Executive Summary…………………………...pg. 3-4

Internet Services

Search Engines………………………………..pg. 4

Convisint………………………………………pg. 8-9

References………………………………………..pg. 10

A simple review of popular websites would be useful to any individual that routinely browses the internet. With so many top name sites available for any given task, the internet can seem overwhelming and surely measureless to others, for there are truly so many websites. In an attempt to simplify the process of choosing a website in the areas of search engines, news, automobile research, retail, and auction sites, several summaries have been amassed to help simplify the choosing process. Websites were rated in the areas of ease of use, content scope, customer service, exclusiveness, usefulness, privacy policy, overall look, and fees.

The first evaluated websites were search engines, which help individuals find websites based on keywords. Google.com, AskJeeves.com, and Vivisimo.com were the reviewed search engines. Google.com proved why it is the most popular amongst search engines, for it was extremely simple to use, and simply blew away the competition in related topics found.

News websites were the second web asset that was assessed, and Cnn.com, NYtimes.com, and Ens-news.com made up this category. Cnn.com had the best services, it had similar offers to the others, but also brought breaking news to my email as it happened.

Internet services are changing, and will continue to change, the lives of consumers and companies selling products to these consumers. Purchasing a product has evolved into a process of signing on to the internet, searching, and clicking, with the new found convenience of purchasing products both the seller and consumer will benefit. And at any given moment an individual can sign on and find up to the minute breaking news stories from the comfort and convenience of his or her office.

Carsmart.com, Cars.com, and Edmunds.com were the reviewed automobile sights. All three of the sites were very good sites to use if one were on the market for a car. All three sites were also very easy to use and very informative.

Retail websites were the next group of evaluated sites. Amazon.com Overstock.com, and Shopping-bargain.com were the three sites reviewed in this area. All three of the sites were excellent shopping sights, but amazon.com and overstock.com proved to carry the widest variety of products. On any given search both amazon.com and overstock.com had many of the products, whereas shopping-bargain.com did not carry many of the products.

Auction sites Ebay.com, Liquidation.com, and Onsale.com are all sites involving the buying and selling of products. There are very few fees involved, although the cost of shipping can get a little steep. Ebay.com was by far the best site in this category, for people auction off absolutely everything from French fries that look like Abraham Lincoln to cars and houses.

Covisint is an online technology service that allows different businesses throughout the world to share information between their partners, customers, and suppliers. Covisint provides businesses with an easy way to communicate with other companies at a low cost. They also provide tools and services that allow them to deal with multiple training partners. Everything is done electronically so it reduces the complexity of having to manage different transactions.

Businesses doing business with each other via the internet is something that has become very popular. There has been a massive amount of money poured into creating infrastructures that allow companies to do business with each other over the net. As it appears right now the internet is a more efficient and manageable way of doing business.

All three of these search engines have quite a bit in common, but between the three there were also a few small discrepancies which in the end made all of the difference. ‘Ease of Use’ was a tie all around the board, for all three of the sites were very ‘user friendly’ and upfront. The three sites also tied in the area of ‘Usefulness’, for they all bring up results when a keyword is searched.

Google and Vivisimo tied for ‘Content Scope’, for they consistently found several million more sites on any given search then Ask. Vivisimo also had a ‘search the web’ option which enables users to directly search in a specific context allowing you to directly narrow your search results.

Customer Service was readily available on all three of the websites, although Googles was the easiest to find. Exclusiveness really did not play into any of the sites, for all three of them were open and searchable.

All three of the websites were very easy to use and they all brought up relevant websites.

All three of the news websites were very informative, and all of them had a great deal of news to search once on the site. The New York Times site was the ‘easiest to use’, for it was very well organized with a predictable pattern of a newspaper. CNN’s website was fairly easy to navigate, but at times the layout appeared to be randomly spewed out onto the webpage. While the Environmental News website required you to find the proper link to even get to their news page, which made it quite inconvenient.

The ‘content scope’ was very similar on both the CNN and the New York Times websites, for they both had all of the news linked to their homepage, although some of the cnn.com links brought you to affiliate’s websites. Ens-news.com had a very limited content scope, which exclusively focused on environmental subject matter; therefore they received the lowest score.

The ‘customer service’ category were once again CNN and the New York Times, for they both had highly detailed contact information lists for the user, but the contact links themselves were extremely small in comparison to the large scale of the overall website. The Environmental news site had links which easily allowed you to contact the editor, but the other sites offered more contact options whereas ens-news.com was limited to this one.

