Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
There are several different ways to direct market on
the web. Producers must, therefore, ensure that
the solution fits in with their overall marketing
plan, with their objectives for using the Internet,
and with their resource constraints.
There three are primary types of websites that an
individual producer can choose to develop:
Website to transact sales
Website to distribute information
Website to transact sales and distribute
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Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
Fundamentals – Objectives, Target
Markets, Products & Services
– Objectives of the organization
– Needs, wants, and expectations of
target markets
– Products and services that are being
offered.
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Planning, Designing &
Developing Your Website
Common Objectives
What is the purpose of your site?
Advertising products & services
Selling products & services
Providing customer service and product
support
Providing product or corporate information
Creating and establishing corporate identity
or brand awareness
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Planning, Designing & Developing Your
Website
Target Markets
It is important to define every one of
your target markets. For each one
you will need to determine:
– Their needs
– Their wants
– Their expectations
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Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
• Other Considerations
– The site should be designed to encourage
repeat traffic:
– The more your brand is reinforced,
– The more your target markets feel a part of
your community,
– The more likely they are to tell others
about you,
– The more likely they are to give you
permission to stay in touch,
– The more likely you will be the first in mind
when they go buy your types of
products/services
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Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
Web elements to keep them coming
back:
• Contests and competitions
• Cartoons, jokes, games
• Advice columns, tip of the day
• What’s New page
• Bookmark this page
• Calendar of events
• Blogs
• Online community
• Coupons, discounts
• Specials and promotions
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Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
Other Considerations
The site should have viral marketing elements that
encourage visitors to recommend your products or
services to others
Word of mouth (tell a friend, send this to a friend)
Pass it on (customers forwarding e-mails to a
friend)
Product or service based
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Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
The site should include elements to leverage its
sales force
– Affiliate or associate programs
The site should incorporate permission marketing,
in which visitors are encouraged to give you
permission to send them an e-mail on a regular
basis
– Newsletters
– Contests
– Notification of new giveaways
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Planning, Designing & Developing
Your Website
Pieces of the Site-building
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Building an E-commerce Web Site: A
Systematic Approach
Planning: the systems development life
cycle
Systems analysis: identify business
objectives, system functionality, and
information requirements
System design: hardware and software
platforms
Building the system: in-house vs.
Outsourcing
Testing the system
Implementation and maintenance 10
System Development
• System Development: The activities that go into producing an
information systems solution to an organizational problem or
opportunity
• Systems analysis: The analysis of a problem that the organization will
try to solve with an information system
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Planning:the Systems
Development Life Cycle
A methodology for understanding
the business objectives of any
system and designing an appropriate
solution
Systems analysis
Systems design
Building the system
Testing
Implementation
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Feasibility
• Determining whether a solution is achievable
given the organizational resources &
constraints
– Technical: Available technical resources
– Economic: costs vs. benefits ?
– Operational: fits the organization ?
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Systems Analysis: Identify Business
Objectives, System Functionality, and
Information Requirements
• Business objectives
– A list of capabilities you want your site to have
• System functionalities
– A list of types of information systems
capabilities you will need to achieve your
business objectives
• Information requirements
– The information elements that the system must
produce in order to achieve the business
objectives
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Information Requirements
• A detailed statement of the information needs that a
new system must satisfy
• Who needs what information, when, how?
• Basis for the system design: details how a new
system will meet requirements
– Logical design: Lays out the components of the
information system and their relationship to each other as
they would appear to users
– Physical design: The process of translating the abstract
logical model into the specific technical design for the new
system.
