How does technology helps in the planning, design, roll out & management and promotion of your web site?

Technology gives a variety of opportunities for promoting and advertising selected e-business. It is possible to use online instruments or specialized software for every stage of establishing the business, and these instruments are highly accessible, help to decrease costs of initiating and maintaining e-business and also increase efficiency. For example, for planning there are the facilities of story boarding and specialized software such as eTaskMaker and Microsoft Outlook; design is made using software by Adobe (PhotoShop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver), and 3DSMax with Maya for 3d-designing. For publishing and deploying the website, platforms like WordPress may be used.

Management functions can be realized through Google analytics. Finally, promotion is one of the best opportunities of modern technology: showing banners at popular resources and spreading information in social networks like Facebook allows disseminating information about new products and services easily. Web-technologies are today particularly irreplaceable for all kinds of business, especially to B2C business.

Besides advertising and promotion, direct selling through Internet is a great opportunity. Via e-shops and e-malls, products can be sold directly to customers, thus cutting the intermediary costs and facilitating the contact of customers with the direct seller. Therefore, technology is efficiently used at every step of starting the e-business and organizing a corresponding website.

Question 2. How does technology hinder our e-business?

Besides a great number of opportunities, technology and internet have a number of limitations hindering business development. First of all, to use necessary technological means one needs to have essential knowledge of these systems. Even the directors need to be familiar with these technologies, to a certain extent. Technical problems which appear while the website is developed and launcher are an additional hindrance. The software might not satisfy all the needs of business; for example, there is a lack of editing options in WordPress project etc.

Further, the cost of software adds value to the products sold. Subscription and advertising fees (putting the banners) also belong to the disadvantages of using technology. There is also licensing in this sphere, which also hinders the process (though, licensing is necessary in most spheres without technology as well and cannot be regarded as significant disadvantage). However, it depends on the laws regulating e-business.

There is the necessity to control work of the employees ”“ concerning ethical computer use, information privacy, e-mail and internet use etc. Naturally, such control is also done via means of technology, but often such measures cause psychological resistance of the employees.

In order to remove this hindrance, flexible and imperceptible control system needs to be implemented.

Intensive use of technology makes information security the primary issue. The threats to information security may appear due to people and due to technology used. In addition to proper information security rules for employees, technological means have to be introduced.

Authentication and authorization, with appropriate rules, have to be implemented. Measures to protect traffic (such as encryption, VPN-access, strong password policy) should be taken. In general, information security and its costs are a hinder to e-business but potential losses exceed the costs many times.