Some of the factors are:
1. Purposes (Transaction broker)
2. Features (Types of services the transaction broker provide)
3. Design
4. Strength
5. Weaknesses
6. Security
7. Privacy
8. Problems
We will be writing a report giving our evaluation and analysis of the individual factors.
Zuji.com 
Zuji.com will be the e-commerce transaction broker we will be researching on.
http://www.zuji.com.sg/
Zuji.com allows one to do online travel booking for hotels, flights, car hire, holiday packages online and in real time. It is a online travel agency helping customers to match their travel accommodation and transport to the accommodation and transport available supplied by the suppliers. The suppliers of Zuji.com are mainly hotels and airlines all over the world. As a transaction broker, Zuji.com only provides the service to match the supply of accommodation and transport to the demand, Zuji.com does not own any of the hotels or Airlines advertised on her website.
Purposes
One of the purpose of Zuji.com is to bring convenience to travellers being able to book a travel from work or home. Zuji.com provides a "one stop shop" concept where travellers can not only book hotels, but also their flights, transport and even their travel insurance! This versatility is a great advantage to Zuji.com as travellers are able to get everything necessary from just one website. It reduces transaction cost and search cost for travellers. For travellers on tighter budget, Zuji.com also provide travellers the option of taking low-cost carriers like Jetstar. Therefore, Zuji.com is able to provide every traveller with something affordable and within their budget.
Another purpose of Zuji.com is to pull in the gap between customers and suppliers all over the world through the Internet. As long as there is internet access, any traveller will be able to get onto Zuji.com and start booking their ideal holiday. It is likewise for the suppliers as their advertisements on Zuji.com will be seen by all travellers around the world and we are sure that it will definitely generate more sales for the suppliers as their hotel, airlines or transport gain more recognition from travellers all around the world.
Features
Zuji.com adopts a business to consumer (B2C) model entailing a network of online travel sites throughout Asia-Pacific, mostly with teams that are on-the-ground managing suppliers' relationships, marketing, site contents and deals.
Apart from B2C business, Zuji.com also does business to business (B2B) operations in Asia Pacific called "Travel Partner Network" (TPN) allowing it to work both travel and non-travel websites, including hoteliers and airlines throughout Asia Pacific to provide the booking technology and travel content to these sites.
Now Zuji.com has a steady air booking business and a rapidly expanding business in global hotel booking offering travellers a large variety of options to the thousands of hotels from the global data base available on Zuji.com.
Recently, advertisement and media revenue is also one of the focus for Zuji.com as there is a ever growing online travel. Besides, there is also a trend for countries all over the world encouraging tourism to boost economic growth. Individuals nowadays also see travelling and having holidays as an intergral of the lives. This paradigm shift is also a contributing factor to the robust online travel and thus leading to Zuji.com's success.
Design
Another purpose of Zuji.com is to pull in the gap between customers and suppliers all over the world through the Internet. As long as there is internet access, any traveller will be able to get onto Zuji.com and start booking their ideal holiday. It is likewise for the suppliers as their advertisements on Zuji.com will be seen by all travellers around the world and we are sure that it will definitely generate more sales for the suppliers as their hotel, airlines or transport gain more recognition from travellers all around the world.
Features
Zuji.com adopts a business to consumer (B2C) model entailing a network of online travel sites throughout Asia-Pacific, mostly with teams that are on-the-ground managing suppliers' relationships, marketing, site contents and deals.
Apart from B2C business, Zuji.com also does business to business (B2B) operations in Asia Pacific called "Travel Partner Network" (TPN) allowing it to work both travel and non-travel websites, including hoteliers and airlines throughout Asia Pacific to provide the booking technology and travel content to these sites.
Now Zuji.com has a steady air booking business and a rapidly expanding business in global hotel booking offering travellers a large variety of options to the thousands of hotels from the global data base available on Zuji.com.
Recently, advertisement and media revenue is also one of the focus for Zuji.com as there is a ever growing online travel. Besides, there is also a trend for countries all over the world encouraging tourism to boost economic growth. Individuals nowadays also see travelling and having holidays as an intergral of the lives. This paradigm shift is also a contributing factor to the robust online travel and thus leading to Zuji.com's success.
Design
Zuji online travel agency has separated its website into Asia-Pacific Region and International Region. International region is run by its sister companies include Travelocity.com (for North America) and Lastminute.com (for Europe). Each Zuji site is unique. Zuji has operates travel websites in: Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, and India and latest edition to the network Travelguru (an Indian-domestic hotel-focused business).
Blue and white is the main colour scheme for all Zuji websites which is pleasant and clearly presented. This is appealing to travellers who are going through them for the best bargains as it is less likely they would miss out any great deals available.
Various categories can be found horizontally above websites such as packages, hotels, flights, insurance, car hire, cruises and travel extras. Travellers will also be able to view special offers and top selling packages, hotels, flights while strolling down the main page. These links are utmostly useful and they would reduce traveller's search cost as it saves a relatively much portion of time, rather then to have to go through the whole website.
However, special offers and top selling categories can be found again under packages, hotels, and flights taps. This repeated information can be unnecessary. On the other hand, it could also serve as a advertisement for Zuji.com to attract more customers by placing the promotions on their homepage as well. Upon clicking on the offers, there will be new screens that pop out, travellers might not be able to keep track to where they might have gotten that information from as it separates from the main webpage itself. Users with average loading speed might experience inconvinience as they might not be able to load so many pages, consuming more of their time. There were certain times where there were some missing pages on the links provided. It would have been better if the website could be updately more regularly.
