Benefits Of Comparsion Websites

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

INTRODUCTION

Some time back people would browse magazines, newspapers and Yellow Pages as a source of information for locating businesses and the products they offered. We also relied on family members and friends as a source of information and for their views.

But the post-recession economy has significantly affected the lifestyles and monthly spending of consumers. The latter has become more cost-conscious shoppers and learned to adapt to these changes. Nowadays the old way of doing things has changed, people normally prefer the Internet as their source of information. With just a few mouse-clicks people can access large amount of information via their web browser. People are thus able to get information and compare the different products proposed by the different manufacturers before buying them.

According to a new research report, conducted by BIGinsight™ "Grocery Industry Pulse: Reaching Today’s Cost Conscious Consumer © Prosper 2012"[2] more than 90% of shoppers regularly research products online before purchasing them in store. Moms and those in the 25-54 age groups are more likely than Adults 18+ to use the Internet to prepare for grocery shopping trips.

It is clear that consumers are changing their shopping behaviors in order to get more for their money. Thus the need for Comparison websites which act as intermediaries that assists buyers when they search for product and price information on the Internet.

Mauritius lacks e-commerce sites and does not have any Price Comparison websites that Mauritian consumers can consult before they do their shopping. Therefore, I want to seize this opportunity to create a Price Comparison Shopping web application aimed at helping my fellow Mauritian consumers.

DESCRIPTION OF CURRENT SYSTEM

Before the year 2011, the Mauritian consumers did not have a system to consult when they needed to know which retailers where offering the best prices for a given product. They had to visit the retailers one by one in order to compare their prices or consult a wide range of newspaper or vendor brochures before making a purchase decision.

Then in March 2011, The Ministry of Industry, Commerce & Consumer Protection of the Republic of Mauritius has set up a Price Observatory. Its objectives are as follows:

To collect and monitor the prices of groceries in a sample of 20-22 supermarkets/ hypermarkets selected to be representative of all regions and shop-signs;

Stimulate competition between retail outlets;

Establish indicative price levels and differentials between outlets, shop-signs and regions;

Bring transparency in price setting [3]

Every month, the Price Observatory publishes in weekly newspapers the latest data gathered from the retailers and rank the retail outlets depending on which retailer is the cheapest.

MAIN PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS OF CURRENT SYSTEM

The Price Observatory collects pricing information of products and presents them in the form of a spreadsheet. This sheet is then conveyed to the Public on their website and the local newspapers.

There exist a number of problems in the current system. Some of them are as follows:

Many staff are involved in the data collection process

The transport budget is quite high, since the officers has to travel all over the island to collect required data

The task of updating the prices is tedious, time consuming and error-prone

The list of shops/merchants and product categories are quite restrictive

The consumers find it difficult to spot the lowest-priced product in the current presentation format

The website does not provide more information about the products, like composition, country of origin, pictures of the products, etc.

The organization should keep their list of vendors updated through queries to the local business registration organization (Companies Division - a government office, which falls under the aegis of the Ministry Of Finance and Economic Development).

OBJECTIVES

System objectives

Mauritius lacks e-commerce sites and does not have any Price Comparison platform that consumers can consult before they do their shopping. The objectives of the Price Comparison Shopping System are to collect data from the different retailers and save that on the database at regular intervals. The proposed facility can help retailers update their value proposition at their own schedule. The consumers can view the up-to-date information on the site and then make informed decision before buying a given product. The proposed system shall also act as a platform for generating shopping lists and generating an estimate cost of projected purchases for the common households.

Project Objectives

As part of my project objectives, the following items were identified:

Learn more about how Comparison Sites and Shopping Carts works

Research information about creating a product catalog

Learn more about marketing techniques and business models of Supermarkets/ Hypermarkets

Collect real data to build the database

Understand the full requirements for a prototype system

Develop a basic Price Comparison site using PHP and MySQL

Evaluation and testing of the system

Suggest future developments and draw conclusions

Personal Objectives

This project has also brought along the following opportunities:

Increase knowledge of database driven websites that use PHP and MySQL

Acquire project management and research skills

Increase my knowledge of Apache, phpMyAdmin, MySQL administration/configuration

LITERATURE REVIEW

COMPARISON WEBSITES

Price comparison sites have been around for some 14 years now, initially started as add-ins to the Internet browsers, later transformed into shopping portals just like an online version of the Yellow Pages where the retailers paid to be listed. As Technology Advances occurred and more retailers started to have their own websites, Price Comparison sites used "crawlers" to fetch the prices of products.

Nowadays the Price Comparison websites update their database directly though data feeds and consumers are being offered a lot of functions like email alerts to inform the consumer of price drops etc. In the year 2000’s sites like MoneySupermarket.com and Kelkoo.fr were setup and have since been the benchmark in the price comparison market.[4]

MoneySupermarket.com started by providing mortgage information, and quickly expanded its business activities to credit cards and personal loans

Kelkoo.fr provided retail products information and is still its specialty. It has been so successful that during the last 10 years expanded to cover 10 countries and 20 different product categories.

