Designers of electronic commerce (e-commerce) transaction system applications face many challenges; some are old while others are emerging because of the emerging nature of the e-commerce domain itself. This article examines the critical design challenges at different stages of the design process of e-commerce applications. The high-level designs have a large number of new issues specific to Web applications. Among them, the security and networking problems are the most determinant for the success of the applications. At the detailed design level, the languages and the user interface are major concerns. The user interface, specific to the Web, forces designers to redefine the traditional concept of the end user for the more appropriate customer-centric concept. This is necessary to address the needs of consumers and for the survival of e-commerce businesses.In addition, we also examine issues bothering the development team and the e-commerce environment. Designers experienced in non-Web applications can be more successful at developing e-commerce applications if they address the issues we identified in this article in a creative way.
K E Y W O R D Sdesign issues, e-commerce, e-commerce systems/application
INTRODUCTIONThe concept of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has crystallized into a fairly well understood concept 1-7 ; its popularity and fast paced acceptance as an alternative to the brick and mortar market economic model 3,8 tend to undermine a clear understanding, and clear exposition of the characteristics, of e-commerce. Most adherents of e-commerce often focus only on the exchange of value end product 6,7 without paying close attention to, or knowing the intricacies of, the underlying transaction itself. 1,4,[9][10][11][12][13] Therefore, a proper characterization of e-commerce applications is fundamental. We focus on the design challenges in e-commerce transactions in a typical business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce domain, which is more popular, more widely patronized by users, and attracts a higher volume of e-commerce transactions. The B2C e-commerce includes retail transactions of products or services from businesses to individual shoppers (ie, businesses sell products or services to individual consumers). Thus, the seller is a business organization whereas the buyer is a consumer.