Chapter 1: Scope and Limitations of an Online Ordering System

The researchers aim to develop an electronic-based ordering for Ralen Trading

since they are still using a manual system in their transactions, payments and even in
generating reports. The system will consist of some significant modules in order to
satisfy the companys needs as well as the customers.
The system will provide a security module which will have three level of access
such as Administrators, Members and Guests. Administrator is fully responsible for
monitoring and maintaining the website since they have access on some modules which
are hidden on guests and even members such as Product Management, Sales and
Inventory, Reports, Order Management and others. At first, the system will only have
one (1) administrator who has the authority to add more administrators by filling up the
form which is available only in the Admin module. This form will need some information
of the personnel such as full name, contact number, username, and password. In case
of suspicious acts of the newly added Administrators, the main Admin has power to
deactivate them.
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As for the Members, the system will provide an area wherein they can view and manage
their orders. They can also request for tracking status provided that they purchased an
item. Unlike the members, the guest can only browse the website but no transactions
can be held unless they would register.
Registration can be easily done by filling up the form with their personal
information such as First Name, Last Name, Address ( Street, City/State, Province,
Country), Contact Numbers (mobile or telephone). Log in information must also fill up by
providing a preferred username and password. Username and Password may contain
letters and numbers with 4-15 characters long. An email address is also required. Once
the details have been validated, a confirmation message will be sent to the users email
for verification purposes. A user must click the link provided by the sent email. It will
then redirect the user to the log-in page. The Log-in page can be found in the
homepage and in a separate page. The registered users must be verified first in order
to log-in successfully. Otherwise, they will prompted by an error message.
Both members and guest can browse the store. This store is sorted according to
the category which is called a Product Catalog. This is where the consumers select their
orders. It is packed with basic contents such as Product image, price, short description
and a button for More info. In case they are looking for a specific product, a search

section is provided. Once the consumer clicks the More info button, it will redirect them
to a page for an elaborate description and more sample photos of the product they
choose together with an Add to cart button.
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Ordering can be done just by clicking the Add to Cart button. The system automatically
adds the item to the consumers Shopping Cart as long as the product is available. If
not, a message will be prompted.
A Shopping Cart can be viewed in the right column of the home and store page
or in a separate page wherein the consumer must input the quantity of the product. A
default quantity is one (1). The Shopping Cart contains the summary of the orders such
as Product Name, quantity, price, shipping fee and the total cost.
For members, they have an option to save their orders in their Wish List page. If
the customer still wants to browse for more items, a link is provided at the bottom of
Shopping Cart page. This will not delete the items they have added to the cart, unless
they would restart their computer/device. If they choose to purchase the item, a
Checkout link is provided. For guests, they will be readdressed to a registration form.
The system does not allow non-members to proceed to the payment transaction in
order to avoid repetition of information in case they would purchase another item. For
members, their payment will be processed through PayZa. They must have an account
in PayZa which requires a Credit Card in order to send money successfully.
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If the customer wants to cancel the ordered items, they can easily remove a specific
product off their Shopping Cart or simply click Empty Cart. If theyve already in the
Checkout Page, a cancel button is still available as long as their payment has not
been processed by PayZa.
Once the payment transaction is successfully completed, an email provided by
PayZa will be sent to the customers email address which contains the Tracking ID. This
ID will then allow the member to monitor the status of their purchased order in the
Tracking Section of the website just by entering this information.
For questions regarding the transactions, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) is
available which consist of questions with respective answers. For further inquiries, the
users might as well use the Contact Us page to privately ask the Administrator
regarding a specific concern. This is open to all the site viewers. A reply from Admin
may take hours or days during office hours.