A Price Comparison site is an informational application that compares the price of products from a range of retailers, thereby helping the users make huge savings by allowing to take decisions based on the information from the website. Price Comparison websites do not sell products themselves; they just refer the users to the retailers’ ecommerce websites and get commissions based on the number of clicks or successful checkouts.

Some of the Price Comparison websites that were studied are:

pricegrabber.com

compare.com

kelkoo.fr

mysupermarket.co.uk

Pricegrabber.com

Figure : The interface of pricegrabber

procegrabber.com allows sellers to list and sell merchandise without the need to have their own web site [5]

Compare.com

Figure : The interface of compare.com

compare.com is an online shopping search engine designed to help consumers find specific stores and unique products on the Internet [6].

Kelkoo.fr

Figure : The interface of kelkoo.fr

kelkoo.fr is specialised in the groceries category before expanding and now has more than 20 categories from which the users can search their desired products.[7]

mysupermarket.co.uk

Figure : The interface of mysupermarket.co.uk

mySupermarket is a new type of supermarket that allows you to compare prices and shop online from the main UK retailers in one place. This aims to help you save time and money while giving you the best possible online shopping experience.

mySupermarket offers three types of shops: Groceries, Health & Beauty and Wine. All you have to do is select your favourite retailer - Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Ocado, Boots or Superdrug and start shopping!

You can order your basket online, print your basket as a shopping list and take it with you to your local supermarket or simply just compare different supermarket prices online.

This site also helps you find the best online deals, offers and vouchers. While you shop, a predictive comparison of your basket in all the retailers is effected so as to suggest smart swaps and replacements to help you save even more money. When comparing between stores, the aim is to ensure that consumers get the best value checkout possible.[8]

The pricing information and inventory are updated daily.

USABILITY CONCEPTS AND FEATURES

For the purpose of this project, the following key concepts and feature were identified:

Nearly all the price comparison and ecommerce websites have known a major relooking and redesign during the recent years. They have become easy to use, the interactive interface allow the user to interact with the different features of the application easily. They make use of the latest technologies like Web 2.0, AJAX, and Flash etc.

Nearly all of them have a search engine that provides the user with a search tool and different filters to perform exhaustive search for products specific to their needs within the least amount of time. The search engine would display a set of products based on the search string search which can further be refined by various filters.

They have also optimized their query scripts to gain precious milliseconds so that the user doesn’t go to competitors.

Mysupermarket.co.uk provides a drag and drop feature, the users can simply drag the products in to or out of the shopping cart to add products or remove products from the shopping cart.

The price comparison sites also have some features like Price Alerts which the user can use to get notified whenever a product’s price gets below a preset level.

Users are able to read and post reviews on a particular product thereby helping other users to make the right decisions.

There is also the Wish List feature where a user can save multiple products to his wish list accompanied by a text and a date that the product is needed.

BENEFITS OF COMPARSION WEBSITES

Numerous benefits have been identified for implementation of a comparison website for Mauritius. These are listed in the sections hereunder.[9]

Save time and money and fuel

There is no need to go to every shop to check the price of the products you want to buy to be able to know where you can get the best price. The user can check the price of product he wants for hundreds of retailers and is able to select the lowest price. Therefore, the user is no more required to travel to different shops to check the prices and thus is able to save time, money and fuel.

Ease and convenience

The web application interface provides an easy and convenient way to get all the information needed on a particular product or service. All these information are only mouse clicks away.

Variety and choice

A comparison website is a platform for attaining a variety of products and an opportunity to make a choice between a wide range of possible product options.

Small retailers

There are many small shops that are lesser-known. A price comparison site could bring money-saving deals to our reach. This will definitely bring along an opportunity for SMEs to develop their product markets.

DISADVANTAGES OF COMPARSION WEBSITES

Price Comparison websites are surely popular nowadays, but it happens that the best deals that these websites offer can sometimes turn out to be not so good after all. The reasons are:

Not all retailers/shops are present on the comparison websites. Therefore, people wrongly presume that they are getting the best offers. It happens that even the best offers offered by the retailers present on the comparison sites can be bettered elsewhere by some small shops [10].

Some retailers/shops do not use the comparison websites to advertise their offers. Doing so will increase their costs and together the prices of products will increase.

Some comparison websites gets income from sponsored advertisements; some retailers pay the comparison sites to get their offers on the first page or ranked in first positions in search results. So, the users of comparison sites should be aware of such practice and should use other comparison sites to verify the deals offered.

The retailers/shops that are present on the comparison websites will be aware of the prices of products offered by their competitors. Whilst this is good for competition and will certainly benefit the shoppers, some companies will try to tweak their prices a little just to appear in higher positions.

PRICE COLLECTION PROCESS

The Price Comparison sites make use of three types of price collection process, namely manual collection, web crawling and via product data feeds.

Manual collection

The comparison sites send their employees to collect the prices of products at the retailer once a month during the end of the month period. Notice that not all of the retail outlets can be visited due to lack of staff.

