M-Commerce Application

Introduction

There has been a tremendous growth in use of mobile devices now a days. As a result we see increased development efforts in commercial application development in order to leverage the business through mobile devices in place of desktop PCs (Scupola 2012). Once such area of evolution is of e-commerce having application in mobile commerce (M-Commerce).

M-Commerce is buying and selling goods using wireless technology through handled devices such as mobile phones and personal digital equipment’s.( Abbott, 200). Some examples of m-commerce include purchasing of airline tickets, buying movie tickets, banking using mobile and etc. We can say that m-commerce is competing with e-commerce as there are more mobile phone users now days compared to internet users. There is a lot of scope in the growth of m-commerce in various industries such as (Kaul 2011):

1. Banking and financial industry

2. Telecommunication industry

3. Retail and service industry

Normally the users tend to go for window shopping to get the information on products, price and other deals so that they can choose the best item for their need. In the physical shopping experience the users tend to compromise on the deals since it involves physical effort of finding stores and etc. As a result people are looking for more and more online shipping rather than the physical shopping. With M-Commerce implementation the business scope increased as the customers can buy items anytime and anywhere using their mobile devices.

This coursework is about an online music shopping application designed for mobile usage. MountZion main business is to sell Christian books and music through both online and physical stores. MountZion basically sells the products through online. The product will be shipped through in 3 working days to the address mentioned by the users.

Business Model and Mobile webpages

Since the past few years there has been a revolution on smart phones. Users are mostly operating and doing the business more on smart phones and tabs. Hence companies are investing more on developing the mobile applications. This is very much essential now a days in the business not just to increase the business needs but also to survive in the market. MountZion however doesn’t currently has a mobile application developed yet to sell their products through M-Commerce. This course work is to discuss the various possibilities and the best methods suggesting the MountZion to go for M-Commerce Application so that the end users will be able to shop from anywhere through their smart phones. This coursework doesn’t exactly replicate the E-Commerce business to M-Commerce completely but it will provide a way forward to step into this area of business.

The business model that currently exiting on MountZion is like any other online shopping business. MountZion advertise its best products on the website. By default transactions are done through guest accounts unless if the user is logged in with his personal id. The online shipping website facilitates the users to login (or use guest account) and selects the products available on the website and purchase the product. There are two ways of shipping the product. If the product is digitally downloadable the users will be sent a notification with a link to download the songs. However if the product is a physical product it will shipped to the billing address mentioned by the users. Before the request is sent to shipping department, the application should be able to provide a means where the user can enter the payment details. This means that the application should be able to handle the payment system. Hence it should be connected to the various payment systems such as VISA, Master, Mastero and etc. Meaning it must be an e-commerce based application.

This business model is common in e-commerce business and it has been successful in the market. Since the customers wouldn’t have much time to go to the physical store to buy this business model would gain the favor of the customers by providing the way to purchase music online.

Since last few years there has been a revolution in the area of smart phones. Almost every one carries a smart phone and use it for entertainment, personal and business usage. Since there is growth in this area companies should look forward to facilitate the customer to do their business through smart phones. However the desktop web pages doesn’t suitable for the smart phones for various reason such as

1. Desktop website could be heavy for smart phones as they are designed the desktops which are better in performance than the smart phones.

2. Desktop website contents doesn’t suitable for smart phone as the smart phones are smaller in size and hence the content must be customized for smart phones.

3. Desktop website interaction with the user could be different than the smart phones as smart phones are touch based. Hence smart phones might need addition software requirements.

The web page on the mobile should be smart and simple. The content has to be very short and relevant. That is why companies now a day create a mobile website in addition to the desktop websites. Both are required and very much essential for the day to day business.

IT strategy

Proper IT strategy is very important before designing a M-Commerce application. Since the development of application involves cost, strategic approaches must be followed in the design such has choosing the right technology and making sure that the application doesn’t breach the security of organization and etc.

1 Cost of the Project

Usually the m-commerce applications don’t cost as much as the e-commerce applications due to the limited feature that m-commerce can provide as compared to e-commerce application. The cost of this project involves the number of resource worked on this project the number of hours. In addition to this there will be cost to the technologies being used to develop this project.

