E-commerce and Portal Site

9.1 E-commerce and Portal Site

9.1.1 Concept of Portal Site

Portal expands the enterprises business to all over the world by using information expressway through Internet and Intranet. But there may be no real enterprises, or many parts of an enterprise can be spreaded out all over the world but it is integrated as a whole by network dynamically and efficiently.

9.1.2 Meaning of Portal Site

Generally speaking, a portal site has the following effects on enterprise:

1. Upgrade enterprises’ image

Generally speaking, the effect of portal site is beyond the corporation propagandizing and advertisement in newspaper and on television. Because portal site is bulky in information, real-time, interactive and global, enterprises can put almost everything that they want to let their customers and the public know into its website without the limit of time and space, to make users all over the world can find out products information of enterprise at any time, to boost up the confidence of enterprises and upgrade enterprises’ image.

2. Make enterprises acquire network-communicating capability

The real meaning of Internet lies in the abundance of its content. For an enterprise, the sign of owning network communication capability is that the enterprise has interactive and individual website of its own not only has an e-mail.

3. Can introduce corporation and its products in detail

One basic function of portal site is to introduce the corporation and its products fully and in detail, represent the specification, performance and shape of all products to users.

4. Can tie up with customers

The foreign corporations have been used to publish all of the new products and

Introduction to E-commerce

new services on website, and periodically publish companies’ information on the website, to make customers know about its information and tie up with customers.

5. Can build business relation with potential customers

This is one of the most important functions of portal site, and is also the fundamental reason why so many foreign enterprises pay great attention to build their own website. Buyers can find new products and new suppliers using Internet, with low cost and high efficiency. If corporations registered their address of website to famous global search engines (for example, Yahoo, Google, BaiDu), the potential customers can easily find the enterprise and their products by selecting key words related to enterprise’s products and services.

6. Can reduce communication cost

For many enterprises, annual communication cost, especially involved with imports and exports, is huge. It can efficiently reduce communication cost by using many kinds of e-mails provided by portal sites. This is one of practical advantages of portal site.

7. Can receive customers feedback in time

Customers usually would not actively give feedback to corporation. If adds e-mail and electronic forms for customers to communicate with the corporation when the corporation designs portal site, customers may generally be willing to communicate with the corporation by using this method owing to the convenience. Therefore, the corporation will receive a large number of ideas and advice from customers.

8. Can make corporation serve customers better

The corporation can realize many things which are impossible to realize before through building up website. For example, GM and Haier implement user design and customized manufacture of enterprise manufacture through website. This can exploit new market; expand new customers, meet many requirements that are unable to be satisfied before, thereby to serve customers better.