ITIS 1210 Introduction to Web-Based Information Systems Chapter 43 Shopping on the Internet

Introduction  How has the Internet revolutionized shopping?  Convenience  Comfort  Selection  Online shopping possible because of encryption techniques  No one can read except intended recipient  Primarily used to scramble credit card information

Introduction  Most shopping information contained in online databases  Data about items for sale  Price  Description  Options (colors, sizes, etc.)  Special offers

Introduction  HTML pages created dynamically  “On the fly”  Advantage is  Company doesn’t need huge set of Web pages that contain every product they offer  Customers don’t have to wade through huge numbers of information they don’t care about – in order find what they’re looking for  Thousands of pages don’t have to be changed every time a product changes

Introduction  Databases also contribute to order fulfillment  Your credit card information is checked  By comparing your order amount with your bank’s financial database  Updates requests to warehouse to package and ship your order  Updates request to shipper to pick up and deliver your order  Updates warehouse inventory, accounts receivable, etc.

Introduction  Cookies are used to  Personalize your experience  Manage your shopping cart

How Online Buying Works  Customer goes to a store’s Web page  Searches for product  Online database participates at back end  HTML pages created on-the-fly  Delivered to customer  Provides credit card information  Via secure site where encryption is used  Fill out a form

How Online Buying Works  Submit button cause several actions  Form information encrypted  What you’re buying  How you’re paying  Sent to company’s transaction server  Financial details verified with bank or credit card company  Transaction OK  Update your credit card balance!

How Online Buying Works  Your order verified back to you  Thank you for your order  Request to warehouse  “Send XXX to YYY”  Doesn’t have to be company’s warehouse  Could be third party direct sales  Order sent to you

How Online Shopping Carts Work  Usually, customer must register before using online shopping services  Personal information  Name  Address  Sometimes financial data  Credit card number & expiration data  Bank data  User’s data stored on company machine

How Online Shopping Carts Work  Cookie placed on user’s machine  Identifies user with specially coded data only company computers can understand  User browses company site  Decides to buy something  Places it in virtual “shopping cart”  Information on item sent to company’s Web server  Updated cookie placed on user’s machine

How Online Shopping Carts Work  Updated cookie now contains information on everything in the shopping cart  Multiple items can be “held” within one cookie  Ready to checkout is multi-step process  User views shopping cart  Site reads cookie  Builds page with all items on it  Sends page to user  User clicks some kind of “commit” button  Possibly supplying new credit card/bank information

How Online Shopping Carts Work  At checkout  Back-end processes kick off  User account debited for amount of purchase  Request to warehouse/supplier to deliver  Warehouse inventory updated  Shipper notified  Company’s books updated  New cookie placed on customer’s machine  No items in cart or  Cookie expires

How eBay Sells Everything  eBay maintains four data centers  Sacramento, CA  Two in Santa Clara, CA  Denver, CO  This ensures site is always up & running  Mirrors of each other  Same information maintained in each  Connected via SONET  Synchronous Optical Network

How eBay Sells Everything  Each data center runs Windows Server software  Your searches go to special search servers  Sun Microsystems hardware  Search servers send request to special database servers  Running Oracle database on a Sun SPARC computer

How eBay Sells Everything  Database sends results of search back to the search servers  Search servers send results back to the Web servers  Web servers dynamically create a Web page with your results  And send it back to you

How eBay Sells Everything  You browse results  Make a bid which goes to the Web servers  Web servers send bid information to application servers  Communicate the bid to the database servers  The bid is now visible to the next person who browses that item

How eBay Sells Everything  Database flags indicate when the auction ends  Database servers send information about the winning bid to the application servers  Application servers communicates winning bid to Web server  Winning bid posted  Data goes to servers to notify winner and seller

How eBay Sells Everything  Servers keep track of which items winners  Have won  Have paid for  Have left feedback for  Winner and seller eventually rate the experience