Electronic commerce systems and applications

Ecommerce

We are witnessing a tremendous growth in information technology and its related services. The Internet in particular has developed into a huge medium with an outreach that exceeded more than 1.1 billion people as on March 2007. [Microsoft] This phenomenal growth is expected to continue at swirling pace and corporations are increasingly relying on the web as the main media for delivering their services, achieving sales boost and global proliferation.

Microsoft and Dell are two giant organizations, which have successfully exploited the potential of the Internet to vigorously market their products and boost their sales revenue. Continuous web upgrades and fine tuning of web-based services with a customer friendly focus has enabled both Microsoft and Dell to realize the growth figures that they managed to achieve. First and foremost come the web designing and the speed and ease of navigation across the website. With more than 13 million unique users every day and with more than 289 million people downloading windows updates everyday it is easily obvious that efficient management of its web portal is crucial for sustaining its business. [Paul Wright] Microsoft.com has evolved constantly and made its web pages easy to navigate by updating its servers and by incorporating XML-based data storage. By separating the features on the web page, Microsoft has also eliminated the need for redrawing the complete webpage every time a user navigates within the website. One of its latest products being 'Microsoft silverlight' which provides cross platform delivery of rich and interactive media content for web as well as mobile mediums.

Dell has also evolved significantly on the webfront with its web sales accounting for more than 20 billion dollars in 2005 alone. [Aoron Ricadela] This staggering sales figure indicates the importance of continuous upgrading of its web portal services. During the nineties and even until 2004 the company had used static WebPages and every time a product update was announced each one of its 80 plus websites for different countries had to be updated by the respective it staff. In a significant ecommerce consolidation initiative, the company figured that it would be much more efficient and cost saving to have a single Product update and have it available worldwide instead of having multiple fixes. This way Dell's regional offices could concentrate on just the language updates than having to deal with the entire product details. In short, Dell has adopted a concept of developing its website based on a standard outlook as Susan Sheskey, VP of the it division which runs the company's website stated 'we don't want to develop everywhere. Customers, no matter where in the world, now see Dell the same way'. [Aoron Ricadela] Thus we see that in case of both Dell and Microsoft, the need for improving the delivery of services to their huge customer base and achieving better leverage from the Internet medium have been the motivating factors behind the continuous transformation of their online services. These upgrades are also motivated by the fact that web-based traffic and ecommerce volume are expected to grow exponentially and efficient scaling up becomes an important aspect in order that businesses continue to provide quality services for the ever growing online market segment.

Microsoft's live feedback program is an initiative designed to gather information directly from selected users during live web-based presentations of products and to incorporate features into the product based on inputs provided from the customers. This allows the company to better tailor its products as per popular demands and thereby makes the products more suitable for its consumers. There are multiple webcasts everyday explaining product features, interactive presentations from Microsoft employees and product experts. Microsoft sends invitations for participation in such interactive webcasts to selected customers and their feedback is used in the design process of upcoming products. [Microsoft] Recently Microsoft extended these feedback programs on a broader level. As an incentive to customers and as an effective tool to evaluate the product pre and post release, Microsoft offered its customers a feedback program for its windows vista ultimate operating system. Customers got to evaluate a free copy of their windows vista ultimate just for providing feedback about the product, which would constitute a valuable input for Microsoft's product development team. [Microsoft] Thus both the web-based live feedback programs as well as the product launch offers by Microsoft are highly effective methods for the company to gather customer views, interests and needs so that they can be used for betterment of their existing products as well as being useful in the development of their new products for the targeted market segment. These didactic online sessions help the company improvise their product design to suit the demands of the customers and thus improve the sales pitch for the product, which ultimately depends on customer satisfaction.