Design and Implementation of M-Commerce Platform for Buying and Selling

Abstract

Computers and other ICT gadgets have become ubiquitous assets in all facets of life including buying and selling. This has made it easy for many organizations to take the advantage of the web coverage and cost saving features of internet to place their businesses on the World Wide Web for customers to access anywhere within the globe. Although personal computer (PC) is generally accepted, mobile devices are overtaking its acceptability, especially in developing countries, like Nigeria. Therefore, online business is fast enjoying paradigm shift from the use of PC to mobile phones and as such, users have closed enough experience to business transaction. This paper presents a mobile commerce (m-commerce) platform that brings both sellers and buyers together. The development of the platform follows Object-Oriented Design approach using HTML 5, JQuery-Mobile, JavaScript and XML for the client side and on the server side, PHP and MySQL were used as scripting language and database respectively. The platform is supported by Android operating system because of its current high market share and usability. Responses received from the users during the testing phase showed that the platform performed adequately well to users’ satisfaction in terms of security, sales and profit.