User-friendly online E-commerce website

Abstract

This case provides a real-world semester long project-oriented case study for students enrolled in an electronic commerce course that has a significant development component. The case provides the technical framework in the form of functional requirements for students to design and build a fully functional transaction processing e-commerce Web site over the course of a semester based on the company, products and/or services, content, and graphic images they choose. The case is divided into three assignments. The first assignment is a basic e-commerce Web site that emphasizes site layout, navigation, text formatting, inserting graphics, and the content necessary to market products and services online. Additional complexity is added in the second assignment, an enhanced e-commerce Web site. In this assignment students will create their own graphics images, menus, and image maps, use JavaScript to create image rollovers and image swaps, dynamically generate Web pages based on the contents of a database, and use a form to send data to an email address. The third assignment is a full-fledged transaction processing e-commerce Web site with a virtual shopping cart and checkout processing procedures. The case can to be used in a course where the students have little or no prior programming or relational database experience. The case was written so that the creation of the student's e-commerce Web site is not dependent upon the student's e-commerce development software, graphics tool set, Web server, Web programming environment, or relational database management system. Teaching notes containing suggested instructions, possible development environments, Web server configurations hints, individual assignment objectives, and a sample solution to the final assignment are provided.