunity to earn a percentage if you use a link to their site from your own.

Table 4

Discount Retail Rankings

Evaluative Criteria	Amazon	Overstock	Shopping-Bargains
Ease of Use	5	5	5
Content Scope	5	5	3
Privacy Policy	5	3	3
Customer Service	4	5	3
Marketing Techniques	4	3	3

Totals 23 21 17

Scale: 5 is best

Auction Sites

For ease of use, Ebay is the easiest site to get around in and find things easily. Ubid is a little harder find things in. Ebay has the most results when performing a search, this gives it an advantage in the area of content scope. The fees for selling an item on Ebay were fairly reasonable, but Onsale is currently providing free product listing, so it has the edge on Ebay when it comes to fees. Each of the three sites offer a contact link and places to provide feedback, so the customer service is good for all of them. IN the exclusiveness category, Ebay is the best because it offers many services and options that the other two don’t. An example of this is the “Pay Pal” buyer protection. A far as popularity goes, Ebay is the winner by far.

Table 5

Auction Rankings

Evaluative Criteria	Ebay	Ubid	Onsale
Ease of Use	5	3	4
Content Scope	5	4	4
Fees	3	3	5
Customer Service	4	4	4
Exclusiveness	5	3	4
Popularity	5	3	3

Totals 27 20 24

Scale: 5 is best

B2B Daimler Chrysler Extranet Vs. Ford Extranet

Suppliers of both Daimler Chrysler and Ford use both companies’ extranet sites to gain valuable information about how the companies deal with their suppliers. Both of these sites have some very similar features as well as some unique qualities. These two sites will be compared by five different aspects.

The first aspect is ease of use in which I felt Daimler Chrysler had a little easier site to navigate. Their site had a section for first time users which explained what this site had on it and how to gain access to blocked information. Daimler also had a very basic layout which made it quite easy to explore the site. The Daimler Chrysler site had an easy to use application overview. Ford’s site is not that hard to use, but it has more features and can be more complex to understand where to find what someone is looking for. What nice feature Ford had was a built in site map which lets the user look at how the site is designed. Overall, Ford gets a slight advantage for ease of use for their site.

Next the content scope of both sites was compared. Ford’s site seemed to have much more information than the Daimler Chrysler site. With all the information on Ford’s site it made it harder to understand for an average computer user. Although the Ford site is harder to understand a supplier probably wants as much information as it can get about how these companies work. Even though both companies supply plenty of pertinent information it appears that Ford has even more information available to their site users.

With extranet sites security is a very important aspect. Both Ford and Daimler Chrysler do not want unauthorized users to be able to gain access to very important information about their companies. It appears that the Daimler Chrysler site is a bit more secure than the Ford site. Much more information is available to the general public on the Ford site and a supplier can gain access if they know the required information. Unlike Ford, Daimler Chrysler requires a supplier to apply for access which is ultimately granted by Daimler Chrysler if they are a legitimate supplier.

Customer service is very important to both of these companies. On each of their sites there are areas where you can send in suggestions on how to improve their sites. Also, both companies have help areas on their sites where someone can gain valuable information about how to gain access to certain information or how to navigate their sites. Both sites have help desks and phone numbers where trained personnel can be reached.

These companies use two distinctly different layouts. Daimler Chrysler has a clean very basic looking site. Ford, on the other hand, has a very attractive site that is maybe a little harder to navigate but is nicer to look at. The Ford site is the better looking site of the two.

Table 6

Daimler vs. Ford

Evaluation Criteria	Daimler Chrysler	Ford
Ease of Use	4	3
Content Scope	3	5
Security	4	3
Customer Service	4	4
Site Layout	2	5
Totals	17	20

Scale: 5 best

The Future of B2B e-commerce

For many small businesses across the country the ability to conduct business to business exchanges is becoming easier. Many of these small businesses are getting a lot of help and support from large corporations to conduct these web exchanges. Large corporations such as SprintPCS, Wells Fargo and Co., and Chase Manhattan Bank have all helped start and run web based exchange sites for small businesses. This is important because this makes is much easier for small suppliers to trade and use web based exchanges. These small companies just did not have the resources or ability to use B2B commerce until these corporations stepped up and helped them.

These larger businesses help connect small businesses to these networks and help them hook up purchasing programs on the net. They also help small businesses develop and create e-catalogs. These corporations feel that helping smaller businesses is a smart decision for themselves. They feel it creates a great relationship with a supplier and that it will help them make the B2B e-commerce an even faster growing part of the internet. It reduces cost for both big and small businesses which is good for everyone involved. Once the initial installation costs are paid for the B2B e-commerce certainly reduces costs like paperwork, and it has increased most businesses sales.

I see the future of B2B e-commerce following this same trend. Many more big corporations will try to get involved and help small companies make the move to business to business electronic exchanges. The big companies are seeing the advantages of helping small companies become involved in B2B e-commerce. This not only helps the small companies, but it reduces cost for the larger companies and it makes the large companies business transactions much easier. B2B e-commerce is here to stay and will only continue to grow as companies both large and small get involved in internet commerce.(Aron, Joan -2001)

Executive Summary

Project one had many comparisons between different internet services. Among the sites compared were search engines including Google, Ixquick, and Hotbot. News services were also compared including CNN, New York Times, and USA Today.

E-commerce was also looked at very closely with B2C sites including automotive and retail sites being compared. Consumer to consumer sites such as onsale.com were looked at and discussed. Finally business to business sites with extranets were observed and compared. After looking at all of these business internet services our group offered many predictions about where we feel these aspects of business are headed and what to look for in the future.

References

1. B2B Predictions: Aron, Laurie Joan. E-Commerce or Bust. Fortune Magazine Online, December 14, 2001. Accessed (5/14/04).

2. Internet Service Predictions: Hollywood Reporter :“DSL growth poised to eclipse cable; Pay TV firms offer new services to combat broadband market shift” by Kathleen Anderson and Georg Szalai

Accessed (5/14/04).

Individual Evaluations:

Kellie:

This project was very helpful. I never really used any other search engines than Google. I never knew Ixquick and HotBot were out there. Also I never took the time to look around the sites and find out more about each site and the content that was on it, just besides what you are searching for. This activity helped me because now I will take more time and look around the sites I am on because maybe that will help me find the information I am looking for.

Kurt:

I felt that this project had some very good educational aspects to it. It forced me to actually think about the contents of a website that, otherwise, I would never even take into consideration when using them. It also opened my eyes to how helpful some of these sites could be to me. I was actually considering to sell my car and the sites for cars that I had to evaluate gave me some important information about selling it. I was in charge of the B2C portion of the project

Ryan:

This assignment was an interesting and informative assignment. I felt I learned a lot about e-commerce especially business to business because that is what I primarily covered. I felt that using teamwork was also a good way to get to know some of our classmates and to help us use webct. I felt this assignment is a good first assignment and it lets us get comfortable with how to complete projects in this class. I also learned a lot of pertinent information about business information systems

Devin:

This exercise was very helpful to me because I have never subscribed to an online newsletter before, and was unaware of what it could offer me. Now I can stay informed of national and world news by checking my email instead of turning on the television.

My role in this project was to subscribe to three different newsletters, and evaluate each on five criteria provided in the exercise description. I chose to evaluate www.bizjournals.com, www.cnn.com, and www.msnbc.com, and found the latter to offer the best service overall.