ABSTRACT

The paper is all about the development and implementation of Interactive online furniture shop for a proposal of an e- commerce platform. The proposal aims to improve online shopper experience in order for them to have a different perspective when shopping for furniture online. The proposal addressed the issue on furniture shopping where consumers prefer most of the time to shop for furniture physically in order for them to see it personally before they would buy it. Furniture is an expensive piece of item or goods so people would want a good value for the money that they will spend. The proposal integrated different technologies today in order to improve consumers experience when buying furniture online so that they would see good value for their money while still having the comfort of shopping anytime anywhere.

1. INTRODUCTION

The internet today along with the tools and technologies that could be integrated with it is massively affecting consumers and businesses. Consumers are now being inclined to online shopping while e-commerce are continually offering them wide variety of goods and services that could be avail online. Despite the massive growth of e-commerce sales, there were few things that online shoppers prefer to just search online but buy it on a physical store. Furniture is one of the goods that people prefer to be bought physically than online because they wanted to try it first before buying it. Furniture is a type of item that people will have to spend time deciding, researching and trying to see if it fits their taste because people will be living with it for years. Aside from that, furniture is an expensive piece of product that is why customer wanted to get a good value out of the money that they will spend.

Current technological developments however can reshape customer’s experience when it comes to buying furniture online. The internet and the web is already a powerful tool that has shifted the world’s shopping behavior but in combination with other emerging technologies, it will definitely give consumers a new experience in shopping furniture online. 3D technologies have been existed for a while. It was being used to create digital model of any real world objects. As this technology progresses, digital objects are becoming more like a real one, people usually cannot spot the difference between the digital and the real ones. 3D walkthroughs of digital models was also developed which gives home goods and services shoppers a new experience. Augmented reality, which is a technology that allows us to put digital object into the real world visually, opens a new perspective for furniture shopping online.

This proposal is organized as follows: First, e-commerce will be defined and its success growth as well as its main advantage and disadvantage will be discussed. Second, the project proposal and system details will be discussed and lastly, the conclusion.

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This section will discuss some of the existing studies related to the proposed system and some existing related system that is already on the web.

1. 1. E-Commerce

^[1]E-commerce involves the use of the internet, the World Wide Web (web), and mobile apps and browsers running on mobile devices to transact business. Electronic commerce in the world is becoming an increasingly popular form of trade. ^[5]Most shoppers start looking for products, descriptions and quality features online before buying a product. ^[6]E-commerce enables even small and medium scale businesses to have an edge to compete with those large businesses as the internet provides same level of access on business dealings.

^[7]E-commerce now is a giant industry. Businesses are now focusing on having an e-commerce platform in order to compete with the current market. New studies projected that wolrd wide e-commerce sales will hit $4.9 trillion sales by 2021. That is 265% growth rate from $1.3 trillion in 2014. E-commerce is showing a steady upward trend without any signs of declining. Global e-commerce sale will account for 17.5% of the total world retail market sale. Those trends means there are still a lot of room for the e-commerce market to grow so businesses with physical store as well as businesses that have yet to be established needs to bring their businesses online.

E-commerce main advantage is it allows customer to purchase anytime and anywhere as long as you are connected to the internet. It also provides all the necessary information to the customer about the product. Basically, convenience is the key why more and more consumers now prefer to purchase online than to go to physical store. In spite of its huge success, it also has it failures, studies shows that 35% if expensive goods sold online are fake which makes online consumers have low trust on purchasing online.

1. 2. Current trends and Technologies on Online Furniture Industry

^[8]The furniture market consists of sales of furniture by entities that produce furniture that supports human activities. The global furniture market is expected to grow from $564.7 billion in 2020 to $671.7 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.% (Furniture Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Impact and Recovery To 2030, 2020).The rising global population and the growing middle class across the major regions of the world is the main reason why the demand for furniture is rising. Asia-Pacific region’s high population and growing residential construction occupied the largest share of the furniture industry (Furniture Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts, 2021).

^[9]Wayfair, online home furniture is one of the successful in the market today. Wayfair set a new record with high numbers of orders in outdoor, upholstery and bedroom. The company is confident that customers will remain focused on their homes even as the environment normalizes in the U.S. and Europe, and that Wayfair’s strong profitability should not only continue but expand. Indeed, as the trend of online shopping today continues to go up, online furniture industry also is going up.

^[4]Furniture retailers today continue to develop new forms of engagement to improve customer experience in their shopping for furniture. One of the emerging technologies today that are being integrated to furniture shopping is the augmented reality. Augmented reality overlays digitally created content into the real world. Furniture is an incredibly visual industry, and customers welcome every effort to bridge the gap between the online and in-store shopping experience. Integrating AR to furniture shopping has its main advantages. (1) You can try it before you buy, as AR allows for digital content and the reality to be integrated, customers can now see how the furniture will fit on their apartments in real world. (2) Customers can customize the product according to their preferences and what will fit to their home before purchasing the product.

3. PROJECT PROPOSAL DETAILS

This section discusses the design details of the e-commerce platform.