Crawling

"A web crawler is a relatively simple automated program, or script, which methodically scans or "crawls" through Internet pages to create an index of the data it's looking for."[11] It can be ran once or scheduled to run anytime. Price Comparison sites use crawlers to scan the retailers’ websites for product prices. Crawlers allow updated information to be obtained but the operation can be quite slow. Also for each retailer, a different crawler needs to be built since not every retailer site is the same.

Electronic submission via data feeds

The retailers are required to "feed" into the system a list of their products and prices. The comparison site send them a data feed template; the retailers just populate the file and submit it to the system. Each time the prices of their products change, they should submit the latest product data feed. The file could be an XML, CSV or some other format. Updating the database is faster when using data feed file.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY

There are several software development methodologies available to developers to successfully complete a project. A Methodology helps the developer use the right tools to communicate with the customer in order to understand what the customer wants, their requirements, the business rules, the data flows etc. Even if the requirements change during development, there should be ways to mitigate its effects on the project flow and deadline for completion.[12]

Waterfall Model

"The Waterfall model is a sequential development approach, in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance."[13]

The Waterfall model is also known as the Linear Sequential Model (LSM) and is the oldest and most commonly used methodology for software development.

Figure : Waterfall Methodology for Software Development

The project is divided into various phases and a deliverable is produced at the end of each phase. The latter is reviewed and improved before starting the next phase. This method is best suited for short projects [14].

Throw-away Prototyping

Prototyping is not a complete development methodology, it is used to handle the requirements analysis and design part of other larger development methodologies like incremental development method, Rapid Application Development (RAD), Spiral etc. It is used by the developers to assist the users in understanding the business problem and requirements, so as to avoid solving the wrong problem.

The users of the system are fully involved during the development process and this increases the user acceptance of the system being developed. Prototypes are developed to represent how the final system should look like. They could be simple HTML forms with buttons textbox etc. without any database connectivity or working links. The prototypes evolve following an iterative process to meet the user’s requirements. Most of the times, the prototypes are then thrown away after the requirements analysis phase.

RAD Model

Rapid Application development (RAD) uses prototyping to define requirements and design the final system. This methodology uses minimal planning thereby enabling the programmers to quickly develop working systems. The system will be built using prototyping and an iterative approach.

The prototypes will be perfected with the involvement of the users and tested continuously. It takes 30 to 90 days to build a complete working solution and is also very cost-effective since there is no deployment of large resources.

But since there is minimal planning and less documentation produced, maintenance of such systems can become complex.

Figure : Rapid Application Development Model

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RADModel.JPG

Evolutionary Software Process Models

In this method, the system is developed by using an iterative and incremental approach. That is, functions of the software are developed in iterations until they pass the testing phase and also the different functionalities of the system are delivered in increments. Therefore, the most important functionalities, the "core product", are usually the first increments and the subsequent increments would be the other add-on functionalities that the customer wants.

The most important advantage of this method is that the customer gets to see a working product quite early and which gets better and better with subsequent iterations. This is helpful in case the requirements changes during the development process.

Figure : An iterative development model

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iterative_development_model_V2.jpg

TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS

Development of web applications of type ecommerce requires tools for designing and coding both front-end and back-end. Some tools that are quite popular and that will do the job are listed below:

Client-side coding

HTML knowledge is required to build websites. It’s a language markup for creating web pages and is displayed in web browsers.

AJAX short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, it is a combination of existing programming languages together with HTML and CSS for mark up and style information. Its provides a new way to exchange data with a server or updating parts of a webpage without nay post back or reloading of the whole page. JSON, JavaScript Object Notation, is used for both communication and display of information.

For example, Google uses AJAX to provide a pleasant search experience to the user when it performs a live query of the searched text and returns the top 10 results without reloading the page.

Figure : AJAX Example – Google

Source: www.google.com

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a language for defining the styles and formatting (layout, font type, colours) of the document content that was written in HTML. AJAX short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, it is a combination of existing

Server-Side Coding

ASP.NET is a server-side web application development framework that produces dynamic web pages. It was developed and supported by Microsoft. Several frameworks exist like the traditional ASP Web Forms, .NET Entity Framework, MVC, Razor, etc.

PHP also is an open source server-side web development scripting language. It is a powerful tool for developing dynamic and interactive Web pages. It is the one of the main competitor to Microsoft’s ASP.

Database Technology

MySQL is an open source RDBMS owned by Oracle Corporation. It is a very popular amongst developers since it is open source. Even Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube use MySQL. MySQL is distributed without a GUI to administer it, but now Oracle has developed a free tool, MySQL Workbench, which provides a GUI for administering the RDBMS. MySQL can also work on multiple platform including AIX, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, etc.[15]

SQL Server is a RDBMS developed by Microsoft and is available only for Windows platforms. The Full version and Developer version are available against license fees whereas the Express edition is available freely but with limitations. SQL Server Management Studio is used to manage the RDBMS

Oracle Database is another RDMS owned by Oracle Corporation commonly called Oracle. It is available both in free versions and paid versions. It can be installed on many platforms just like MySQL.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

PROJECT SCOPE

This project has been undertaken for the partial fulfillment of the BSc (Hons) Business Information Technology course. The sections below describe in detail the various works undertaken.

