Name: Praise Mafusire

Reg No. : C15126015v

Course: CUIT 412

1. The environment where e-business services are provided has both constraints and
opportunities to its stakeholders.

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a) State the stakeholders of an e-business microenvironment. [2]
i. customers
ii. suppliers
iii. shareholders
iv. media
v. employees
vi. competitors

b) Identify and describe these constraints and opportunities. [14]

Opportunities
Flexible Business Hours
Most businesses operating in the traditional method have business or working hours ranging
from 8:00hrs to 17:00hrs. E-business breaks down the time barriers that location-based
businesses encounter since the internet is always available. As long as someone has an Internet
connection, you may be able to reach and sell your product or service to these visitors to your
business website. This is an opportunity to suppliers and shareholders because their good and
services are available for sale 24/7 and payments can be done even after the traditional business
hours

No Geographical Boundaries
There are no geographical boundaries for e-business. Anyone can order anything from anywhere
at any time. This is an opportunity to suppliers and shareholders to develop and expand their
businesses. They are not confined to local customers only

Easy to Set Up
It is easy to set up an electronic business. You can set up an online business even by sitting at
home if you have the required software, a device, and the internet. For instance, for one to start
selling Avroy Shlain beauty products, all they need is a web browser, internet and social media
account to start marketing and selling their products.

Variety
E-businesses benefit customers by providing a wide range of products to compare and choose
from. For instance, customers can compare laptop prices across the ecommerce sites Alibaba,
amazon and e-bay among others.

Cut expenses
This also cuts down on operation costs like employee payroll expenses because business owners
and shareholders no longer need to have dozens of employees a week on-site to sell albums,
books, or movies. Another opportunity to business owners and shareholders is expenses that
result from human errors are reduced. Human errors in a traditional business setup may include
giving a customer too much change than the actual.

Provides and improves personalized services

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Customers can receive responses very fast through email and live chats used by most e-
businesses.
These flexible forms of customer service can extend past a physical store’s hours of operation. E-
businesses also offer the convenience of delivering products straight to a customer’s door. Using
Artificial Intelligence, e-business are able to tailor make their customer digital experience
through suggesting. The personalization of the experience is a key aspect for an effective
customer experience. The brand must get to know which subject matters and products interest
them, and which do not.

Constraints
Lack of Personal Touch
E-business lacks the personal touch. One cannot touch or feel the product. Therefore, it is
difficult for the consumers to check the quality of a product. In addition, the human touch is
missing as well. In the traditional model, we have contact with the salesperson. This lends it a
touch of humanity and credibility. It also builds trust with the customer. An e-Business model
will always miss such attributes. For instance when customers buy clothes, they may be
convinced by the feel of the clothes material.

Security Issues
As performing business online is expanding, the number of hackers is also increasing. Many
people defraud through online business. In addition, it is easier for hackers to get your financial
details. It has a few security and integrity issues. This also causes distrust among potential
customers.

Delivery Time
The delivery of the products takes time. In traditional business, you get the product as soon as
you buy it. However, that does not happen in online business. This lag time often discourages
customers. However, e-businesses are trying to resolve such issues by promising very limited
delivery times. For example, Amazon now assures one-day delivery. This is an improvement but
does not resolve the issue completely

Network unreliability
As the number of internet users increase rapidly day by day, the internet is becoming a very busy
information highway. If network failure occurs e-business websites cannot serve, its customer as
a result leads to sales loss and credibility. The network failure may be due to network traffic or
inadequate bandwidth. Denial of Service attacks (DoS) can also lead to network being
unavailable.

c) Describe any four unique features of e-commerce. [8]

i. Ubiquity- The traditional business market is a physical place, access to treatment by

means of document circulation. For example, clothes and shoes are usually directed to
encourage customers to go somewhere to buy. E-commerce is ubiquitous meaning that it
can be everywhere. E-commerce is the worlds reduce cognitive energy required to
complete the task.

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 ii. Global Reach- E-commerce allows business transactions on the cross-country bound can
be more convenient and more effective as compared with the traditional commerce. On
the e-commerce businesses, potential market scale is roughly equivalent to the network
the size of the world’s population.
iii. Richness- Advertising and branding are an important part of commerce. E-commerce can
deliver video, audio, animation, billboards, signs etc. However, it is about as rich as
television technology.
iv. Personalization- E-commerce technology allows for personalization. Business can be
adjusted for a name, a person’s interests and past purchase message objects and
marketing message to a specific individual. The technology also allows for custom.
Merchants can change the product or service based on user preferences, or previous
behaviour.

2. Explain the following terms and suggest which is the most useful in measuring the
effectiveness of a web site.

a) Hit. [2]

A website hit refers to the number of files that a website has to request. Types of files found on a
web page include images and videos. For example, a request for an HTML page with four
graphic images and a video will result in six hits in the log: one for the HTML text file and one
for each of the graphic files. While a hit is a meaningful measure of how much traffic a server
handles, it can be a misleading pointer of how many pages are being viewed.

b) Page impression. [2]

A page impression refers to the number of times a page is loaded. Therefore, if you have one
unique visitor, but ten page impressions, this tells us that the website was attention grabbing
enough for the visitor to click around and explore. On the other hand, if you have one unique
visitor, but three page impressions, it implies that the content or other aspect of the website was
not sufficient for the visitor to browse around.

c) Site visit. [2]

A visit refers to a series of hits from any particular IP address. It is also a visitor’s session with
your website. A user can view any number of pages during a session, but the visit as a whole will
count as one. The session ends when the visitor navigates to a new website, closes the browser or
is inactive for a certain period. If the visitor returns to the website later in the day. Each session
will count as a visit.

Conclusion

To conclude, page impression seems to be meaningful in measuring the effectiveness of a

website since it indicates to us that the website was attractive and intriguing enough for the
visitor to click around and explore. Lower page impression value helps us to see the need to

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change and update our website to suit the visitors’ needs and expectations and in return increases
site visits.

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