Both cnn.com and nytimes.com had member based programs on their sites, but the New York Times site was the ‘most exclusive’ because it had a fee based membership option which granted members access to a members only news-archive. While the ens-news.com site had both a membership option and a news letter option available to interested parties.

The ‘usefulness’ of the ens-news.com site was limited by subject matter. cnn.com was by far the most useful; for one could use the affiliate links to obtain quite a bit more information then one could obtain on the other two sites.

The sign up service was available as one of the extended services on each site. The ens-news.com site had a mailing list service you could join, which sent environmental headlines to your email. The cnn.com services were mainly email based as well, sending breaking news to your email account, as well as giving you several newsletters; cnn.com also gives you a portfolio manager to keep track of your money. The nytimes.com site gives you access to several archive databases, although some were fee based, but they also had a newsletter one could sign-up for. Cnn.com had the best services, it had similar offers to the others, but also brought breaking news to my email as it happened.

Internet services will change the personal and business lives of people in the future by pushing the world economy more and more towards perfect competition. The internet enables countries all around the world to compete on a global level. This competition will create better services and products out of necessity. These enhanced services will allow people and businesses to work on projects other than figuring out how to communicate with a person across the world, thus creating better services and products and renewing the cycle again.

All three of the automobile research websites were very similar in format and overall layout. Cars.com and Edmunds.com were the ‘easiest sites’ to use while searching for potential automobiles, for one could type in the kind of new or used car they were searching for immediately after arriving to the sight. Carsmart.com on the other hand did not have their new and used car search engines immediately available on the main homepage, and while finding this section was not that difficult, there were still more steps involved.

The ‘privacy policy’ and ‘exclusiveness’ of the three sites were all about the same. There was no indication that any of the three sites had an abnormal privacy policy, and none of them were outlandishly exclusive. It appeared as if all three sites mainly acted as an intermediary between buyers and sellers.

‘Content scope’ and ‘customer service’ were two other areas that were judged while looking at the sites. Carsmart.com and Edmunds.com were the best sites when regarding content scope. The overall numbers of cars both used and new, on the two sites, were greatly higher then the number offered on Cars.com. While evaluating the ‘customer service’ of the three websites, I found that they were remarkably similar; for all three of the websites offered the same services to the customer.

The ‘overall look’ of the three companies were also very similar, for there were really only two marketing techniques used between the three sites. Carsmart.com and Edmunds.com had advertisements for car companies, and specific types of cars, all over their websites, which were obviously present to try and sway a customer one way or another. Cars.com on the other hand seemed to take the ‘less is more’ approach, for they seemed to eliminate the ‘car pushing’ aspect and concentrated more on making the website as simple and uncluttered for the customer as possible.

Overall, all three of the sites were very good sites to use if one were on the market for a car. In the end, they are all basically the same site, with the only difference being the individual car adds that show up in a given search.

 

	www.Carsmart.com	www.Cars.com	www.Edmunds.com
Ease of Use	4	5	5
Content Scope	5	3	5
Customer Service	5	5	5
Exclusiveness	5	5	5
Privacy Policy	5	5	5
Overall Look	5	5	5

In this section the three retail sites that were observed included www.amazon.com, www.overstock.com, and www.shopping-bargains.com. To find information about each of these sites, we decided to look up the DVD of Friends-The Complete Tenth Season, so we could see how we would go about finding the product at these sites, or if the site even had the product.

The first category was ‘ease of use’ and amazon.com was the first site tested. Amazon.com received five points because of the ease with which the DVD could be found, as well as the amount of information the site provided on the DVD itself. Amazon.com also provided a link to find customer and editorial reviews on the product. Overstock.com received a four because it provided a great amount of information about the product; however it did not give as many options as amazon.com. While shopping-bargains.com received two points because it was impossible to even find the DVD on their site, they did not have it; although shopping-bargains.com did give reference to a sight in which one could find the DVD if they wanted to buy it.

In the content scope category both amazon.com and overstock.com received a five and www.shopping-bargains.com a three. The reason www.amazon.com and www.overstock.com received a five is because they both gave a nice description of what you were going to buy, how much you would save, and they also provided a picture of the product. Shopping-bargains.com received a 3 because it did not provide as much information in certain categories.

For the privacy policy amazon.com received a five, www.overstock.com a four, and www.shopping-bargains.com a three. Amazon.com received a five because they did a nice job of explaining their policy and it was very easy to understand. Overstock.com received a four because it was also very informative, however more information could have been given about the policy in general. The reason shopping-bargains.com received a three is because even though they provided the policy it was very vague and could have used more detail.

