Subway Restaurants - Improving Website Interface And Usability Essay.

Targeting the Right Customers

1) Website Plan (5 marks) a) Clearly identify the goals of the business (0.5 marks),

target market and demand (0.5 marks),

and specific objectives of the website (1 mark)

for an improved e-business solution (2 marks) 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. (2 marks)

c) Identify appropriate metrics to measure objectives of the website. (1 mark)

Note: You are required to explain how you will make use of the visualisation of e-business data for the above.

2) Website Development (7 marks) d) Detail the system development lifecycle for the website: requires a methodology description (1 mark), followed by justification of the chosen methodology (1 mark). (2 marks)

e) Provide clear reasons for choices made for the following aspects, and report limitations inherent in these choices (0.5 marks each = 5 marks):

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. (5 marks)

Note: You are required to incorporate visualisation of e-business data to justify the improvements made in the proposed e-business website. Refer to the workshop textbook for SAS visual analytics on SAS Viya. Bachelor of Information Technology E-Business Systems Report Assignment (50%) 3) Report Presentation (2 marks) f) The report will address the following qualitative features/concerns (0.5 marks each):

i) a title page and table of contents, and lists of tables/figures, as required.

ii) appropriate use of headings, tables/graphs/images, appendices and references.

iii) correct spelling and grammar throughout report.

iv) logical structure to the report – complete, consistent and comprehensible. (2 marks)

Website: E-Commerce Website Prototype (16 marks total) 1) Prototype Functionality (13 marks)

The e-commerce website prototype will contain at least the following functionality:

a) All information about the company a reasonable person might require before undertaking an e-commerce transaction. (1 mark)

b) Requirements for customers to provide personal or sensitive information are appropriate and there is appropriate reassurance about the security (1 mark) and privacy (1 mark) of that information. (2 marks)

c) All product information (0.5 marks) and information on ethical and legal implications (1 mark) that a reasonable person might require before undertaking a transaction. (1.5 marks)

Making Changes to the Current Website

d) Shopping cart design is appropriate to meet business information and customer usage needs (1 mark). (1 mark)

e) All the customisation of the product, service and/or price that a reasonable customer might expect (1 mark). (1 mark)

f) All the payment and delivery options that would be generally appropriate, convenient and reassuring to the reasonable customer (1 mark). (1 mark)

g) A clear indication of a commitment to after-sales customer support and service (1 mark). (1 mark) Bachelor of Information Technology E-Business Systems Report Assignment (50%) h) An appropriate and functional database to store product information (0.5 marks), customer information (1 mark) and transaction information (1 mark). (2.5 mark) i) Consistent, aesthetically pleasing design (0.5 marks) promoting the brand (0.5 marks). (1 mark) j) Error-free and quick loading pages (0.5 marks),

with several easy-to-use navigation options (0.5 mark). (1 mark) 2) Website Demo (3 marks) Students are required to comprehensively give an in-class demonstration of their website to the tutor individually, and answer questions raised during the demo: a) Website features: each student must successfully demonstrate the features of the ecommerce prototype website (1 mark) and explain them in a clear manner (e.g. complete, concise, informative and interesting) (1 mark). (2 marks) b) Questions: each student must appropriately answer questions on how the website meets business or customer needs (1 mark). (1 mark)

Notes to assist students in completing this assignment:

• Report: The report must be professionally presented and employ an appropriate report structure, including a titlepage, table of contents, introduction and relevant appendices (e.g. information supporting development choices, structural diagrams of the site, dataflow, usecases and databases). A title page must include details of the course, assignment, and tutor. The document must be well presented (i.e. look professional), with appropriate language for a tech-savvy business audience, and with correct spelling and grammar. The report must include correct and complete citations and referencing, if other material/information is used to develop the report.

• Prototype. Any Web application development tool may be used to implement the eCommerce website prototype – it must be fully functional but with limited datasets and onsite information, and also with limited security features.

• Demonstration. All features and functionality of the prototype must be demonstrated on the classroom computers. The demonstration must show the website functionality meeting underlying business and other stakeholder needs. All students must equitably participate during the in-class presentation.

• Plagiarism. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. All reports and prototype websites must be original. Each student must submit a signed statement of originality available as a coversheet with the report.

Targeting the Right Customers

Website Plan

Goals of the Business

The main business objective is to increase the market base and attract more customers to the Subway restaurants. Moreover, the business is anticipating to make it easy for customers to order for their favorite dishes at any time by developing a user friendly interface for the website.

Target Market and Demand

In this generation, more many people especially those working prefer ordering food from the restaurants near their work places. Also, when people have parties and home comings, they get to outsource for outside catering to help in preparing the food (Belcher, 2018). As such, Subway is targeting mainly these two categories of customers because they form the major customer base for the business.

Website Objectives

Subway is planning to carry out some major changes in the current website. This is to increase usability and add some functionalities that allows the customer to choose the modes of deliveries and payments. Furthermore, the current website does not give customers what will be of their details that they fill in when making an order. As such, the new website will assure the customers of the security of their information and explain to them the measures that have been taken to ensure the same. This will enhance customer trust and loyalty.