Project Justification

Since the Price Observatory is not able to provide a better system to solve the various problem of its current system and the non-existence of a Price Comparison Web Application dedicated to Mauritian consumers and retailers, I firmly believe that this project is justified and worthwhile.

Project Objectives

The main objectives of the project are to implement a platform for price comparison for the Mauritian Market. Amongst the other objectives of the project, it is an opportunity to learn more about how Comparison Sites and Shopping Carts work. The project also involved research on information pertaining to creation a product catalog.

The project also involved research works related to marketing techniques and business models of Supermarkets/ Hypermarkets in the local market.

The software platform for this project is based on open-source technologies that would help build a database system and web-based application.

Project Scope Description

The solution seems to be straight forward, which is the computerisation of the whole process and development of a Price Comparison Web application. The main functionalities of the system are as follows:

There should be 3 types of users: Administrator, Retailer and Normal User

The Price Comparison Web application should regroup all the existing retailers/merchants of the country under the same roof. It is kind of a sort of virtual mall where the consumer can get access to information about all the products being offered by the range of suppliers.

The system should be very user-friendly interactive interface, through which the user can interact with the various functionalities of the system easily.

The core of the system should be a search engine that provides an easy and convenient way to search for a given product specific to the needs of the user. The search engine would list a set of products based on the search term and the user can perform different search combinations by using filters.

When displaying a product, the prices of all the retailers where it is available should be displayed.

Users should be able to post reviews about a particular product.

Registered users should be able to save products to a wish list.

The users could subscribe for price alerts which would enable them to receive messages when price for products drops below a particular level.

The user can add products to a Shopping Cart, modify the quantity desired and calculate the total price of the shopping cart.

After having added the products to the shopping cart, the user can decide to either cancel the process and finis their shopping at the retail outlet or decide to check out on the system and pay with their credit card and have their ordered products delivered to their home.

Project Acceptance Criteria

The product should be completed by 25 April 2013 and a corresponding project report submitted to the University of Greenwich online Coursework Submission System for the course of BSc (Hons) Business Information Technology.

METHODOLOGY ADOPTED

The Waterfall model was chosen as the software development methodology for this project. The reasons why the Waterfall model SDLC is believed to be an acceptable methodology are:

I am acquainted with this development methodology, it is simple, intuitive, logical and easy to execute.

The project is a relatively small and short duration one

This is an individual project meaning that I am the only one working on this project; there is not a development team

I do not expect the requirements to change too much and this project is not a long super risky project, even if the requirements change I expect that they are not going to be very expensive ones.

REPORT STRUCTURE

The remaining part of this report will be focused on the different phases of the Waterfall model: Feasibility Study, Requirements Analysis, Design, Coding, and Testing.

Feasibility Study Phase: Before embarking on the project development, several studies should be conducted to ensure the worthiness of the project.

Requirements Analysis Phase: I will be gathering the business requirements. During this phase I shall come up with the Data Flow Diagrams (DFD), Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams. These diagrams will help to better understand the system and what are the functional and non-functional requirements of the system.

Design Phase: After the requirements are known and complete we can move to the design phase. During this phase I am going to produce the Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD), conceptual data model, logical relational schema, class diagram, data dictionary and come up with the user interface design.

Coding and Testing Phases: After the design process in complete, I shall then start the development of the software and move on to the testing phase where the software will be tested thoroughly to check if the product meet the business requirements and is free from bugs.

GANTT CHART

Figure 9 shows the proposed Gantt chart of the project. The project completion date is scheduled for the 25th April 2013.

Figure : Gantt chart

FEASIBILITY STUDY

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of this phase is to come up with a feasibility study report that evaluates the viability and potential success factors of the proposed project. In other words, to determine whether developing the proposed application is financially worthwhile and technically feasible.

EVALUATING THE BEST FEASIBLE SOLUTION

This part is divided into three sections namely, Technical Feasibility and Operational and Economic feasibility.

Technical Feasibility

The project technical resources that are required are as follows:

Operating System:

Windows XP/Windows7/Windows 8

Software:

Microsoft Office, Notepad++, Microsoft WebMatrix ,Apache

Hardware:

PC, Laptop

Front-end:

HTML, CSS, AJAX and PHP

DBMS back-end:

MySQL

As we can see, the technology required to build the product already exists. The Software required such as Apache, PHP and MySQL are open source technologies. Microsoft WebMatrix is a freeware and the hardware and software required for the development of the solution already exist.

The technologies we mentioned above are already being used to power e-commerce sites which are quite similar to the Price Comparison Web Application. I firmly believe that these technologies are capable of handling the solution.

Operational Feasibility

The Price Comparison Web Application will be able to reduce the costs associated with the current way of doing business. The price collection process which required many staff will now become automatic. Paper work will be reduced considerably; all the processes will takes place on the online system. The number of retail outlets and product categories can be increased without any costs involved.

