Posting some of the assignment requirements and planning frameworks from the facilitator
A good way to begin a web project is to consider that you need to:
- Have a complete understanding of how the site/store needs to function, what limits and restrictions are there, etc.
- Use case scenarios to make sure both the development team, of which you are part, and the client understand the functionality, look and feel and features of the site. Make sure everyone comes to an agreement.
- Identify the budget and resources available for the project.
- Identify the Schedule Requirements.
- Identify Internal and External Dependencies such as
- Communication with External Networks and Databases
- External Customer Interactions and Communications
- Have sign-Off Teams.
Managing the Project
Here's a list of additional design elements that will increase the sites usability:
- Make sure to integrate your project team. According to the project Management Institute (PMI), most projects fail due to poor integration.
- Assemble the team for a Kick-Off
- Don't forget quality assurance (QA), information technology (IT), Marketing, Release Management Folks
- Establish Roles and Responsibilities
- Schedule regular team meetings to review
- Task lists
- Schedule
- Issues that need to be resolved, etc
- Put together a Schedule of tasks including:
- Time to write specs, test plans, test cases
- Development time
- Quality assurance
- Release Management
- Marketing
- Training Tasks
- Usability Studies
- Beta Testing
- Site Update Process
- Milestones
- Give team members their first assignments
The Team
When setting up your teams, typically you will have:
- Someone from Marketing or Product Management driving the requirements
- A Project Manager managing the daily tasks and tracking the schedules
- Developers, which should include architects, software and database professionals
- Designer
- Release Managers (building and posting updates to Dev, QA, Stage, Production Servers)
- IT Engineers to assist with network-related requirements
Now, the list above is far from comprehensive. Can you think of any other team members? Depending on your budget and the deadlines you have, this team may be 1 person or 100!
Competitive Strategy Concepts to Consider
I have listed a number of issues that I feel link the site to the competitive positioning of the firm. Remember that a web site should not only reflect the image of the firm and the 7 Cs that we discussed earlier but also relate directly to the firm’s strategy. Here are some strategy issues to consider when designing the site.
- WHAT POSITION DO WE WANT "TO OWN" IN THE MARKETPLACE?
- WHO IS THE COMPETITION?
- SIMILAR MARKETS? SIMILAR PRODUCTS? SIMILAR INDUSTRY?
- WHO IS THE COMPETITION WEB AND NON-WEB BASED?
- WHAT ARE YOUR COMPETITIVE STRENGTHS?
- WHAT IS THE LONG TERM CONDITION OF THE MARKETPLACE?
- CAN WE TAKE THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE MARKETPLACE AS A GIVEN AND MATCH OUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES TO IT?
- WHAT RESOURCES DO WE HAVE TO COUNTER COMPETITION
- WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF OUR WEB SITE
- TO THE CONSUMER?
- IN CONTRAST TO THE COMPETITION?
- TO SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNERS?
- CAN YOU BUILD A DISTINGUISHABLE ELEMENT IN STRATEGY THAT WILL SET YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE/BRAND APART FROM COMPETITORS?
- CAN YOU DEVELOP OR TAKE AWAY COMPETITOR’S BRAND LOYALTY?
- WHAT ARE THE RESOURCES THAT OUR COMPANY WILL REQUIRE OVER THE YEAR? WHEN WOULD WE EXPECT PROFITABILITY?
- DO WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE TO INTEGRATE OUR COMPANY INTO THE INTERNET ENVIRONMENT? WHAT WOULD BE NECESSARY FOR MAINTENANCE? FOR GROWTH?
- TO WHAT EXTENT WILL WE BE INTERNET PURE? WHAT SERVICES/COMPONENTS WILL WE RELY ON OTHER THAN WEB SOURCES?
Designing Your Site
When you're done with your site mapping, you are then ready to begin designing your site. Start by reviewing the requirements and site map documents you developed. Your Web site should be designed with:
- Usability, functionality, visibility, use of colors, shapes, graphics, load speed, traffic requirements, etc.
- The appropriate user level
- Maximum utilization of search engines
- Realistic expectations, something that developers can actually develop!
- The ability to enable QA to test it with automated testing tools
- Features that enables book-marking pages on the site working as expected
- The ability to work well with the colors and fonts of the company or product logo.
Now, when designing your site, keep in mind that:
- You want to be able to update the content easily without disrupting service
- You may have to localize your Web site to other countries/languages
- You want a cool looking site that is not boring
- It is easier if you establish a standard page layout for all pages to follow.
When developing your site maps, try to keep the hierarchy of your site relatively horizontal. You should not have more than 7-10 primary categories of pages on your site menu. You should also be able to reach almost any page on the site with a few mouse clicks. If you take the time to categorize properly, you can achieve this. Download the web design sheets and begin to draft out your site.
Click here to download web design sheets.
Now consider easy ways to traverse the site map tree to reach related topics. Your sketch of the site should look something like this with each page filled in for graphics and text.
More on Site Design
Also, remember:
- To utilize some common standard elements on each page, such as:
- Links to Home Page on all primary pages
- Email Webmaster link
- Links to site map
- Privacy policy
- Licensing info
- Help section, etc.
- Be considerate of low vision users (contrast and colors can make a big difference)
- Very Important: Make sure it is obvious to the user how they can contact someone to purchase your products or ask questions about them.
Last but not least, have someone review your design for:
- Look and Feel
- Usability
- Functionality
- Complimentary Colors and Themes
- And update as you see fit.
Try to think about the items that we have discussed that contribute to a site's success. Click here for some web site success factors and try to identify key issues under each heading.
How did you do? Were you able to identify issues under each heading? Check your answers by clicking on the headings below.
A Bit More about Site Design
Are we ready now to begin development? Well there are a few more important items to consider while you are under development:
- All development tasks should be documented in a specification document
- By analyzing the requirements your team should be able to assemble a comprehensive set of specification documents.
- What items do you feel should be included in this document? Some include:
- Database Schema including tables, indexes, default settings, etc.
- Database coding (Stored procedures, interfaces)
- Front-End Web Page Development
- Back-End Scripting and Coding
- Server-Side Applications, DLL's, etc.
- External Entities:
- Interface with Shopping Cart Software
- Getting an SSL Certificate
- Credit Card Processing Services
- Shipping Carriers and Rates
- Inventory Database
- Order Processing Systems
- Don't forget to have a signoff from as many parties in the firm as possible. Remember operations may love the way you show the products but marketing could dislike the customer interface. The CEO may love his picture on the home page but advertising may believe the space could be better utilized.
Labels: Project requirements
posted by David @ 09:50
1 Comments
1 Comments:
and we have how long to get all this done???
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