Web Mining Project Proposal

Web Mining Project Proposal

Introduction

For our project proposal, we are proposing an e-commerce, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) based website targeting university students. The main purpose of this site is to connect potential buyers and sellers by using modern web techniques and major APIs. Though the concept resembles popular and already existing websites such as Craigslist and Amazon, we believe our concept goes a bit further by integrating more of “the social web”.

Business Problem and Solution

Currently, the majority of e-commerce sites are still largely independent, meaning that much of the product information and reviews are all on their own respective site. In addition, sharing such products on social media sites still mostly involves copying the product’s web address and pasting it onto a comment box (for example, copying the address on Facebook’s “Wall” or Twitter’s “tweet section”). With the exception of Amazon, there is no other major e-commerce site that facilitates product sharing on different social media sites. Our proposed solution provides more integration with social media by utilizing APIs, which allow user generated content to flow from one site to another. This means that buyers and sellers can share their products and reviews more easily on the social web. By tapping into the social media aspect, both buyers and sellers can have what they want: more access to potential buyers and more information and reviews about a particular product.

Market Review, Competitors, and Concerns

Our main competitors will be Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist.

• Amazon is the largest online shopping website in the world. It has diverse categories of products for customers. After shopping, user reviews can be used for share information and feedbacks about products.

• eBay is the leading online auction website. It is used by more than 100 million people around the world to trade all kinds of products. eBay provides seller ratings for buyers to evaluate the services and products sellers provide after purchasing.

• Craigslist is a free online platform for communities to share information such as sales, jobs, housing and discussion. It famous for its simple design, the site also does not using many images and JavaScript languages in the website.

Although these websites are well-established, they have limited or a lack of social media integration. As previously noted, users cannot easily share product reviews from Amazon, seller ratings from eBay, as well as community information from Craigslist to their friends on social media. Moreover, Amazon and eBay are not designed to be place-specific, meaning that their business model revolves around selling and buying from across large distances. Shipping is a large