Planning for effective web-based commerce application development

An ever-increasing number of businesses have established web sites to engage in commercial activities today, forming the so-called web-based commerce. However, careful planning and preparation are needed for those businesses to achieve their intended purposes with this new channel of distribution. This chapter proposes a framework for planning effective web-based commerce application development based on prior research in hypermedia and human-computer interfaces, and recent research on web-based commerce. The framework regards web application development as a type of software development projects. At the onset, the project's social acceptability is investigated. Next, system feasibility is carried out. If the proposed project is viable, its web-page interface is examined both from the functionality, contents, and navigability points of view. The use of the framework will contribute to more effective web-based commerce application development.