Overall, Zuji is a detailed website full of information for travellers. However, improvement can be made to allow an even better environment for its users.
Strength
Zuji helped to introduce, grow and ride the wave from online travel's earliest days in Asia Pacific in the early 2000s. Hence, it is very experience and has a strong foundation as an online travel agency. It is due to their good services and trustworthiness that travellers repeatedly visited the website. Travellers’ viewership for Zuji is around 60million site pages a month. Therefore it is not surprising for Zuji to be voted the ‘Best Online Travel Agency’ in Asia Pacific for the fourth consecutive year.As one of the largest online travel agency, Zuji brings a choice of more than 400 airlines, 60,000 hotels, and thousands of car hire activities, attractions as well as travel insurance to travellers. Zuji is not alone, it has its sister companies which include: Travelocity.com (North America), Lastminute.com (Europe), Igougo, Travelocity Business, GetThere and Sabre Travel network. Most recently it added Travelguru - India's largest hotel network - under its wing with Travelocity Global's acquisition of the business in August 2009.
As people are becoming more conscious of our environment, Zuji has come out with Greener Travel which provides greener hotel stays and greener out-and-about activities. Helping travellers to travel more eco-friendly is one of the way to show its part in helping the planet. This will help Zuji to gain more support from eco-friendly travellers and maybe even social group such as Greenpeace.
Besides providing services to consumers, Zuji tries to understand what travellers need by doing surveys. Zuji also came out with petition for an extra public holiday for Singaporeans and cheap travel deals. This is important for a company to survive as they are selling products needed by consumers.
Weaknesses
Zuji as one of the biggest player in Asia’s online travel agency, do not offers Singapore-based low-cost carriers (LCCs) such as Tiger Airways. As a big player who emphasis in its great variety of choices for travelers, it should provide more LCCs to cater for the budget concern consumers. It is also difficult to get tickets at the last minute from Zuji.com. For example: I have to leave urgently for a trip tomorrow, it is difficult to get it from Zuji.com. Therefore for people who wants to have a holiday as and when they are free, are unable to get their holiday packages from Zuji.com. Only people who plan ahead are able to get the best deals out of Zuji.com. If Zuji.com can look into the area of grabbing these "last minute" customers, they might even make more profit.
Zuji provide a wide range of services which include cruise packages. However, cruise packages provided are limited and expensive. Travelers will be able to find better deals from other websites such as fivestarsonline. Moreover, packages provided are not for regional tours. Most of them are cruise packages for western countries.
Zuji.com has this system call the TripAdvisor which is meant to allow travellers to read reviews left by other travellors who have stayed at that particuler hotel before. This is a good system that Zuji.com has in placed for their customers. However, there are very little or none reviews available. We feel that Zuji.com should encourage their customers who have been past occupants of that particular hotel to give a review and rate their stays. Of course, no one likes to write reviews so maybe Zuji.com can provide some incentives to these customers who write the reviews. This will not only benefit Zuji.com's customers but Zuji.com. Other travellers can see how established Zuji.com is by the reviews and this helps Zuji.com build up their reputation and customers' confidence.
Security & Privacy
This Verified by Visa is a new way for Visa users to add safety when transacting online. It is a additional security feature that ensures that only the applicant of the Visa card is the user. Zuji.com is one of the online stores that is recognised by Visa.
This Trustsg Seal is Authorise Code Owner is Commercetrust appointed by iDA. The Trustsg Seal is endorsed by the government. Only accredited B2C businesses are able to receive the seal. With the seal, the owner of the website will be subjected to a code of practice which is legally binded. If the webmaster does not adhere to the code of practice, he or she will be penalised. This seal gives recognition to Zuji.com for her credibility and reliabilty. Travellers who are not satisfied with the service from Zuji.com can approach the authority to seek action against Zuji.com.
Truste provides online safety, trust and Internet privacy to consumers of the Web. It is a company who are like the watchdogs of the web, helping companies like Zuji.com to promote its privacy policy and at the same time giving assurance to consumers of the web that the transactions that they are dealing in is safe.
Truste provides online safety, trust and Internet privacy to consumers of the Web. It is a company who are like the watchdogs of the web, helping companies like Zuji.com to promote its privacy policy and at the same time giving assurance to consumers of the web that the transactions that they are dealing in is safe.
Zuji.com is equipped with a secure server software which encrypts customers' personal information as well as credit card information. In addition to high secure online protection methods as above, Zuji.com also has a risk-managment team who regularly and randomly counter check on the credit card purchases made on Zuji.com to ensure autenticity. Besides that, Zuji.com alsoverifies credit cards that have not been used for making unauthorised purchases. Another security measure that Zuji.com in place is to request for phone contact number of her customers, so that in the case where Zuji.com detects a foul play, they are able to contact their customers immediately.
However, we feel that despite all the safety measures that Zuji.com has put in, it is still impossible to create the "perfectly safe" environment. Incidents like phishing, information theft is abundant in the vurtual world. We feel that not only does web owners have to put in security measures, consumers too should play an active role in ensure security and privacy in any transaction they do over the Internet. Consumers should never disclose any private information nor credit card information to any website which is unknown. Consumers should also have some form of security softwares on the computer they are using as well.
Pitfalls and Problems
Zuji is owed by Travelocity. It represents the Travelocity brand and business in Asia Pacific. Zuji expand its business out by acquisition. Example will be Nextour in Korea and Travelguru in India. One of the cons of acquisition is the difference in culture and goals. Zuji has to make sure that all their goals are align and their business strutures are compatible. Human is a key resource in a company. People tend to leave after their company are being taken over. Thus, it is important that Zuji makes sure such problems will not occur.
