E commerce site (Ebay/ Tesco)

Another example of an E-commerce site is "Tesco Online".

This site is very similar in design to Amazon, with a search bar and drop down menus to make it quicker and easier for a person to find the product they are looking for.
Tesco Online is predominately used for grocery shopping. This is were a customer searches through all the grocery products available and then choose what they want and the quantity. This item it then added to their "basket", a webpage that keeps track of everything the customer has selected to buy but not yet bought. This "basket" system is useful as people can make huge lists of items and buy them all at once instead of taking time to make many smaller purchases.

The customer chooses a date and a 2 hour time slot at least 24 hours later than the current time. The products are then delivered at the time specified. This is useful because the person does not have to leave their house and that it is easy to deliver a large order using a van, as opposed to trying to fit it all in one car. The main disadvantage of this delivery is that someone has to be at the house in order to collect it. As it is a 2 hour slot this means that some-one has to make sure that they at in the house for those 2 hours. This can cause a problem either if a person can not get home to take the delivery or if they have got something else planned near that time slot.

It is possible that Tesco does not have some of the items you ordered in stock when they make the delivery. If this is the case they either substitute a similar item or do not charge the person for the item not delivered. This substitution of products can be problematic because a person might be allergic to ingredients in the new product.
Tesco Online keeps a record of what products you have bought from it. This is useful because it makes it easier to order the same products which is common with grocery shopping. A disadvantage of this however is that the list contains all grocery products brought. This means that some-one could click on and buy something they did not want. This can cause a problem if the product was bought once but the person found that they did not like it.

 

There is a feature on Tesco online that shows recipes for meals. This is useful as it can provide people with ideas on what to cook. Each recipe lists the ingrediants needed and has an option of buying all of them at once. This can make it quicker for a person to order ingrediants to prepare a meal.

Another example of an E-commerce site is Ebay. Ebay is different from the majority of other E-commerce sites as the products for sale are not being sold by the company. Anybody with an ebay account can put items up for auction. Other people can then bid for these items.

Ebay also has a search bay and drop down menus which enable people to quickly find what they are looking.

Ebay contains an auto-bidding system. This is where a person states the maximum amount of money they are willing to bid for an item. A computer program then places a bid only a small amount above the current price. If another person places a higher bid the auto bidding computer system then increases the bid. This continues until on of the people reach their max bid. When this happens the computer stops bidding for that person. This is useful as it means that people will not have to constantly watch the item they are bidding on. It also means that people will pay the lowest possible price. The "bid history" shows the number of bids on an item. This is useful as it shows if other people have bid on a item. This can provide an idea of whether the product is worth bidding on.

As anyone can sell stuff on ebay there is a risk that the product may be damaged. People also have to be careful of what they buy. Although by law people have to accurately describe the product in the description box, sometimes people only read a bit of the description and focus more on the picture which can lead to them buying something they do not want. An example of this was when somebody took a photo of their car and turned it into a poster. He then put the poster up on Ebay . In the description box he described all the features of the actual car. Halfway throughthe description he mentioned it was a poster. However many people did not read this part and proceded to bid ridiculously high amounts of money. The person could not get prosecuted as he had said that he was selling a poster.
However an advantage of anyone being able to sell objects can result in people being able to find rare or limited edition items that can not be brought from a company.
Ebay uses a feature called pay-pal. This is were you tell the compnay pay-pal your credit card information. This is so that you can make payments through pay-pal and not directly. This is very useful becuase it dramatically reduces the risk of someone illegally gaining your credit card information, which they can work out if you pay them directly. The only concern is that pay-pal may use your credit card. However pay-pal is a professional company so it is very unlikely for that to happen