The system will provide product information, price comparisons, and allow the update of prices directly by the retailers via a form or by uploading data feeds.

Also, according to the 2011 Housing Census Report (Housing Census carried out in the Republic of Mauritius from 31 January to 19 June 2011), the number of households with ICT and Internet access has increased. [16]

In 2011, the proportion of households having:

Mobile phones was 88.2% up from 28.1% in 2001;

Computers was 37.6% up from 13.3% in 2001; and

Internet was 31.7% up from 12.6% in 2002

Economic Feasibility

Economic feasibility is about the cost/benefit analysis of the proposed Price Comparison Web Application. We shall check if over a period of time its cumulative benefits are greater than the cumulative costs.

Table 2 below is a high level view of the costs and benefits of the proposed system, it is clear that the benefits outweigh costs.

Table : Cost-Benefit Analysis of the proposed solution

RISK ASSESSMENT

The project is not super risky due to the fact that it is a rather small project and should be completed within duration of 3 months. Also, if the business and system requirements are well understood I think that the risk can be sustained.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

The solution to the current problem need not be a computerised solution; I shall enumerate 3 possible solutions that could be adopted.

Increase the Number of Staff

We may improve the current system by increasing the number of staff. Thus, data from more retail outlets can be collected.

Buy Off-the-shelf Software

We can also look for an existing Price Comparison system that is available off-the-shelf.

Custom Developed Software

We could also consider the possibility of building tailor made custom software taking into account the specificities of the Mauritian economy.

RECOMMENDED SOLUTION

Improving the current Price Observatory system by increasing the number of staff will not help to attain the project objectives. Instead it will increase the total cost of the current system.

There exist many e-commerce solutions available off-the-shelf, but there is none that addresses the problem of price comparisons. An experienced programmer will have to be hired to customize the e-commerce solution. But I think that this is not practical, because when new updates of that solution will become available the customized version will not benefit from it.

Therefore, I recommend the building of a custom solution that is going to meet all the business and system requirements.

REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

During the Requirements Analysis phase, the requirements for the proposed system was gathered and documented in this section. It helps to understand the requirements from the users’ viewpoint: the actors, inputs, processes, outputs and data flows.

Tools like DFDs, Use Cases, Activity diagrams and Sequence diagrams but not limited to can be used to model the system for better understanding and communicating the requirements with the users.

FACT FINDING

In order to study how any system works, we need to collect the system requirements. This was done by talking to people, perform fact finding, research and find the characteristics of the system and understands what is supposed to do. Following are some techniques that were used to gather the business and system requirements.

Research

This method is useful when we want to learn more about the problem domain, how it has been solved elsewhere and whether the technology is available to solve the problem. Books, Internet, scholar journals etc. can be used.

The Internet proved to be very useful to read about the works of other researchers in the field of e-commerce.

Observation

It allows watching or participating in the activities that a user performs in order to validate the requirements gathered previously and learns more about the functions of the system and its complexity.

A wide range of e-commerce and price comparison websites were consulted and compared. The business model and system requirements understood.

Interview

It is the most widely-used techniques and is very useful in the sense that it enables the elicitation of information from stakeholders during a face-to-face meeting. But it is important to help the users differentiated between what they need and what they want.

Many employees of the Price Observatory and e-commerce users were interviewed. It helped to clear all doubts, identify the requirements and helps to get the users involved during the whole process.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

After the fact finding process and all the business and system requirements are known, we come up with the specification of these requirements in terms of functional or non-functional requirements.

Functional Requirements

The main functionalities of the system are:

Login Control

There should be 3 types of users: Admin, Retailers and Customers.

The header of the main page should have a login control system. New users should be able to register before using features like shopping cart, wish list, post reviews, etc.

Depending on the role of the user, he will be automatically directed to the appropriate home page. For example, the administrator will be directed to the admin control page, a retailer will be directed to the retailer page and a simple user will be directed to the main home page.

Administration panel

The Admin should be able to manage product categories, products, Retailers, Prices, Orders.

Products and price management by Retailers

The Retailers can update the prices directly on the website via a form or can upload their product data feed directly to update the prices of their products.

Product Catalog

The user can also search by product name or tags by using a search box found on the home page. The user can also browse the product catalog to search for products.

All products belong to a category or a subcategory. When a parent category is chosen, all product belonging to the parent category and sub categories should be displayed. But when a sub category is chosen, only products belonging to the sub category should be displayed.

Users should have greater control of the presentation of the results by using filters and sort functionality.

Price Comparison feature

When searching for a product, the customer is presented with a list of retailers where the product is available. The selling price is also displayed to help the customer spot the best price and save money.

Shopping Basket

Customers are able to search a specific product, browse the product catalog, view details on the product and add the product to the Shopping Basket. The Customer can modify the shopping basket by changing the quantity of a product to be bought or by adding and deleting items. The cost for each items and the total cost of the basket should be displayed to the customer.

If the user decides not to checkout but instead want to purchase the products in the shopping basket at the retailers’ site, the he can print and email the shopping details.