Need Analysis

Business Requirements

• To increase the customer base
• To enhance customer interaction
• To enhance security of customer information
• To increase traffic to their website

Stakeholder Requirements

A suggested by Leo (2016), some of the stakeholder requirements for an e-commerce website are:

• Privacy of information
• Secure payments
• Fast deliveries
• Ensure that the right orders are delivered to the right customer.

Metrics to Measure Objectives of the Website

A project can never be considered complete, accepted, functional, or meets the objectives until the stakeholders approve it does. As such the business is obliged to carry out data visualization to find out if the proposed system meets the objectives (SAS, 2018). The process kicks off with data collection which helps in determining the customer experience and opinions. This can be achieved through the consideration of three factors. They include:   

Identifying the demographic factors: this helps in identifying the customer’s attributes such as age, location, gender, do they have a particular taste and other attributes.

Monitoring customer engagement: brings out the entire customer-site interaction. In essence, this means how the customer interacts with the site, what does they click frequently, what is their navigation pattern? This will help to measure usability objective.

Exit points: this helps to identify where the customers stop carrying out their orders, if it is the checkout page where they are prompted to key in their details (including the payment process), then it means that they are not sure of the safety of their information. This helps to measure the objective of privacy and confidentially of customer information and the business will have to review the checkout module to ensure it is appealing and convincing enough to the customer.

Making Changes to the Current Website

Website Development

Methodology

The methodology used during the development of the website is rapid application development (RAD). RAD allows development of different versions of the system developed sequentially with improved functionality as the users provide additional needs. This will help to develop an efficient system that satisfies the needs it allows development of the system with minimal time of the user. RAD produces systems more quickly and to a business focus, this tend to lower the cost of development. The prototypes give users tangible descriptions on what to judge and this enhances extensive user participation allowing them to provide their suggestions and requirements thus enabling the development of a system that suits the users need.

Also with RAD it is easier to make requirements changes to the system (Point, 2018). The RAD approach thus includes developing and refining the data models, process models, and prototype in parallel using an iterative process. User requirements are refined, a solution is designed, the solution is prototyped, the prototype is reviewed, user input is provided, and the process begins again. RAD is therefore flexible and adaptable to changes thus making it easier to change requirements. RAD consists of various phases during software development process as shown in the diagram below.Justification of the Modules used in developing the website

PHP/ Scripting Language

PHP is an open source server-side scripting language that is used to develop various systems. The new system has been developed using PHP because it is secure, easy to handle, highly flexible, and is free (no extra cost is used to get it) (Thomas, 2016).

Payment system (credit Cards)

The payments system integrated in to the website is the credit card technology. This is because it is convenient and more secure compare to other payment systems (Oswald, 2015). Also the fact that the new system also supports pay on delivery for those customers who would not want to share their credit card details over the internet, they can just swipe it when the food is delivered to them using ETR.

Database

The database has been developed using my SQL. Compared to other databases such as MS access, SQL is more stable and secure (Lindblad, 2018). Also the database has been developed so as to store customer information, product details, and employee details.

 Security and Privacy Management

When it comes to e-commerce where a lot of private information is share, privacy is key. As such, during the launching of the site security certificate will be implemented and two firewalls layers will be added one on the front end and one on the backend to ensure that no third parties are able to access the crucial information.

Ethical and Legal Implications

The business assures its customers that their information will not be used aside of the intended purpose. Also no information will be shared out to other parties without their consent. The business operates under federal and national laws and if it goes against such set laws, the business will be prosecuted. 

Customer Service and Communication

The new site has a portal dedicated solely to address customer complaints and allow them to give their opinions and feedback. We have personnel whose responsibility is to manage and respond to customers. As such the maximum waiting time for a customer is estimated to be one to two minute.

Website Style and Aesthetic Design

The website developed is responsive and user friendly. The website is able to adjust to any screen either a PC, tablet or a mobile phone, it will fit to it without affective the overall functionality and look.

 Website structure

The website has been structure to ensure that all the pages have the same structure. The header, menu, footer, color codes, and fonts and constant across all the pages.

Inclusions

The website has images of every product, social links on the header to direct customer to Subway social pages.

Conclusion

How customers interact with a system and tracking their movements is really important to any business as they help find out exit points and the reason for the exits. For e-businesses like the Subway, it is critical to know what preferences of the customers and the how they make their choices. However, it is important to understand that customer preferences and shopping patterns changes constantly and as such a business can try determine at what products to customers but at different seasons or time. Data visualization has revolutionized the e-commerce industry be making it easier to track, gather, and analyze customer information and patterns. Finally, it is essential to always know that privacy, confidentiality, availability, and transparency are important factors that keeps the customers around for a long time.

Reference List

Belcher, L. 2018. Target Market vs. Target Customer.

Leo, S. 2016. 6 Principles of Needs Analysis. 

Lindblad, M. 2018. Database Uses in Business.

Oswald, E. 2015. Pros & Cons of Using Credit Cards on the Internet.

Point, T. 2018. SDLC RAD Model.

SAS, I. 2018. Data Visualization: What it is and why it matters.

Thomas, T. 2016. Advantages of PHP.