Improving the Shopping Experience in B2C E-Commerce Systems using Rich Internet Applications

Abstract

One of the main uses of the internet is e-commerce. Companies conducting business online across a broad range of consumer goods and services from books to travel are operating in an increasingly competitive environment. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are a new generation of internet applications. RIAs combine the advantages of desktops and Web applications. RIAs incorporate behavior and features of desktop applications such as animations, multimedia content and client-side computing. In Web applications, RIAs allow to the users to do interactive data exploration through visual attractive interfaces. RIAs solve disadvantages presented in traditional Web applications like continuous updating Web pages and processing overload on Web server. Therefore in a software development context, the RIAs have a great acceptance as solution in data-processing. RIAs can improve the experience of moving through an e-commerce application by removing extra navigation steps, reducing interface complexity, and presenting relevant, meaningful information to the user in the most appropriate visual format. Advances available with RIAs are enhancing the customer experience, driving revenue, and increasing customer loyalty. In this book chapter, the authors cover the reasons for incorporating RIAs in B2C e-commerce systems.