Checkout

If the user decides to check out, the shopping cart details are converted into an order. The user shall then supply the delivery address and payment option (cash on delivery or PayPal payment gateway). The customer should be able to view the status of his order.

Shopping Lists

Customers can save shopping lists of products they purchase frequently to help them during their shopping.

Wish Lists

Customers can add products to a wish list, add a description and a date. At any time they can view their wish list and quickly add the product to the shopping cart and check out.

Price Alerts

Customers can subscribe to Price Alerts. An email is sent to the customer when the price of the product drops below the level set.

Product Reviews

Customers can post and read reviews on products. The Customers can also vote for reviews if found helpful.

Non-functional Requirements

The Non Functional Requirements are:

The system must be intuitive and easy to use

The application must be as quick and responsive as possible, website’s homepage should load in under 3 seconds.

A search query should take no longer than 4 seconds

The website should be able to handle 20,000 concurrent users

The application must run on almost all Internet browsers available

DATA FLOW DIAGRAMS

Data Flow Diagrams are used to better understand the logical flow of data through an information system. It is a way to represent the processes/functions of a system together with its inputs and outputs and also shows the interactions between those processes/functions.

The DFD will be drawn using the Gane & Sarson notation as per below:

Figure : Gane & Sarson DFD Notatation

Context Diagram

Figure : Context Diagram of Price Comparison Shopping System

The first DFD is the Context diagram; it is a summary of all the processes of the systems in a single process symbol. It is the highest level diagram view of the system. It also represents the actors that interact with the system and the relationships that exist between the actors and the system.

Diagram 0

Figure : Diagram 0 of Price Comparison Shopping System

The Context diagram is decomposed to show all the core processes and the flow of information between them. This shown in Diagram 0 above. The entities are shown and the data stores are added to the diagram.

List of core processes identified are:

Check Product Availability

Produce Shopping Cart Summary

Process Payment

Process Order

Manage Product Catalog

Manage Product Prices

Registration

Login

Diagram 1 – Check Product Availability DFD

Figure : Diagram 1 – Check Product Availability DFD

Diagram 1 shows all the processes that made up Process 1.0 in Diagram 0

Process 1.0 was decomposed into 6 processes:

Browse Catalog

Search Catalog

Display Product Specifications

Post Review

Manage Wishes

Subscribe Price Alerts

Diagram 2 – Shopping Cart DFD

Figure : Diagram 2 Shopping Cart DFD

Diagram 2 shows all the processes that made up Process 2.0 in Diagram 0

Process 2.0 was decomposed into 5 processes:

Add to Shopping Cart

View/Edit Cart Items

Calculate Total Amount

Display Shopping Cart Summary

Checkout

Diagram 5 – Manage Catalog DFD

Figure : Diagram 5 – Manage Catalog DFD

Diagram 5 shows all the processes that made up Process 5.0 in Diagram 0

Process 5.0 was decomposed into 2 processes:

Manage Products

Manage Categories

Diagram 6 – Manage Product Price DFD

Figure : Diagram 6 – Manage Product Price DFD

Diagram 6 shows all the processes that made up Process 6.0 in Diagram 0

Process 6.0 was decomposed into 2 processes:

Get Products

Update Prices

Diagram 7 – User Login DFD

Figure : Diagram 7 – User Login DFD

Diagram 7 shows all the processes that made up Process 7.0 in Diagram 0

Process 7.0 was decomposed into 4 processes:

Login Details

Check User

Home Page Redirection

Edit Profile

Diagram 8 – New User Registration DFD

Figure : Diagram 8 – New User Registration DFD

Diagram 8 shows all the processes that made up Process 8.0 in Diagram 0

Process 8.0 was decomposed into 3 processes:

Get User Details

Check Login Availability

Add Billing Details

FUNCTIONAL DECOMPOSITION DIAGRAM

INTRODUCTION

The System design phase will address how the system will accomplish the objectives. During this phase each portion of the system will be designed in detail including the User interface, Data structure and the program design. The system and user requirements are translated into a representation of the software in terms of documents and diagrams that is focused on quality before the coding actually starts.

ARCHITECTURE DIAGRAM

This is the architectural diagram created during the design process presenting a bird’s eye view of the proposed system.

Figure : System Architectural Diagram

Three-tier architecture

Three-tier is a client-server architecture that is often used to develop e-commerce websites. The Price Comparison Shopping application will be built using three tiers:

The presentation tier, Internet browsers that render the front-end GUI that is served by the Web Server, for e.g. html.

The business logic tier controls the application’s functionality, processed by the application server, for e.g. PHP, ASP.

The data tier is the back-end database and the RDBMS software related to manage and provide access to the data, for e.g. MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server.

