2022

E-Commerce 512

Thabisile
HCIT : 31/10/2022
402202955
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Contents
Question 1 ........................................................................................................................................ 2
Question 2 ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Question 3 ........................................................................................................................................ 7
Question 4 ...................................................................................................................................... 10
References .................................................................................................................................. 11
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Question 1

1.1.1) What payment options are there?

Firstly, it’s useful to understand the different ways you can take (and customers can make)
payments.
One method is bank transfer, but it’s likely some customers and clients won’t be
comfortable sending money this way.
Another method is Direct Debit, where clients and customers can set up a recurring
payment. Direct Debits usually get taken monthly, which makes them good for things like
subscriptions.
Online payment systems often give you the ability to take card payments in different ways.
For example, if you already have an online presence, you can integrate most payment
services into your business website.
If you don’t have the ability to take payments on your website yet, some services give you a
link or invoice that you can send customers so they can make the payment.

What are online payment systems?

An online payment system is usually made up of different elements, including payment

processors and payment gateways. It’s useful to understand the terminology:

payment gateway – this is a secure gateway that sends online payments to the payment
processor
payment processor – these deals with the actual transaction between payment cards and
the acquiring banks
merchant bank – funds are deposited into a merchant bank before going into your business
bank account
Are online payment systems secure?
The reason online payment systems exist is to make it quick and easy for you to sell your
products – and to give both your business and your customers security.
After a customer purchase something on your website using their card details, those details
are encrypted and then processed through the payment gateway, payment processor and
merchant bank.
What online payment systems could I use for my business?
Worldpay
Worldpay has a Pay by link feature that you can use through its business manager tool,
which lets you send a secure payment link to your customers over email. This is useful if you
don’t already have a website and online shopping cart.
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PayPal

PayPal is one of the most well-known online payment systems. PayPal’s option for small
businesses is called Web Payments Standard and you can add payment buttons to your
website by copying code.
1.12) What Are the Risks When Making Online Transactions?

Online shoppers are concerned about the potential dangers of online transactions because
of the potential for identity theft and fraud. While identity theft is on the rise, there is no
need to panic. There are some things that can be done to keep your identity safe.
One of the biggest risks when making an online purchase is the use of your credit card. The
information that you give out when giving your credit card to a store clerk or a customer
service representative can be used in order to obtain personal information. If the company
has access to this personal information, then they can charge you with an outstanding
balance or even get your bank account information by way of an overdraft.
Some of the personal information that is stored on your card includes your name, address,
and even your phone number. This information may be used to gain access to a person’s
banking information or even to open up a checking account.
Online shopping may also present other risks. You should know that there are always the
possibilities of a credit card not working, and if you have already spent your money, then
you should report the transaction immediately to the credit bureaus.
One of the biggest risks when making an online transaction is not having the right security
software installed on your computer. Make sure you use an online shopping cart that
provides secure encryption of all of the financial information that you send from your
computer to the shopping website.
When making online shopping, it is a good idea to purchase a secure credit card or debit
card that requires a one-time password. rather than a monthly membership fee that allows
you to make unlimited purchases with that same card. If you are going to use your card to
make a purchase online, remember to put the amount of money you want to spend on each
item on a separate line so that you don’t end up overdrawing.
Always make sure you read the fine print when you pay for your item and make sure that
you know what your policy says about returns. If you make a purchase and you don’t want it
after you receive it, make sure to contact the merchant for a full refund. Most stores offer
refunds after receipt, but not always. Always pay your balance by cash and never use a
credit card.
1.1.3) Due to fast-changing market dynamics and increased competition, many
organizations seek to expand their market internationally. To do this, companies set up legal
entities in foreign locations to support their operations, simply their legal structure, lower
operating costs, and comply with local statutory and legal requirements. Yet, such ambitions
can be fraught with challenges. Listed are five major obstacles companies are likely to
encounter when going global.
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Talent Acquisition
Hiring talent while setting up a business can be challenging on its own; throw a new country
into the mix and it can place added stress and burden on your hiring team. Many times, the
hiring process varies in other countries – from where to post jobs to how conduct interviews
to the actual job offer.

Employee Management and Training

Effective employee management is crucial to improved productivity, reduced risks, and
providing a great employee experience. Companies that poorly manage employees or fail to
provide thorough training can find a new location being isolated from the company culture
or organizational values and goals.

Tax Codes and Compliance Issues

Setting up a legal entity overseas entails learning different tax codes and understanding
local business regulations. For example, in several countries opening an office for longer
than six months may require you to file local tax returns before the due date otherwise you
may incur penalties.

