WMES3314: Electronic Commerce

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WMES3314 Electronic Commerce

• Chapter 8
• Web Site Development Process

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Introduction

• In the late 1990s, few companies has the in-house
  expertise to build their own websites most hires
  3rd-party Web Development companies such as
  Scient, Razorfish, Sapient to do the job.
• Today, many companies have their own in-house
  personnel who specialized in the creation and
  maintenance of websites.
• As a result of this shift to in-house
  development, companies such as Scient has filed
  for bankruptcy, and Razorfish and Sapient have
  scaled down their businesses.
• The goal of website development is to present
  functionality and content through some type of
  visual interface.
• This goal seems straight forward but it is shaped
  by external forces such as time, budget and
  resources.

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Process for Building a Website

• Strategy Formulation
• User Experience Definition
• Architecture Design Process
• Implementation
• Test/Fix
• Launch

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1. Strategy Formulation

• Building a website is like putting together a
  puzzle. The process cannot begin until several
  important pieces are in place. These include
• Well-define set of business objectives for the
  site
• Identification of the audience segment that the
  site will serve
• Clear project plan with checkpoints and
  milestones
• Definition and description of the relevant
  branding systems (organization, products and
  websites)
• Budget
• Development resources
• Steering committee made up of senior stakeholders
  and executives

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1. Strategy Formulation (contd)

• Successful site development requires a multitude
  of employees to cover different areas
• Business strategy
• Functional expertise
• Information architecture
• Content development/writing
• Visual design
• Interface design
• Technical architecture
• Database administration
• Data modeling
• Technical development
• Quality assurance team lead
• Quality assurance testing

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2. User Experience Definition

• User Type
• The discrete types of users who will use the site
• User Intension
• What tasks users want to accomplish when they
  visit the site
• For example youre required to build an
  e-Commerce website for Acme Computer, a company
  that sells computer equipment, software and
  peripherals.

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2. User Experience Definition (contd)

• The company objectives for the site
• Increase the ease of doing business with Acme
  Computer for customer, partners and suppliers.
• Increase the overall revenue of Acme Computer by
  increasing the purchase frequency and quantity of
  its customers
• Increase customers satisfaction and loyalty
• Lower the cost per transaction for goods
  purchased
• Identify potential User Type?

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2. User Experience Definition (contd)

• The development team consolidates its list into 6
  major groups of users
• Customer
• Prospects
• Partners
• Vendors
• Interest parties (media, jobseekers)
• Employees
• Next, the team must gain an intimate
  understanding of who those user are and what they
  expect to accomplish through their interaction
  with the site.
• Result is a series of user personas user
  profile, from various sources such as interviews
  with existing Acme Computer customers, past
  purchase recordsetc

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2. User Experience Definition (contd)

• User Intentions
• The output of this investigation is a descriptive
  list of each user type.
• For example, a customer
• Research and purchase a computer
• Check on the status of a previous purchase
• Get technical support information
• Work with customer service
• Obtain general contact information

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2. User Experience Definition (contd)

• These processes led to
• Functionality Matrix, purpose is to
• Define project scope, used to build project plan
• Communicate with executives, project team
• Track enhancement
• Functional Specification
• Provide detailed design of system processes and
  pages.
• Provide details of the life cycle of different
  object (search, payment)
• Define detailed of each page (list of fields on a
  page, their validation requirements, their data
  source)
• Define all action on each page (save shopping
  cart, send email, update account, checkout)
• Content Matrix
• Define the content will be required on each
  screen
• These sets of content are referred to as the
  content matrix

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3. Architecture Design Process

• Design both look and function of the website
• The architecture design process allow the
  development team to translate what was learnt
  during the user experience definition process
  into what functions the site needs and how those
  functions represent on the screen.

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3. Architecture Design Process (contd)

• Site Map
• A hierarchical view of the proposed website and
  encompasses all of the primary pages, or
  templates to be developed. (refer pp.320)
• www.dell.com.my
• Page Schematics
• Simple drawing or diagrams that serves as a
  conceptual layout for what each page on the site
  will look like. (refer pp.321)

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Experience Definition and Architecture Design
Output

• By this point, the development team should be
  able to create the following outputs
• User experience and functional definition
  document
• User type definition document
• User intentions definition document
• User persona definition document
• Functionality matrix
• Content Matrix
• Site map
• Page schematics

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4. Implementation

• Validation
• Build phase
• Application, or back-end development
• Interface development
• Includes the production of HTML pages and other
  interface technologies such as Macromedia Flash.
• Interactive development
• Includes the production of imagery, artwork,
  sound and video
• Content development

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4. Implementation (contd)

• Deciding which language should be used is guided
  by a number of factors
• Available skills
• Portability
• Scalability/enterprise features
• Cost
• 3 zone for development / 3 Tier Architecture
• Zone 1 The live Site
• Zone 2 The staging environment (ready to be
  published version)
• Zone 3 The development

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4. Implementation (contd)

• Page Design
• Unique pages
• Template pages
• E.g. HTML, Flash, Java, JavaScript, Cascading
  Style Sheets (CSS)
• DHTML

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5. Test/Fix

• 2 aspects that developers loathe (hate) the
  most
• Properly documenting their code
• Testing their code
• Both are time consuming and tedious processes
• Test script describe how the module, page or
  process and lets the user perform that task.
• Test script are applied to all phases of testing
  unit testing, integration testing, system
  testing and load testing.
• Number of Bugs over Testing Days (refer pp.335)

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6. Launch

• Final steps to make the website go live
• Publishing it to the servers within the hosting
  environment.
• Groundwork must be done to ensure the successful
  launching
• Selecting a hosting facility to serve the site
• Building and testing the servers
• Testing the connectivity of the site
• Auditing the security of the overall system

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Tasks today

• Go to your favorite website. Look at the
  different pages. Which are unique pages and which
  are template pages?
• Sketch what you think the site map would be.
  Sketch a page schematic for one of the template
  pages.