BUSINESS RULES

From the Requirements Analysis phase, we have identified the THINGS of interests or the Entities that are involved in the proposed system. The list of entities is as per below:

User

Administrator

Customer

Retailer

Product

Category

Price

Cart

Order

Order_Details

Review

Wish

Price Alert

The business rules of the system are as follows:

A USER can either be an ADMINISTRATOR, RETAILER OR CUSTOMER

A PRODUCT must be associated with a product CATEGORY

A product CATEGORY can have zero, one or many PRODUCTS

A PRODUCT can have zero, one or many REVIEWS

A CUSTOMER can post zero, one or many REVIEWS

A RETAILER can sell zero, one or many PRODUCTS

A PRODUCT can be available at zero, one or many RETAILERS

A CUSTOMER can vote for or against the helpfulness of a REVIEW

A Customer can add one or more PRODUCTS to his CART

A CART can contain zero, one or more CART_ITEMS

After payment a CART is converted into one ORDER

An ORDER has one or many ORDER_DETAILS

A CUSTOMER can have zero, one or many WISHES

One WISH is associated to only one PRODUCT

One PRODUCT can be WISHED zero, one or many times

A CUSTOMER creates zero, one or many ALERTS

One PRODUCT has zero, one or many ALERTS

Duplicate PRODUCT names must be rejected

Duplicate PRODUCT SKUs must be rejected, SKU is an Unique Identifier

USERS are uniquely identified by a username

A CUSTOMER can have zero, one or many ORDERS

CONCEPTUAL DATA MODEL / ERD

Based on the requirements and business rules gathered during the requirements analysis phase, the following Entity Relationship Diagram using Peter Chen’s notation was produced.

Figure : ERD - Using Peter Chen's notation

NORMALISATION CHECK

All fields that do not depend on the key were eliminated.

Since all relations are in 1NF and 2NF and there are no non-primary-key attributes that are transitively dependent on any candidate key, the Relational Schema produced in section 6.5 above satisfies 3NF criteria.

PHYSICAL DATA MODEL

Based on the conceptual and relational models, a physical model was produced using MySQL Workbench software. The UML notation was used for the relationships.

Figure : Physical Data Model

USER INTERFACE DESIGN

Before the coding and design of the different pages starts, high level wireframe designs of the pages were produced. These were done to be sure of the design to be adopted and not to lose precious time by returning to the web page design later after the coding is completed.

TESTING

WHY TESTING?

Software testing begins once the coding is completed and its objective is to find and correct bugs until we get a fully functional solution. The application is tested to uncover any flaws in the codes or logic. A test plan was prepared to test the software against predefined inputs and expected outputs.

UNIT TESTING

Unit testing done in parallel with the coding of the software, individual process or modules are tested independently. We checked if the individual piece of code is working.

INTEGRATION TESTING

When all the web pages have been built and individually tested during unit testing, all the web pages were integrated to come up with the final system. During Integration testing we tested the whole system by checking if the pages interact with each other by passing parameters and if information is displayed correctly. The results could be verified on the screen or on the database.

A test plan was prepared to test the whole system; the table below is a list to the test cases to be verified.

See Appendix C for more information on the test cases

USABILITY TESTING

Link Testing

All the hyperlinks on each page were checked to see if any pages are linked incorrectly. These tests were done during integration testing. All invalid links were corrected.

Multi Browser Testing

The website was tested against various web browsers available, this test is important as every browser displays web pages differently to some extent. To certify the cross-browser compatibility of the website, the application was tested on the latest versions of the majority of the internet browsers available on the market.

Mozilla Firefox

Google Chrome

Internet Explorer

Safari

Android web browser

IPhone Safari browser

SYSTEM TESTING

We tested the final system against the functional and non-functional requirements from the requirements analysis phase.

Functional Requirements

The original core functions desired was tested against the final product, the results are shown in the table below. See figure 6 for the results.

Requirements

Result

Reason

Login Control - There should be 3 types of users: Admin, Customer, Retailer and Warehouse

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Administration panel - The Admin should be able to manage product categories, products, users, prices, orders.

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Products and price management by Retailers

The Retailers can update the prices directly on the website via a form

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Data Feed upload - Retailers should be able to upload product data feed directly to update the prices of their products.

FAIL

Time frame was not sufficient to implement this feature

Searching of products - Customers should be able to search for a product by its name or tags

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Navigate Product Catalog - Customers should be able to browse the catalog by categories

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Use of filters and sort functions to refine search results

FAIL

Time frame was not sufficient to implement this feature

Price Comparison feature - A list of all the retailers where a product is available with the prices offered

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Shopping Cart - Customers should be able to add the product to the Shopping Basket. The quantity can be changed and the item cost and total cost recalculated.

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Printing of Shopping Cart Summary

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Email of Shopping Cart Summary

FAIL

SMTP server not configured Functionality Implemented

Checkout - The shopping cart is converted into an order. The user shall then supply the delivery address and payment option (cash on delivery or PayPal, etc.)

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Shopping Lists - Customers can save shopping lists of products they purchase frequently to help them during their shopping.

FAIL

Functionality not Implemented, the shopping cart and wish list partially overlapping this feature

Customers can add products to a Wish List

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Customers can subscribe to Price Alerts

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Customers can post and read reviews on products.

Pass

Functionality Implemented

The Customers can also vote for reviews if found helpful.

