E-business site
An e-business site is an externally facing site designed to market a company's products and services to consumers and allow them to purchase these items online. The focus of the site is on helping a consumers match their needs to the appropriate product or service and maximizing their purchases.
The site provides:
- press releases about the latest news relating the company's products and services.
- a promotions area with information about products and services including sales, special package deals, and discounts.
- a products and services catalog area with the entire catalog displayed as a searchable taxonomy.
- a shopping area where users can see:
- a searchable list of available products and services available for purchase online.
- a summary of the items they are intending to purchase.
- an area to calculate tax, shipping and other costs.
- an area to purchase these items online using mail order, or using a follow-up call from a salesperson.
- an area to track orders they have already initiated.
- articles where the organization can help customers using articles discussing their products and services.
- a support area with technical documentation, contact numbers, support request forms, FAQs, and downloads.
- a service for subscribing to a newsletter where the user is sent a regular update highlighting new promotions, products or articles.
The home page of the site is used to highlight the latest promotions, and to give a strong sense of the brand of the organization. Throughout the site, collaborative filtering is used to help suggest products and services to consumers based on their purchasing and navigational activity. A discussion system may also be used to allow users to build a community where they can comment on and rate various products and services.
A number of components are used together to build the e-business site:
- WebSphere Portal is used to provide a platform for the integration of content and applications that form the e-business site.
- The overall theme and top-level navigation of the intranet is also managed using WebSphere Portal.
- Web Content Manager provides the micro-level layout of the content within the site, and is also used to directly build the press releases, FAQs, articles, and promotional content.
- The catalog and shopping areas are being run using WebSphere Commerce.
- Personalization is used to suggest products to users based on collaborative filtering, and to email the newsletter.
- A third-party discussion system is used to deliver collaborative forums in the communities section of the site using a custom portlet.
An e-business site can generate a large amount of traffic with a relatively small amount of content.
Types of websites
Related
Design and setting up a portal site
Road map to building a web content system
Personalizing content
Related information
IBM WebSphere Commerce
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