1. SYSTEM DESIGN
   1. System Modules
      1. Website

This is the main module of the system where in customer can browse and view all the available items as well as its details. Figure 1.1 shows the use case of the website.

The website consists of the following modules or pages:

1. 1. 1. 1. Home page

Main page of the website, which consists of the general information about the company. There is also a search bar added throughout the pages in order for the customer to search their desired furniture item. There is also a login button where all the users can login. If the customer does not have account yet, the customer will have an option to register as a new user. Figure 1.2 shows the design of the home page.

Catalog Page

The catalog page is the page where the customer can view all the available products and add it to cart afterwards or visualize it on his own space using the design platform of the website. The right navigation panel of the page displays the available categories for the furniture for refined browsing.

Items can be click in order to view the specification details of the furniture as well as to choose different available colors. There is also a design mode button in case the customer chooses to see the furniture on actual space or add it to cart for purchase.

Cart Page

This page displays all the items that the customer added to cart for purchase. It displays the total price. On the bottom of the page are some customer relation options and contact information of the company.

Design Platform

This is the application on the website, which allows the customer to design on a 3D model the chosen furniture. With this platform, the customer can visualize what the furniture will look like on an actual preferred space (e.g., Bedroom, Living Room, Kitchen, etc.,). After putting the furniture in place and designing the space, the customer can render the design into an interactive virtual reality like walkthrough.

Figure 1.6 shows the available space template that can be used for the design or the customer. Other options available are the customer can start the design from scratch or they can use readily available templates on the website. Designers who also have their own 3D files can upload it on the platform and put the furniture on their own model.

Figure1.7 shows the design platform application of the website. On this platform, the user can add different objects and use different tools, which help them design their space.

1. 1. 1. 5. Augmented Reality Mode (AR Mode)

This feature of the platform allows customers who are not professional and do not have designing experiences to try out the furniture on their actual space. Using just their camera on their laptops or mobile phones, they can place the furniture to their actual space so that they can see how it would fit to their homes or spaces. They can rotate and resize, and move the furniture object so that they would see how it would fit on their spaces.

1. 1. 1. 6. Payment page

This page is the payment platform of the website where in customers can choose their preferred payment options and enter their payment details. Payment details will not be stored on the system for the customer’s privacy and security. A confirmation email will be send after the purchase, which contains the invoice and delivery or shipment details.

1. 1. 1. 7. User Profile/Account Page

This page contains the personal information of the customer as well as their purchase history.

1. 1. 1. 8. Security Policy page

This page contains the website’s security policies for customer data protection and security.

1. 1. 2. Admin Module

This module is for administrator use. It manages all the modules on the website as well as on the employee’s module. IT contains all the modules needed for the management of the system and its users. Figure 2.1 shows the use case for the Admin Module.

1. 1. 1. 1. Content Management

This module allows the administrator to manage the content of the website. Administrator has all the administrative rights to review, modify, delete or add content to the website.

1. 1. 1. 2. User Management

This module allows the administrator to add, update or delete system user and user data. The administrator also has the option to deactivate or activate the users.

1. 1. 1. 3. Items Management

This module allows the administrator to add, update or delete items on the catalog that are being sold by the company. All the item information as well as pictures will be uploaded on this module. Items can also be active or inactive.

1. 1. 1. 4. Billing and Payments Management

This module allows the administrator to monitor and see the status of the purchase and all the information related to billing and customer payments.

1. 1. 1. 5. Transaction History

This module allows the administrator to see and monitor all the transaction history of the system and generate reports from it.

1. 1. 1. 6. Logging

This module allows the administrator to monitor and see all system activities and generate reports from it.

1. 1. 1. 7. Reports Module

This system allows the system administrator to generate business related reports such as sales report, item inventory reports, employees report, etc.

A.1.3 Employee Module

This module allows non-administrator employee to manage the system with limited options than the administrator. All the employees functionality can be performed by the administrator but non-admin employee cannot perform all administrator functionality. Modules available for the employees are items management, Billing and payments management and reports module. The employee module also has chat functionality for customer live chat support.

Figure 3.1 shows the use case for employee module.

A.1.4. Login Module

This module allows all the user and registered customer to login on the system with different levels of access depending on the user privileges.

1. 2. Implementation Requirements

This section will discuss all the technology that will be used for the successful development and implementation of the system.

1. 1. 1. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

HTML is the webs main makrup language. It is a GML that is relatively easy to use. HTML provides web page designers with a fixed set of makrup tags that are used to format the web page^. HTML will be used on the proposed e-commerce platform to build the structure of its website.

1. 1. 2. Bootstrap Framework

Bootstrap is a framework for designing a website’s front-end. It contains wide variety of javascript plugins and prebuilt component to make designing a web quick and easy. The framework is open- source so it is cost effective but there are many prebuilt paid templates as well. This is a very good toolkit for designing and building a web.

1. 1. 3. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Webserver and other tools for the deployment of the website can be installed in ec2 making development efficient and fast. This is also cost efficient as this will save the company money for hardware maintenance cost.

