Fedex Com And Ups Com example essay topic

599 words
FedEx Corp. is the premier global provider of transportation, e-commerce and supply chain management services. With annual revenues of about $20 billion, The company offers integrated business solutions through a network of subsidiaries operating independently, including FedEx Express, the world's largest express transportation company; FedEx Ground, North America's second largest provider of small-package ground delivery service; FedEx Freight, a leading provider of regional less-than-truckload freight services; FedEx Custom Critical, the world's largest provider of expedited time-critical shipments; and FedEx Trade Networks, a provider of customs brokerage, consulting, information technology and trade facilitation solutions. The contribution of technology and online trade to its success cannot be over emphasized. FedEx has always been a technology trailblazer, and the success of fedex. com is testament to that. The company was one of the first to harness the power of the Internet and the vast new information pathways it opened up to provide fast, easy and convenient service options for its customers. FedEx launched its Web site in 1994 with a bold new package tracking application-one of the first true corporate Web services.

Over time, FedEx continued to pioneer new technological territory, such as when it became the first transportation company with Web site features that allowed customers to generate their own unique bar-coded shipping labels and request couriers to pick up shipments. According to the recently published report on its website, fedex. com hosts an average of 8 million unique visitors per month and handles on average 3 million package tracking requests daily. More than 2.5 million customers connect with the company electronically everyday, and electronic transactions account for almost two-thirds of the more than 5.4 million shipments FedEx delivers daily. The fedex. com Web site is widely recognized for its speed, ease of use and customer-focused features. In an article published in Computer Bits magazine, an analysis of the US home pages of both FedEx. com and UPS. com were compared for speed and accessibility using the 'Web Page Analyzer' plus an additional tool to detect dynamic content. The result was as follows: FedEx had a US home page of 56,775 bytes.

FedEx's HTML file size was 22,779 bytes, with 11,614 bytes in two external JavaScript files. One CSS file contributed 3,222 bytes, while 14 images contributed 19,170 bytes to the total page size. Overall, the total page load time was 16 seconds on a 56 Kbps modem, taking 14 seconds to display useful content to the screen. The UPS US home page weighed in at 96,535 bytes in total. The UPS home page consisted of a 31,221 bytes HTML file, 9,927 bytes in two external Java Scripts, 13,255 bytes in one external CSS file, and 15 images contributing 42,132 bytes to the total page size. Overall, the US home page of UPS. com loaded in 22 seconds on a 56 Kbps modem, taking 19 seconds to display useful content.

The Web Marketing Association praised fedex. com as the 'Best Transportation Web Site' and e Week saluted it as a top e-business innovator. FedEx online transactions generates over two million shipments a day, about two-thirds of its domestic express volume, all electronic with no paperwork. In 2003, the number of FedEx 'interNetShip' users doubled to over half a million customers online. At the same time, the monthly online volume tripled.

These results are attributed to the technological innovations and features on its website such as customers " ability to complete documents online and also provisions of customs forms etc...