The cost of the project is usually estimated during the initial planning stage of the project. The estimation would be in man hours or days (each day 8hrs). The estimated cost of this project will be 20 days which is 160 hours. If we divide the estimate cost into subtasks it would be something as follows:

|Sequence |Task |Cost |
|1 |Design Architecture |3 days |
|2 |Develop the application |7 days |
|3 |Test the application |7 days |
|4 |Implement the application |3 days |

Table 1: Cost estimation

2 Security features

M-Commerce is pretty new concept in the market as a result there are various technological gaps and security concerns that the industry is still learning. The following are the challenges that must be considered while implementing an m-commerce application.

1. End to end security

2. Privacy

3. Client-merchant identification

4. Communication authentication

5. More points of attack

Using proper security layers in the application is the key for the protection. The information that is transferred between a mobile device and the server must follow encryption and decryption process. The integration with the payment system however enables the security using the process such as very sign and etc.

Protecting the passwords and the other sensitive information is very much essential. That’s why encryption and decryption methods must be strictly followed. This is the most important thing dealing with m-commerce that is to make the transactions safe so that the users are confident to do the business using m-commerce.

There are primerely two areas that needs to security considerations

1. Security issues related to technologies

GSM is most commonly used wireless technology that is being used world wide. When GSM was initially started it was very limited security features. However as the usage increased GSM introduced security in the following areas

a. IMSI confidentiality

b. IMSI data confidentiality and physical connections

c. Connectionless user data confidentiality

d. Signaling information element confidentiality

To solve the security issues the m-commerce application must be able to log out the user automatically if the user is not using the application. This will ensure the system is not breached through the hackers.

2. Layer security transport

Layer security transport gives more security to wire logic. USSD technology is very powerful and it will ensure that the data doesn’t fall under wrong hands.

3 Time frame

As discussed the MoutnZion e-commerce application is estimated to be made available in 20 man days in m-commerce world. This includes the design, develop, test and implementation. Since MountZion is not a very large in its business it doesn’t required months of effort to design a basic UI application for the users to start with. As the days goes MountZion can take a look and concentrate on the improvements of the application. The time frames however differ from organization to organization. This rough estimate is based on the knowledge gained on the current business.

Implementation and UI considerations

MountZion is a Christian bookshop that sells the music albums. This project is to make the application available for mobile users so that they can place the orders using their mobiles.

The basic application has 4 main UI screens. The linking between the pages is given below

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Home Page

This is the first page of the application, which is displayed by default when the application is launched. Some of the important products will be displayed in this page along with product details such as name of the product and the price. As the user selects the required products it takes to another page. This page has several links. The users either can search for a product or browse all the products by category. Or simply add the product and directly go to cart screen to buy the product. The screen looks as follows.

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Figure 1. Home page

As you can see the home page looks very simple with only required content .Since this is a mobile application space consideration should be taken into account. As a result the content must be reviewed to make sure only the relevant and import content is displayed. For example in the home page you can display full details of the product. The recommendation is to show the product picture name and the cost of the product.

Product Page

The following is the product page where the full details of the product is displayed.

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Figure 2. Product page

In the product page all details related to that product can be displayed. This is to make the product look attractive to the users. The Buy Now button is right at the bottom of the screen so that the users can immediately buy the product if they like. It would be very bad design if the users has to search for a button to buy the product. Hence why in my design I have given some

attractive color to the buy now button. This will lead to cart screen where the users should be able to change the order if they would.

Cart screen

The following is the cart screen where the customers will make final judgment call before buying our product. They should be able to increase or decrease the number of products to buy here.

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Figure 3. Cart Screen

The checkout button will take to next screen where the user will entire the payment details.

Payment Screen

This is almost the final screen where the users will enter the name, address, credit card details. Upon selecting submit button the details will be sent to the backend payment system where the information will be verified. If the user decided to change the order he or she can go back to cart screen by selecting the cart button on the top left screen and change the order accordingly.

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Figure 4. Payment screen

CONCLUSION

This is the basic implementation of M-commerce application. There are few aspects such as UI, security, cost consideration has been taken while designing this project. It is important that we don’t overspend for m-commerce application. M-commerce is fast growing industry as the users are more interested to do the transaction using their mobiles. However there are limitation in m-commerce applications. The m-commerce applications can’t be as descriptive as e-commerce. The reason for this is most mobile devices are not as large in capacity as the desktops. As a result only the important features that can be developed will should be taken into account while developing m-commerce applications.