1. 1. 4. Space Designer 3D

Space Designer 3D is an online floor plan software to create 3D homes and interior design projects. This can be integrated to your website and integrate your design catalog to design your spaces. It also has 2D plan feature and also 3D walkthrough. This will be used on the proposed e-commerce platform so there is no need for the platform to be developed from scratch. There are also other 3D modeling tools that can be integrated to the web which could be a good choice for the project.

1. 1. 5. Python/ Flask Framework

Python is a general purpose programming language that can be used to build server side web application. Flask is a web framework based on python. Framework is generally being used today for web development as it gives you a lot of existing libraries to speed up the development. This framework is also open-source so developing a web platform using this one will be cost efficient.

1. 1. 6. Augmented Reality

^[4]Augmented reality overlays digitally created content into the real world. So when interacting with virtual content, users are not excluded from normal reality. This technology creates an entirely artificial world where people can manipulate objects or perform a series of other actions. With AR, online furniture shoppers can now see the furniture on their actual spaces in real world.

1. 3. Process Flow Diagram

Figure 4.1 shows the process flow diagram of the proposed system. The flow starts with an option if the customer wants to login or continue browsing with the furniture catalog. If the customer chooses to login, there will be an option to register as a new user of the platform or if the customer already y has an account, they just need to input their user and password. While browsing the catalog, the customer will have an option to add the item to cart or design space with the chosen furniture. On the design platform, the customer can choose from the available premade template, upload their own template where they can place their chosen furniture and render a 3D interactive walkthrough for it where they can virtually walk around the 3D rendered space. Customer also has an option to use the AR feature of the platform in order for them to see how the furniture will fit on their real world homes. Afterwards, they can proceed to adding the furniture to cart and then proceed with the payment. After successfully processing the payment, there will be a confirmation with the purchase information that will be sent to their email address and the process ends there.

1. 4. Other Requirements
      1. Security
      2. Secure Socket Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TSL)

SSL and TSL are security protocols which secures network communication. They both use PKI certificates and related keys to secure network communication. This allows data encryption and confidentiality. SSL and TSL also allow hashing and digital signatures. Digital signatures are uses to determine the authenticity of a message. It very important that e- commerce platform is secure and should not be compromised as it holds a lot of personal information from the user that can be exploited if not secured properly. It also holds a lot of data related to sales, transaction and money which can be of great target of the attackers that is why it is very important not just to have an attractive website but also well-built security that can protect your customer and business. SSL and TSL can be provided by number of certificate authorities.

1. 1. 3. Administrator

The admin have access to everything that is happening on the platform. So, whenever there will be a security breach, the admin can detect and monitor it. The system also has a logging system so all activities will be logged and all users who are using the system will also be detected and recorded. Any anomaly on the system can be easily investigated with the logging system.

2. BUSINESS MODEL
   1. Value Proposition

One of the main issues of today’s online furniture business is that people would not want to really buy furniture without seeing and touching them personally because picture is not really enough to make them imagine if this item will fit to their home or spaces. The proposed system answers that dilemma by integrating a designing platform to our website. Customer can upload their own 3D spaces in order to visualize how the furniture will fit to their actual space. 3D interactive walkthrough will give customers actual feel of the space making them see it almost like how they would see it in real world. Augmented reality gives the customer the experience of seeing the furniture pieces on their actual spaces.

1. 2. Revenue Model

The proposed e-commerce platform will be adopting sales revenue model because all revenues will be derived from the sales of the furniture.

1. 3. Business-to-Customer Business Model

The business model of the proposed system is e-tailer as it is an online retail store. ^[1]E-tailers are similar to the typical bricks-and-mortar storefront, except that customers only have to connect to the Internet or use their smartphone to place an order. The primary target markets are professional home designers as well as common individual who just wanted to design or buy some furniture for their home. All transactions will be online from payment to the delivery of the goods. Physical showroom will not be available as the platform should be enough as virtual showroom for the furniture.

Furniture market is one of the largest markets in the Philippines today. According to Philippines Statistics Authority, it is one of the top 5 big markets as of 2021. Philippines is also well known for manufacturing well-made furniture around the globe so furniture business is actually a good revenue generating business today. The proposed platform is not just providing good and quality furniture catalog but also good platforms that will make them have virtually and online what they can have physically.

The proposed platform is also cost effective as the software requirements were less costly as stated on section A.2. Sales generated from the business can sustain the platform.

4. CONCLUSION

Different web development technologies and framework today are cost efficient which give small and medium businesses the ability to develop their own e-commerce platform so that they would be able to compete with the large businesses that is dominating the electronic commerce. Framework like bootstrap, flask and cloud technology are powerful tools to develop an efficient and well maintainable e-commerce platform as they were primarily being used for faster and cost efficient system development.

The internet is shaping our daily activities and so as the businesses. The emergence of e-commerce because of the extensive use of internet has driven the world into a different form of retailing. Physical presence is now not obligatory in order for us to purchase goods which could exactly fit our needs. Technology and internet has made it possible to do everything anytime anywhere including the very visually dependent industry of furniture. With the use of the internet and different technologies together, physical showroom for furniture could be eliminated. The internet which allows us to be connected together all over the world, the 3D technologies which could convert real world objects into digital objects and the augmented reality which integrates the two together could indeed change the way on how we shop furniture.