Planning & Development Of An E-Commerce Website Essay.

1) Website Plan
a) Clearly identify the goals of the business (0.5 marks), target market and demand, and specific objectives of the website (1 mark) for an improved e-business solution

b) Provide a reliable analysis of needs, which must include both business and stakeholder requirements for the use of the website as an improvement of their e-business solution.

c) Identify appropriate metrics to measure objectives of the website. 
Note: You are required to explain how you will make use of the visualisation of e-business data for the above.

2) Website Development
d) Detail the system development lifecycle for the website: requires a methodology description, followed by justification of the chosen methodology

e) Provide clear reasons for choices made for the following aspects, and report limitations inherent in these choices
i) development tools and PHP/scripting language(s).
ii) payment systems.
iii) database.
iv) security and privacy management.
v) ethical and legal implications.
vi) customer service and communications.
vii) website style and aesthetic design.
viii) website structure.
ix) inclusions (e.g. media, links, community, documentation).
x) compatibility and scalability.
 

Websites, SDLC, Database, Payment and Customer.

The booktopia website system proposed site require to be implemented to enable the updating of the proposed changes as below.

The booktopia system will be implemented to enable the organization achieve its goals which include:

• To improve the customer service delivery.
• To improve communication to the customers.
• To add more customers in the organization.
• To increase the profit made per day.
• Minimize the cost of operation in advertisement of products.

The proposed booktopia website has been designed targeting various groups of people who include the following:

• The national and international libraries organizations.
• The universities and colleges institutions.
• The various college and university students.
• The young children in school.
• The ordinary people who like reading various learning  materials

During the development of the booktopia website there were various objectives that were to be achieved among them are:

• Display of the products on the e-business website.
• Providing the descriptions of the products on the website.
• Keep record of customers in the database.
• Offer efficient customer services.
• Enable email and messaging services by the customers.
• Enable customer’s interactions through contact forms.

The booktopia website will however have various purposes and uses by the both the staffs, customers and the organization ,some of the uses will be as follows :

1. Updating of the sales products to the website by the staffs.
2. Buying of products by the customers using the website.

• Making the payments and receiving the payments between customer and organization.

1. Communication between the customer and staffs through contact number,email and contact form.
2. Advertising the available products in the organization.

To measure the performance of the website there are various aspects that will be taken into consideration and these aspects are referred to as metrics, among the metrics are the:

1. Customer’s lifetime values:The customer interacts with the system should result to generation of income.
2. The gross profit margins:In this the amount of profit is obtained is measured by subtracting the value of products in the store and the value of the products sold over period of time.

• The e-commerce conversions rates. This will be determined by increase of the number of visitors who becomes customers and buy products over a period of time.

1. The subscriber’s growth rates. This is the case the email will be provided to ensure the customer enquire of the products and thus will enable us know if products is selling.
2. Values per visit. This is a metric that measure the respective value of the website visitors, this is determined by value of the revenue gained divided by the number of the visitors.
3. Average in the size of orders. This is the value obtained when the number of transactions is divided with the amount of revenue generated per month.

• Cart abandonments rates. This is the number of customers that order values versus the once that orders and buy the products.
• Percentages of mobile visits. This is where the website is optimized and the mobile devices are used to access the website. 

In the website system development there are various stages that will be used and they are referred to as system development life cycle  and the various processes that will be used will include the planning, creating, testing and deployment of the website system (Stroud 2013).

There are various approaches used to design the system and in our case we shall use the waterfall model that will entail the following stages:

The system will also keep on being updated whenever there is introduction of new technology in the markets, and therefore by the end of this phase the e-business site is required to hold unlimited amount of traffic as the customer number grow bigger.

The website development will make use of various tools for both back end and front end design; these tools will include the following:

1. The joomla content management software.
2. The wampp webserver.

• The MySQL server database software.

The website will also make use of the payment module that will be used by the clients or customers to make their payments of their products selected, among the payment methods will be:

1. PayPal
2. Visa card

• Master card.

In the implementation of the e-business the database was used to store the products, customers, sale and the products description and the database implementation was done using the databases system called the xampp and the MySQL software( Phillips 2016).

In the implementation of the system the system security is vital since very sensitive information is used, this security will be implemented by use of secret login details and protection of the customers payments details as well.

The system will ensure there is use of the ethical and legal issues  this is by ensuring there is privacy in all the customers transactions to prevent any fraudulent cases ,however to ensure the system is licensed the system copyright is obtained to license the domain name of the system.

The website will ensure the staffs and the customers can communicate efficiently, this is by ensuring that the customers can have access to the contact form, phone number and the emails address of the organization that he can use to enquire and send message to the organization.

In the proposed system there are various web design styles that will be used, which will ensure system appearance is good and all functionalities are well implemented.

Among the website style used will be:

1. Use of the Buttons styles
2. Use of the Navigation menus styles.

• Use of input Web forms.

1. Use of media styles for example, images and graphics.
2. Use of the Iconography styles
3. Use of the Photo-Realism styles

• Use of the Transparency styles
• Use of the Textures and Patterns styles

1. Use of the Nature style
2. Use of the Abstraction
3. Use of the Retro style

The proposed website will have the various web pages and below show the web structure indicating how the various web-pages link and connect to each other, below is the web structure of the proposed website.

The design of the booktopia website will ensure there is inclusivity aspect where the buyers and the seller will be considered and able to access and use the system, the inclusion will be implemented by ensuring that the web site is responsive enough and it is compatible to all type of browsers, this will enable the customers using the various types of the devices to access the system and do the transactions as well.

The use of e-commerce technology the booktopia organization will be able to grow and scale fast and with ease and they will be able to achieve the demands in the market where they will achieve the customer requirements by introduction of sales channels and able to reach the global market. 

References

[1]. Buchanan, D.2014. The expertise of the change agent. Hemel Hempstead, United Kingdom: Prentice-Hall.

[2]. Butler, M.2016. The e-business advantage. London, United Kingdom: Ecademists.

[3]. Cohan, P.2016. E-profit: high payoff strategies for capturing the e-commerce edge.New York,U.S.A: Amacom.

[4].  Kalakota, R.2014.E-business roadmap for success. Harlow, England: Addison Wesley.

[5]. Levine, R.2016. The cluetrain manifesto: the end of business as usual. Perseus, South Australia: Cambridge MA.

[6]. Mackenzie, D.2016. The social shaping of technology.Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

[7]. Newell, F.2016. Loyalty.com: customer relationship management in the new era of internet marketing. New York,U.S.A: McGraw-Hill.

[8]. Phillips,F.2016. Market-Oriented Technology Management. Berlin, Germany :Springe,2016.

[9]. Siegel, D.2015. Futurize your enterprise: business strategy in the age of the e-customer.New York, U.S.A :Wiley..

[10]. Stroud, D.2013. Internet strategies: a corporate guide to exploiting the internet.Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Macmillan.