E-Commerce Business Technology Society

Question: Discuss about the E-Commerce for Business Technology Society. Answer: Introduction Electronic business has taken a significant pace in the shaping of the global economy. The banking industry has broadly adopted e-business and continually sought to expand its involvement in e-commerce. Most banks use the business to consumer (B2C) websites in engaging nearly all their customers in different locations (Sohani, 2009). The reason for choosing the banking sector is that with the introduction of technology to conduct business, it has had a significant impact on banks operating in the economy. The banking industry has widely adopted B2C e-business model to broaden the market share and provide quality services to customers. This discussion is based on the Australian banking sector where the use of e-commerce have enabled the banks to improve and innovate excellent customer management strategies as well as serving customers better through the development of new products and services as preferred by the customers. The National Australia Bank, Westpac, and Commonwealth Bank, all based in Australia provide e-business services to their clients through B2C model. The URL for National Australia Bank is, (https://www.nab.com.au/), Westpac URL is, (https://www.westpac.com.au/), and the website for Commonwealth Bank is, (https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/online-banking.html). The purpose of this essay is to describe and compare the ways the websites of these three banks address the 7Cs of e-business models. Description and Comparison of the Companies Websites Companies websites play a significant role towards business success. The banking sector uses sites to accomplish various marketing strategies of new offers by the firms in the market to assist business growth (Laudon Traver, 2008). These three Australian Banks use public websites as stated above in focusing on the marketing, sales and customer service transactions with the end customer using the B2C model to address the 7Cs of marketing. Content Identity The website of National Australian Bank (NAB), https://www.nab.com.au/, address the 7Cs of the customer interface. The content of the site has beautiful animations and graphic designs that make customers feel comfortable and gain interest in transacting online business with the bank (Laudon Traver, 2008). For Westpac, the URL, https://www.westpac.com.au/, employs the feature of HTTPS and this makes it much easier for customers to visit the company's website. Navigation Between Sites Customization is key to the success of e-business. Commonwealth bank's website is, https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/online-banking.html allows the customers to personalize the site. Unlike the webs for NAB and Westpac, this website enable customers to personalize Hi5 and MySpace where easy navigation into the company's social sites is incredible. Download The URL, https://www.westpac.com.au/, of Westpac makes it easier to download the videos for Westpac products than it is when using the NAB and Commonwealth bank's website. The webpage of Westpac is greatly linked to other sites of other companies, and this ensures easy access to its products as compared to the other banks in Australia. Graphics The use of graphics in a companies website plays a huge role in e-business success. The visual part webpages of Westpac, Commonwealth, and NAB have great colors and images that are purposely designed to attract the bank customers. While NAB and Commonwealth have attractive graphics and animations, Westpac's website has the best content in that the colors, sounds, and videos offered online for customers to view the bank's products. Linking Capabilities The linking capabilities of the three companies' websites have an impact on success under the banking sector. NAB and Commonwealth banks use both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 which present the best capabilities in the overall success of the companies. However, Westpac focuses on the use of Web 2.0 making it the best. Community Purposely, webs are designed to enable the user to user communication. Commonwealth's website leaves room for customers to personalize their accounts. This creates an excellent communication platform between the bank and the customers over the internet (Carol, Daniel, Jeffrey, Martin, William, 2012). However, for the sake of privacy of data, this is impossible in NAB and Westpac. Privacy The websites of companies should always enable commercial transactions in the most secure and privy manner. The three companies websites address the issue of privacy with high care. Customers data and the information are kept safe and confidential such that it is impossible for fraudsters to hack the customer's banks accounts (Sohani, 2009). This is what has made the three companies remain competitive in the Australian banking industry. Recommendations The information and technology manager of NAB and Westpac should design web features and pages that allow their customers to personalize the site since this plays a significant role in marketing its products and services. The managers of NAB and Westpac should copy Commonwealth Bank's approach to designing a great content that allows customers to view their products online through videos; this educates customers on the use and applicability of the service in money transfer. The three banks should strive to offer convenient money transfer services to the customers, provide speed and quality services, and seek to establish linking capabilities to other sites especially for well-known banks in the world. References Carol, B. V., Daniel, D. W., Jeffrey, H. A., Martin, W. E., William, P. C. (2012). Managing Information Technolgy. New York: Prentice Hall. 7th Edition Laudon, K., Traver, C. (2008). E-Commerce: Business, Technology, Society. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 4th Edition Sohani, A. (2009). Technology and Banking Sector. India: ICFAI University Press. pp. 1-39