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System Design: Hardware and
Software Platforms
• System design specification
– Description of the main components in a
system and their relationship to one another
• Logical design
– Describes the flow of information at your e-
commerce site
– The processing functions that must be
performed
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System Design: Hardware and
Software Platforms
– The databases that will be used
– The security and emergency backup
procedures that will be instituted
– The controls that will be used in the
system
• Physical design
– Translates the logical design into physical
components
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Design Specifications
• Output: medium, content, timing
• Input: origins, low, data entry
• User interface: simplicity, efficiency, logic
• Database design: logical data relations
• Processing: computations, program modules
• Manual procedures: activities, performers, when
• Controls: input, processing, output, procedural
• Security: access, catastrophe plans, audit trails
• Documentation: operations, systems, user
• Conversion: transfer files, new procedures
• Training: techniques, modules, facilities
• Organizational changes: task, job, process redesigns
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Systems Analysis: Business Objectives,
System Functionality, and Information
Requirements
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A Logical and Physical Design for a
Simple Web Site
Simple Data Flow Diagram
This data flow diagram describes the flow of information requests and responses for a simple
Web site
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A Logical and Physical Design for
a Simple Web Site
Simple Physical Design
A physical design describes the hardware and software needed to realize the logical
design
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The Spectrum of Tools for Building
Your Own E-commerce Site
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Testing the System
• Unit testing
– Involves testing the site’s program
modules one at a time
• System testing
– Involves testing the site as a whole, in a
way the typical user will in using the site
• Acceptance testing
– Verifies that the business objectives of the
system as originally conceived are in fact
working
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Programming
• Testing: Determining whether the system
procedures the desired results
– Unit testing: Each program separately
– System testing: The whole system
– Acceptance testing: Final certification that the
system is ready
• Test plan: Preparation of tests and the order
in which they will be carried
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Conversion
• The process of changing from the old system to the new system
– Parallel strategy: old and new system run together
– Direct cutover strategy: The new system replaces the old
system completely
– Pilot study strategy: Limited area of the organization
– Phased approach strategy: Either by functions or by
organizational units
• Conversion plan: A schedule of all activities to install a new system
• Production: The stage after the new system is installed
• Maintenance: Changes in hardware, software, documentation, or
procedures
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Implementation and Maintenance
• Benchmarking
– A process in which the site is compared with
those of competitors in terms of response
speed, quality of layout, and design
• Maintenance is on-going
– 20% devoted to debugging code and
responding to emergency situations
– 20% concerned with changing reports, data
files, and links to backend databases
– 60% devoted to general administration and
making changes and enhancements to the
system
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Choosing Server Software
• System architecture
– Refers to the arrangement of software,
machinery, and tasks in an information system
needed to achieve a specific functionality
• Two-tier architecture
– A web server responds to requests for web
pages and a database server provides backend
data storage
• Multi-tier architecture
– A web server is linked to a middle-tier layer
that typically includes a series of application
servers that perform specific tasks, as well as
to a backend layer of existing corporate
systems
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Two-tier and Multi-tier E-
commerce Architectures
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Web Server Software
• Site management tools
– Verify that links on pages are still
valid and also identify orphan
files
• Dynamic page generation tools
– The contents of a web page are
stored as objects in a database,
rather than being hard-coded in
HTML
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Key Players in Web Server
Software
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Basic Functionality Provided by
Web Servers
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Web Application Servers
• Software programs that provide the
specific business functionality
required of a web site
• Include:
– Catalog display
– Transaction processing
– Audio/video server
– Auction server
– B2B server
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Application Servers and Their Function
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E-commerce Merchant Server
Software Functionality
• Software that provides the basic functionality
need for online sales, including:
– An online catalog that list products available on a
web site
– Order taking via an online shopping cart that allows
shoppers to set aside desired purchases in
preparation for checkout, review what they have
selected, edit their selections as necessary, and the
actually make the purchase by clicking a button
– Online credit card processing verifies the shopper’s
credit card and then puts through the debit to the
card
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Choosing the Hardware for an
E-commerce Site
• Hardware platform
– Refers to all the underlying computing equipment
that the system uses to achieve it e-commerce
functionality
• Stateless
– Refers to fact that the server does not have to
maintain an ongoing dedicated interaction with the
client
• I/O intensive
– Requires input/output operations rather than heavy-
duty processing power
• CPU intensive
– Operations that require a great deal of processing
power
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Visitor Profile at Typical
E-commerce Sites
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Tools for Interactivity and Active
Content
• Common gateway interface
– A set of standards for communication
between a browser and a program running
on a server that allows for interaction
between the user and the server
– Active server pages
– A proprietary software development tool
that enables programmers using
microsoft’s IIS package to build dynamic
pages
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Tools for Interactivity and Active
Content
• Java
– Is a programming language that allows
programmers to create interactivity and active
content on the client machine -- thereby saving
considerable load on the server
– Java server pages (JSP)
– Like CGI and ASP, a web page coding standard that
allows developers to dynamically generate web
pages in response to user requests
– Javascript
– A programming language invented by netscape that
is used to control the objects on an HTML page and
handle interactions with a browser
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Tools for Interactivity and Active
Content
• Active X
– A programming language created by microsoft
to compete with java
• Vbscript
– A programming language invented by microsoft
to compete with javascript
• Coldfusion
– An integrated server-side environment for
developing interactive web applications
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Personalization Tools
• Personalization
– The ability to treat customers base on
their personal qualities and prior
history with your site
• Customization
– The ability to change the product to
better fit the needs of the customer
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The Information Policy Set
• Privacy policy
– A set of public statements declaring to your
customers how you treat their personal
information that you gather on the site
• Accessibility rules
– A set of design objectives that ensure disabled
users can effectively access your site
• Financial reporting policies
– Statement declaring how you will account for
revenues and costs at your site
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