Payroll Administration
Payroll administration involves tasks ranging from calculating employees’ remuneration to
ensuring compliance with employment laws. Whether in the United States or a foreign
country, payroll administration can get complex quickly. Further, various aspects such as
commission, pay rates, and annual state withholding amounts change from time to time,
making payroll administration even more complex.

HR and Benefits Tasks

Managing HR tasks such as onboarding, health/benefits administration, offboarding, and
more are critical and time-sensitive tasks. It often gets difficult for businesses to keep up
with the HR changes in another country or even to create policies and train employees
according to these changes in a timely manner.
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Question 2

2.1) N-tier (or multi-tier) architecture refers to software that has its several layers rendered
by distinct IT environments (tiers) under a client-server logic. The user interface
(Presentation Tier) runs in a separate environment than the “computation” (Business Logic
Tier) which in turn also runs in a distinct environment from the database engine and
instances (Data Tier).
Businesses can extend the benefits of the N-tier architecture even further by establishing
standardized hardware and software designs at each tier. If properly implemented, this
process leads toward the creation of a menu of shared services that IT can use in planning,
designing and deploying new applications.
High-volume e-Business transactions are putting new pressures on the corporate
computing environment. Functionality and stability are no longer sufficient to provide a
competitive advantage. Businesses must be able to deploy and adapt applications quickly to
address rising workloads and changing business requirements. Data and applications must
be integrated across the enterprise to improve efficiency, and the highest levels of
performance and availability must be maintained to support business-critical processes.

Leading companies are accelerating their business cycles by establishing e-Business

connections across their entire chain of customers and suppliers. The advantages are
compelling. Information sharing, collaboration and transaction processing are more
efficient. Costs are reduced, and each connected business can respond more quickly to new
opportunities and market shifts. The growing maturity of applications for e-Commerce,
supply-chain management and customer resource management is fuelling this evolution by
simplifying deployment and providing a faster and more substantial return on investment.
2.2) Whitelists and blacklists are ways of filtering specific types of data, or from blocking
malicious or unauthorized access to systems or databases. In the context of computer
security, blacklisting and whitelisting are used as a means of access control.

What is a Whitelist?

A whitelist tells a system what is allowed. If a user or a system hasn’t been granted access,
or whitelisted, it will be blocked from accessing the resource. Whitelisting can range from
very simple to much more complex. A simple whitelist system usually identifies applications
based on their file name, size and directory paths. A more complex, stricter approach is
using a combination of cryptographic hash techniques and digital signatures which are
assigned to the developer of each component or application.
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Advantages of Whitelists
o Higher level security due to identity verification and authentication.
o Allows for more specific and limited access.
o Whitelisting let’s admins block all users except the chosen few.
o National Institute of Standards and Technology say whitelisting is best for high-
security environments

Disadvantages of Whitelists
o Must verify identities to check if user is whitelisted.
o Difficult to authorize a large number of users.

What is a Blacklist?

A blacklist is a list of blocked or disapproved users or applications. Imagine a blacklist as a

list of known and suspected criminals maintained by the FBI or other government agency.
There would likely be criminals who had not been caught who wouldn’t be included on the
list. As a result, blacklisting isn’t as “secure” as whitelisting because it allows more people to
slip past the system.

Advantages of Blacklists
o Blacklisting is simple due to not having to check the identity of every user.
o Allows free flowing access to resources.

Disadvantages of Blacklists
o Only accounts for known variables, so can only protect from identified threats.
o Blacklists are often exploited by malware that are designed specifically to evade
detection.
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Question 3

3.1)

Ecommerce is the business of buying and selling goods and services over the internet.
Ecommerce customers can make purchases from their computers as well as other
touchpoints including smartphones, smartwatches, and digital assistants such as Amazon’s
Echo devices.
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, is the buying and selling of product
or service over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.
Electronic commerce draws on such technologies as electronic funds transfer, supply chain
management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.
Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the
transaction’s life-cycle, although it may encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-
mail, mobile devices and telephones as well.

There has been and continues to be much publicity and discussion about e-commerce.
Library catalogues and shelves are filled with books and articles on the subject.
However, there remains a sense of confusion, suspicion and misunderstanding surrounding
the area, which has been exacerbated by the different contexts in which electronic
commerce is used, coupled with the myriad related buzzwords and acronyms.
In the emerging global economy, e-commerce and e-business have increasingly become a
necessary component of business strategy and a strong catalyst for economic development.
The integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in business has
revolutionized relationships within organizations and those between and among
organizations and individuals.
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3.2) If you invent a product that starts making money, there will naturally be people that will
want to try to profit from your idea by copying your design. Therefore, after creating a
product, protecting your design is of the utmost importance. Your design is what makes
your product unique, and if you don't secure your design, it can result in severe
consequences.
By protecting your design, you'll be ensuring that you will be the only person that will be
able to profit from your product. Fortunately, there are several different methods you can
use to protect a product design.
One potential method of securing a product design is to apply for a copyright, which is a
type of intellectual property protection. The purpose of a copyright is to protect an artist's
work, and you can apply for a copyright even if you never intend to publicly reveal your
creation. Copyrights can protect virtually any type of artistic creation:

