Exam 3: E-Commerce Infrastructure: the Internet, Web, and Mobile Platform

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The Internet and the Web have made commerce possible because they brought about an extraordinary expansion of digital services to millions of amateur computer users. The Web makes nearly all of the elements of rich human expression including color, text, images, photos, animations, sound, and video available, creating a unique environment in which to establish a commercial marketplace. Many of the Web's services and features support e-commerce, including e-mail, search engines, instant messaging (IM), chat, streaming media, and cookies. E-mail, for example, can be used as a very effective marketing tool. E-commerce sites can buy e-mail lists from various sources and collate them with lists of their current customers to create a targeted advertising message that can be quickly and economically delivered and will produce a creditable response. Search engines have also become a crucial tool on e-commerce sites, providing a method for customers to quickly locate the product category or a specific product they are looking for. Instant messaging has been added to some e-commerce Web sites as a method of accessing customer support personnel. Streaming media enables live Web video, music, video, and other large-bandwidth files to be sent to users in a variety of ways that enable the user to play back the files. Web advertisers increasingly use video to attract viewers. Streaming audio and video segments used in Web ads and news stories are perhaps the most frequently used streaming services. Finally, cookies are a very important tool used by marketers to collect and store information about a user. These small text files are sent to the user's computer so that information from the site will load more quickly the next time they visit. More importantly from the e-tailer's perspective, cookies can retain information about the customer such as the number of pages visited, products examined, and other detailed information about a customer's behavior. Cookies enable sites to recognize returning visitors and target specific customers with special offers and marketing messages.