With customer service, amazon.com and overstock.com should receive a four and shopping-bargains.com should receive a two. The reason amazon.com and overstock.com received fours was because they both offered great deals in buying the Friends DVD. It was very easy at both sites to figure out how to buy the product, and both offered free shipping when spending over twenty-five dollars. Shopping-bargains.com received a two because they did not offer as many services for their customers, and purchasing products from them seemed like it could be a little difficult.

All three sites, www.amazon.com, www.overstock.com, and www.shopping-bargains.com should receive a five for their marketing techniques because each site was presentable and eye catching to the user, each of their homepages showed what deals they were offering and how long they were going to be available.

With the security section of our search amazon.com a five, while overstock.com and shopping-bargains.com both received fours. Amazon.com is seemingly a more reputable company from which more customers would feel comfortable ordering.

 

	www.Ebay.com	www.Liquidation.com	www.Onsale.com
Ease of Use	5	1	4
Content Scope	4	2	4
Fees	4	2	3
Customer Service	4	3	4
Privacy Policy	5	5	3

Covisint

Covisint is an online technology service that allows different businesses throughout the world to share information between their partners, customers, and suppliers. With 190,000 active users in over 96 countries, Covisint serves almost 50 percent of companies throughout the industry.

Covisint provides businesses with an easy way to communicate with other companies at a low cost. They provide tools and services that allow them to deal with multiple training partners. Everything is done electronically so it reduces the complexity of having to manage different transactions. Because Covisint Connect manages all of these documented transactions they make it easier for businesses to participate in large supply chains.

More and more companies throughout the automotive industry are also choosing to participate with Covisint Connect because of these many reasons and because Covisint also provides other features like the Covisint Problem Solver. The Covisint Problem Solver helps resolve problems throughout the industry; it helps produce product quality, and also evaluates performance. Effective supply chain management has become a very important issue for businesses including the automotive industry, so it is important for them to be sure to have high quality development on time. All of this can be achieved through Covisint.

Businesses doing business with each other via the internet is something that has become very popular. There has been a massive amount of money poured into creating infrastructures that allow companies to do business with each other over the net. Doing business to business work over the internet basically simplifies things so that companies can access information much easier than in the past when they had to contact multiple individuals to find out information. It takes out the middle man in a company and allows things to be done in a more simplistic manor.

Like most new ideas this started very basic. Businesses weren’t doing very complicated business with each other. However technologies along with many very intelligent people are coming up with infrastructures that are extremely intelligent. The biggest new thing that CIO has come up with has been connecting the on call people at a company with the E-commerce world. This allows for much faster more efficient business via the internet. The sky is the limit when it comes to doing business to business work over the internet, and as a consumer this is very good news. The more efficiently things are done between businesses the cheaper the end cost, which will hopefully equal cheaper prices.

I feel that in doing this project I have learned to more appreciate what the internet and different websites can enable us to do throughout our normal lives and for businesses. I think that it is great that we have this information available to us. I also thought that it was interesting to see the similarities and differences between sites in each of the sections. I think that this would be a good project for people who are unfamiliar with certain sites that are involved in this project. I also feel that the project itself is fine for classes in the future. - Jacquelyn Kerby

I feel that this project has exposed me to websites I may have never gone to otherwise. The project also showed me what separates such successful websites like google.com from their competitors. After reading all of the reviews I may have to explore some of the sites in my personal time to fully appreciate all they have to offer. Overall, I would say this was a fair assignment, which helped expose me to B2B and B2C E-commerce. - Michael Widmann

Doing this project first for the class was a good way to get things started. It was not that difficult, and it gave the groups a good chance to get together and figure out how the group was going to work together. Our group seems to be a good one and I see us doing good work on future projects. As for this project I felt that I was able to get some pretty good information. When comparing the sites it really showed me how up to date you have to be to have any kind of competitive advantage against other companies in the same field. When looking at the different car sites you really had to look to find many differences at all. That is probably the biggest thing that I learned from doing this project. - Ryan Van Loozen

I learned you can buy stuff for a lot cheaper on the auction websites then you can in the store. I found a sound card for twenty-five dollars on ebay, and I was thinking about buying it at the store for fifty dollars. Overall I enjoyed the assignment and I was introduced to a whole new world of shopping -Chris Brown

Varon, Elana. (2001). The ABCs of B2B.

Retrieved September 18^th, 2005, from

http://www.cio.com/research/ec/edit/b2babc.html

Executive Summary, Search Engines, Editing, and Final Presentation: Michael Widmann

Retail Websites and Covisint: Jacquelyn Kerby

News Websites and Prediction #1: Benjamin Cooper

Automobile Websites and B2B E-commerce: Ryan Van Loozen

Auction Websites: Chris Brown