How E-Commerce Can Benefit from Visualization

Nowadays, the Internet has become one of the most important means of communication. The powerfull architecture of the Internet makes conducting business possible. In e-commerce applications the amount of goods and the exchange of information are increasing. In order to make full use of the Internet's potential, a user-friendly access to information is needed for the optimal distribution of information and knowledge. User-friendliness means easy technical access and methods to enhance the users comprehension of the information. This can be achieved with the support of information visualization. Therefore, we have developed the WWWW model, which demostrates how e-commerce can benefit from visualization. The system PROSECO is designed as an open scalable framework architecture to easily provide and access any services needed for a distributed visualization of abstract data. We demonstrate the capabilities of our concepts by providing a user-friendly access to economic information.