Pass

Functionality Implemented

Figure : Requirements Testing Results

IMPLEMENTATION

After the project has been tested, all bugs corrected and considered as a working solution, we proceed to its implementation. The following points need to be considered.

DEPLOYMENT

In order to upload the website on the Internet, we need to buy a domain name and hosting plan. An example of such companies is HostGator (www.hostgator.com). It offers web hosting packages at affordable prices.

MARKETING

Since the Price Comparison Shopping System is new to the public a marketing strategy has to be adopted. Techniques like email marketing, online ad campaigns, social network marketing, etc. could be used to build up traffic.

LEGAL IMPLICATION

According to the Data Protection Act 2004, the company collecting sensitive personal data should ensure that same is safe and secured. The company should also destroy such data when same is not required anymore. Also, personal data of customers should never be sold or disclosed.

For an operational system, the organization implementing a similar process will act as a "data controller" or "data processor" which means that a legal authorization should be obtained through a registration process to the concerned authority [18].

BACKUP AND DATA SECURITY

Once the system is fully operational, it has to be backed up regularly so that the system suffers little downtime if problems like data corruption or server crashes etc. There exists several types of backup namely; full backup, incremental backup, differential backup, mirror backup, etc.

Normally a clean full backup of both the application and the database is performed and every day a differential backup is done.

We also need to decide on the retention policy to be adopted, for example; we can store backup for one week only.

Restoration of the backup should be done by the web administrator whenever required.

USER MANUAL

A user manual on how to operate the use the Price Comparison System can be found in Appendix D.

CRITICAL APPRAISAL

WHAT OBJECTIVE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED?

This project has made provision for the following features:

No need for many staff to be involved in data collection - The retailers can update their price lists directly or can send their data feeds for upload to database

Reduce amount of time to update price lists

The number of retailers/merchants and product categories that can be added to the system is practically unlimited

Prices are sorted in ascending order so as the better deals/offers are listed at the top

More product details are available like country of origin, pictures of the products, etc.

Most of the system objectives and functional requirements have been fulfilled.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED?

Numerous challenges were encountered since the start of this project. These were mainly related to the following:

Programming skills

I am not a coder by nature, I had to read books and consult specialised websites to learn PHP programming.

Time frame

The project duration was about four months, and I should say that this time frame is not sufficient to develop a fully functional application and at the same time prepare the project documentation. The documentation part took a lot of time, since I had to document the requirements and design using UML CASE tools.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

This project has been an opportunity to demonstrate skills and learning gathered during the last three years. I have had the opportunity to strengthen my knowledge on the following topics:

Methodology

I have learned and appreciate the fact of developing the project by following a project methodology.

Project Management

Time management was very important during this project; it helped me to discipline myself, prioritise the works to be done and kept me on track to complete the project on time.

PHP Programming

Before starting this project, I had never programmed some code in PHP, not even a website. I have learnt a lot from tutorials and books including the hashing of password etc. At first, there were a lot of syntax and logic errors but with time I leaned to correct them.

OVERALL

I believe that even though the project objectives have been met and the functional requirements implemented, if I think that the methodology chosen was inappropriate. The documentation part took most of the time available to complete this project. Less time was available for program coding and testing.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

The application has its limitations to which solutions could be provided as future developments:

The system does not make use of stored procedures and views which I think would have been better than the current implementation, which is, put all the queries in the connector.php file.

PayPal and Internet banking features is currently not implemented. This can be considered at a later stage together with the new comer, Orange Money [19].

More features like reporting facilities could be added for the administrator and retailer.

The customer could be allowed to save shopping lists that they purchase on a regular basis, and provide a quick checkout facility to these shopping lists.

FAQs, forums, chat rooms and newsletters could also be implemented to provide customers with enough content on products to help them to make the right decision before buying.

The system could be modified to allow login by using social network logins, so that customers do not need to create a login.

A mobile app for the fast growing android market could be developed to reach more users.

CONCLUSION

This project was started with the main objectives of creating a proof of concept for the Mauritian economy. It was supposed to enable anyone to use the system on their desktop PCs, mobile phones or tablets. At first I just wanted a system for price comparison so as to help consumers to make informed decisions while shopping. Then the idea expanded to add a layer of e-commerce to the system and brings a new e-business model that does not exist currently in Mauritius.

The fact that the company would be able to make a profit by delivering the orders to the customers, there is no need to sell advertisements or collect affiliation fees to keep the services running. Thereby, consumers won’t feel cheated and will be trust the company

The original idea this project was gradually developed thorough background reading and research on the existing similar systems. The Waterfall model helped a lot during requirement analysis and design phases. The fact that documentation is paramount in the Waterfall model has helped me a lot to really understand what are the system functions and process and also how they work. The requirement analysis and system design phases took more time to complete than all the other phases joined together.

The success of this project relies on a working solution that has been developed and verified to meet the core functional requirements. I have learnt a lot while working on this project such as; time management, project management, research and analysis techniques and document writing. I have also increased my knowledge of the PHP/MySQL platform.

The project has been limited to the define scope though the potential of further developing the project do exist – A Marketing Information System.