Online Virtual Shop
9.2 Online Virtual Shop
9.2.1 Virtual Shop Mode
Virtual shop mode refers to that enterprise opens a virtual shop to advertise and display its products and service and provide function of online trade further. This mode is similar to online retail market, but more professional than the online retail market.
Let’s take an example of an enterprise that has a successfully developed online
9 Portal Site Design of Virtual Enterprise
shop mode to illustrate online shop mode. AMP Inc. is a company of accessory related to computer, motor and communication. It specializes in producing circuit connector, and it holds thousands upon thousands various accessories. Their products catalog is about 400 pages. Thereby, customers found it hard to search for a certain product in the immense catalog ever since. But after the company publishes online product catalog, customers can conveniently find target products only by inputting the description of the product characteristics. Obviously, online inquiry is much easier than entity catalog inquiry. The company’s online inquiry catalog is published in eight languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English), serving for customers from 114 countries and areas.
How much ROI does the online investment of AMP bring to it? Considering the saving on printing, communication and phone supporting, the corporation primarily estimates the yield to be 1.5 database in AMP is rather huge and ordinary searcher is not applicable, it specially engages SAQQARA Systems Inc. to develop appropriative software, which is called Step Search.
This software makes AMP e-commerce website so successful that the website has attracted large quantities of companies to contact with it to consult the approach of successfully developing e-commerce website. Therefore, the company specially found
a department to provide Internet e-commerce solution and sell software to clients currently. AMP becomes the largest connector manufacturer in the world owing to it “connecting” thousands of customers with myriad of products on the Internet.
9.2.2 Virtual Shop Design
Modern e-commerce technologies have concentrated on foundation and operation of Internet virtual shop. There is no difference between network virtual shop and real shop on department structure and function, and the differences lie in the implementation methods of these functions and structure and the approach of business operation.
Internet virtual shop is viewed as an especial Web server from the foreground. Multimedia support and good interaction function of modern website become the foundation of this kind of virtual shop, which makes customers to select commodity as in the real super market, pushing cart and pay at payment desk at last. According to above, we can derivate the three pillars of constructing Internet virtual shop: commodity catalog, shopping cart and payment desk. Good commodity catalog can make customers quickly find the wanted commodity by the easiest method, and make them know information of products fully through various channels; shopping cart links up shop and individual, customers can put his favorite commodity in the cart, also can remove it from the cart, until to pay at last; payment desk is the final link, and also the most pivotal link. It must be secure to use some electronic currency to trade with a shop for both customers and shop.
Introduction to E-commerce
At the back of the Internet virtual shop, the enterprise firstly should have commodity storage and management organization; secondly, it needs to deliver products sold online to the customers through logistic channel; thirdly, the enterprise also needs to take charge of after-sale service, which may be through network or not. Online trade is generally a “cash before delivery” shopping mode. For the customers, the convenience is that the purchased commodity will be directly delivered to their home, but what worrying them is that they do not know what the commodity exactly is. Virtual shop is not a real shop. Although the customers know the introduction and packaging of the commodity, after all it may be greatly different from the real commodity. Therefore, the credit standing and service quality of the network virtual shop is actually the key of the success for e-commerce.
9.2.3 Implementation of Virtual Shop
A business Web site is founded on the Internet, where customers can select commodities and pay for them as in a real shop. Multimedia support and good interaction function of modern website become the foundation of this kind of virtual shop. Therefore, the virtual shop needs:
Shop name: on the Internet it is called domain name, which is unique in the whole Internet world.
Shop site: it is the Internet address of your shop. High-speed network connection is just like that you open a shop in a golden place in downtown area.
Shop decoration: it is termed as Web page design in computer science. Ornate web page is like a well-decorated marketplace, naturally more attracting. Commodity update: Pages should be continuously maintained. Removing commodities sold out and placing new ones is the daily routine. Settling account: It is the prerequisite to build up Internet virtual shop. Moreover, the security of settling account directly affects the security of the business operation.
Storage management: Whether for virtual shop or real shop, commodity and currency are both real, as is management of storage.
Commodity being delivered to customers finally: Online trade is similar to mail order. The last step is to deliver goods to customers by post system, logistic system or people.
Typical department structure of a virtual shop is shown as Fig. 9.1.
Figure 9.1 Structure chart of virtual shop
9 Portal Site Design of Virtual Enterprise