Abstract

This research work is aimed at developing and deploying a basic e-commerce website (A University computer online store) embracing the latest methods and trends of conducting businesses with the advancement of technology. The work covers the electronic trading of goods and services, electronic fund transfer, online procurement, direct marketing, electronic billing, etc, through the internet via the computer. The proposed system provides a self serve, easy to use site that offers a user friendly purchasing experience, provides personal attention through the use of tools such as feedback forms, to substitute for the face to face human interactions used in non electronic commerce, enhances reliability and security as regards customers’ method of payment online by requiring specific details from customers. The site handles basic buying and selling, alleviating the stress encountered in the traditional commerce situation. It allows customers the opportunity to shop at their convenience without wasting time, money and effort, and also to conduct real time transactions in a borderless world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The products associated with the university online store are limited to just computer accessories and products. The development of the University online store combines open source solutions to provide a free and open e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) web scripting language, a complete software package allowing the use of all the power and the flexibility that dynamic languages offer, as well as the efficient use of databases. Package includes an Apache server, a MySQL database, a full PHP execution, as well as easy development tools for web sites or applications. It also allows developing applications on a local computer without having to upload to a server., HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database server (An open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structures Query Language (SQL), for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database).