Comments or Suggestions are also welcome to the sites Chat box. This is where
the guest can simply connect to other visitors by entering name and message. Spam
and other non-site -related messages are can still be deleted by the Administrator.
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A user can share a specific page to their preferred social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter. This will help the website in gaining more viewers as part of
marketing strategy.
For some information regarding the Company, the visitor may refer to the About
Us page containing the Companys historical background.
The system will also include some modules that are viewable only to
Administrator. These modules are mostly for managing, maintaining and monitoring
website, orders, users and products. One of these modules is Products Inventory and
Monitoring. This is where the Admin can view a summary of the products in-stock, out of
stock. Below of the summary is a table of all Products containing the Product ID,
Product Image, Product Name,Price, Number of Stocks, Category, Shipping Fee, Date
Added and column for Edit and Delete buttons. To easily search for a product, filtering is
available.
Maintenance allows the Admin to add/update/delete products and Categories. In
order to add new items in the store, the Admin must input the required text fields such
as Product Name, Selling Price, Shipping Fee, Short Description, Additional Information,
Product Image thumbnail and select the appropriate category. Optional fields are
Original Price and additional photos. Product name must not match the other available
items in store. Price and shipping fee must be in Philippine Peso.
Under maintenance module also is the site configuration. This enables the Admin to
update the site information such as Company Address, Tel. No., Email and Shop
Description.
Aside from Maintenance module, Admin Panel also includes Order Management
wherein it displays a table of all orders made by the clients. This table contains the
Tracking ID, Customers Full Name, Order Status, Total Cost, Date Added, Date
Modified and a column for Action (view or edit). Administrator can easily filter the table
by Status, Tracking ID, Date or by Customers Name.
The system will also provide a Report module which contains information about
the Total sales of the Company daily, monthly or yearly. It also generates a graph with

corresponding interpretation of the most purchased products. A summary of visitor

counts and number of registered members are also included in this module.
In order to develop the system, the researchers will use a server-side scripting
language which is PHP version 5 as the front end since it is compatible to most of the
servers available in the web. CSS3 will also be needed for styling purposes and HTML5
for creating forms. As for the back end, the researchers prefer MySQL 5 as it is widely
used in most of the hosting sites and easy-to-use interface.
The study also contains a conceptual framework in developing the system. The
conceptual framework to be use is the V-Model, because it is one of the popular
frameworks used in developing software. V-model is one of the many software
development models which hold a pattern to be followed. The first phase in V-Model is
the system requirements which cover the hardware and software. Hardware
requirements represent the needed tools in running the system while the software
requirements represent the applications in developing the system. Statistical treatment
is used for analyzing the data collected from the survey. It will help the researchers to
judge whether the null hypothesis accept or not based on the data collected.
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The researchers have a total of forty (40) respondents. The first set of respondents
consist of twenty (20) respondents will be the IT professionals to know the opinion and
point of view from the expert. IT professionals must be a graduate of any computerrelated Four-year course. The second set of respondents consist of twenty (20)
employees, owner and the target customer of Ralen Trading in order to know the
opinion and point of views from the users and beneficiary. The customer must be
eighteen to fifty (18-50) years old to secure that the customers have their PayZa
account.
The system also has its limitations. The system only allows payment via PayZa
Technology. Thus, the customers are required to create an account in PayZa first to
purchase the item/s. For Tracking System, it will not specify the exact location of the
item/s being shipped. The system will not generate printout report.
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Definition of Terms
The researchers had defined some words that may encounter in the research
study.

art

Accessibility

- A general term used to describe the degree to

which

product,

is

device,

service,

or

environment

accessible by as many people as possible.

Administrator

person

technically

responsible

for

running

advanced information systems.

- Users that are login inside the system

- A systematized collection of data that can be accessed immediately and manipulated
by a data-processing system for a specificpurpose.
Efficiency

- the ratio of useful work to ressources (processor and

storage) expended
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E-commerce
and

- Refers to the process of marketing, buying

selling of products and services online.

Functionality

-The capacity of a computer program or application

to
Robustness
errors
to
input,
Security
to

provide a useful function.

- The ability of a computer system to cope with
during execution or the ability of an algorithm
continue to operate despite abnormalities in
calculations, etc.
- Its objective is to establish rules and measures
use against attacks over the Internet.

- a cart supplied by a shop, especially supermarkets, for use by customers inside the
shop for transport of merchandise to the check-out counter during shopping.

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User
- an agent, either a human agent (end-user) or software
agent, who uses a computer or network service. Can be either a Guest or Client.