Trademark Protections
If you've branded your product with a symbol, word, or design, then you might also want to
apply for a trademark. A trademark is used to identify a product's creator, and it can be an
important part of marketing your product. In addition to standard trademarks, there is a
type of trademark that is specifically used for the design of a product known as trade dress.
3.3)

1. Conduct competitor analysis

The first step to overtaking your business rivals is to find out who they are and what they
offer to your target audience. In doing so, you can identify your competitive advantage and
maximize these strengths to attract new customers. For smaller businesses that don’t have
the budget to hire a market intelligence analyst, it’s still possible to learn a great deal about
other companies with a basic competitor analysis.

2. Adapt to your audience

Consumer behaviour has been irreversibly affected by the pandemic. To win potential new
customers, you first need to understand how your existing customers have changed. If your
brand's story, offering, and prices have fallen out of sync with your regular clientele, it’s
unlikely you’ll appeal to those of your rivals. By taking a fresh look at your customer base,
you can reposition your business to better serve the demands of prospective buyers.

3. Promote your USPs

Once you understand what differentiates your business from its competitors, and the post-
pandemic shopping habits of your target market, you can begin to promote the desirable
and unique qualities that make your brand stand out in a crowded market. These can be
features such as your prices, delivery time, product availability, convenience, quality,
or customer service.
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4. Invest in digital marketing

With more people choosing to shop online than ever before, digital marketing is crucial to
expanding your brand awareness and growing your client base. However, as your target
customers are constantly bombarded by advertising, getting heard above the noise is a
never-ending challenge.

5. Encourage brand advocates

One of the most successful ways to attract customers from your competitors is word-of-
mouth marketing. A personal recommendation from a friend, family member, or colleague
can have a profound impact on consumers who are shopping around for goods or services.
Similarly, online reviews and testimonials are powerful tools when converting a prospective
buyer to a dedicated customer.

6. Identify gaps in the market

If you’re looking to beat your rivals, you should constantly seek novel and innovative ways
to fill gaps in the current market with new goods and services. This approach
requires significant investment in product development, but you’re guaranteed to entice
customers away from competitors if you can offer a unique product or service that responds
to an unmet consumer need.

7. Create brand loyalty

Acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining an existing one. Once a
consumer has made their first purchase, it’s essential to encourage repeat visits if you want
to see a strong return on your investment.
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Question 4

4.1) Encrypted Web is a process through which some or all of the Internet activity initiated
from a Web browser is natively encrypted. Encrypted Web is used to safeguard a user’s
browser activities regardless of the website being accessed.
One of the easiest things you can do to protect your website, yourself, and your users, is to
install an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. You may not realize it, but you come across
SSL all the time when you browse the web – it’s the reason for the “s” in “https”, and the
padlock in the address bar.
You start your web browser and request a secure page using the https:// prefix on the URL.
Your web browser contacts the web server on the HTTPS port – TCP port 443 – and requests
a secure connection. The server responds with a copy of its SSL certificate. Your web
browser uses the certificate to verify the identity of the remote server and extract the
remote server’s public key. Your web browser creates a session key, encrypts it with the
server’s public key and sends the encrypted key to the server. The server uses its private key
to decrypt the session key. The client and sever use the session key to encrypt all further
communications.

What is SSL?
SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is an encryption-based Internet security protocol. It was first
developed by Netscape in 1995 for the purpose of ensuring privacy, authentication, and
data integrity in Internet communications. SSL is the predecessor to the
modern TLS encryption used today.
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References
Investopedia. 2022. Checking Account Definition. [online] Available at:
<https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/checkingaccount.asp> [Accessed 15 August
2022].
Oracle.com. 2022. What Is Ecommerce. [online] Available at:
<https://www.oracle.com/za/cx/ecommerce/what-is-
ecommerce/#:~:text=Ecommerce%20is%20the%20business%20of,such%20as%20Amaz
on's%20Echo%20devices.> [Accessed 15 August 2022].
Practicalbusinessskills.com. 2022. Payment Options. [online] Available at:
<https://www.practicalbusinessskills.com/managing-a-business/financial-
management/payment-options> [Accessed 15 August 2022].