Next Week Tele-conference ???

Hey everyone...

I know the next few days are probably going to be filled with turkey, football, and (for those brave souls) shopping....but I was curious if everyone still wanted to get together on a tele-conference and hash out some of the details. If so, I'll just need a couple of days notice so I can work my flying schedule around it. As of now I am available anytime Monday, and can free up any other days/times as necessary. Hope everyone has a great Holiday !!!

Gobble...Gobble...

Matt

PS...Dave...way to spearhead this Blog...it's awesome !

Each Team is On Their Own

Have you seen latest post by our facilitator in the discussion site? Here is what he says:

There are three groups in the section. So there will be three website.

Each group will do the same “static website for the College Text Book Market”. There is no group/team collaboration.

Each group/team will have their own website. Each team should pick a leader.

Each team will have their own website directory.

Hope this explains it.

Shah

I think this will help us have a better picture of what we need to accomplish.

Also, please note that we are no longer going to do the case studies (yeah!). We are to rate each of our classmate's blogs on a form he has posted and email it to him by Monday.

Positions

To keep this thing flowing (and I’m not trying to step on anyone), we should go ahead and formalize our positions within the group. My thought on team responsibilities is that while we are all responsible for each step of the project, we need to pin a “functional area” tail on each member in order to keep this project running efficiently and successfully. I would also figure – unless I misunderstand the intent of the project – that each functional area member would be responsible for cross-team communication with their counterparts in the other two groups.

Thus, I submit this excel spreadsheet for review by all. The positions I have indicated are the ones suggested by our facilitator. Also, since none of us have worked together before (i.e., we only have each other’s word with regard to a functional area proficiency), I figured that the best way to assign responsibilities would be to use some impartial formula. For example, once we have agreed (or disagreed) to the project team roles, we can start going down the list alphabetically (or reverse alphabetically) picking positions. Each person could post their choice on the blog in order to ensure an orderly process. Anyway, that’s just my take. Not trying to squish anyone here.

D

P.S. Please refer to your email inboxes for an example of the positions with some position descriptions attached.

Final Proj Competitors

Cynthia’s “BU Web Site Project” email distilled:

Links to relevant web-site examples

1. http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com/IM/?gclid=CN7ho6C_2YgCFR4QGgodujM4jA

This Web site is not really an online retailer, but a search engine. (Something to keep in mind the next time we have to buy textbooks. Check out these prices!)

2.http://www.ecampus.com/textbookpage.asp?A=225&gclid=CMrtvOzA2YgCFRgfUAodRShmew

This website also purchases used textbooks (good to know).

3. http://www.textbooks.com/HomeA.php

4. http://www.bigwords.com/

This Web site is interesting because it includes a place where you can blog about the book (see next page).

5. The other in the top searches for text books:

https://www.varsitybooks.com/(he3zhsfcyf4jh445j5wjuxjq)/Default.aspx

Frankly, I like the look of this particular site best. It doesn’t seem so cheesy or look like something trying to appeal to grade school students!

This Web site appears to be selling text books for private schools – see list of schools below for Massachusetts schools. See also – bottom right corner above – this site includes a video.

This site partners with Office Depot to sell school supplies – more of a factor for secondary schools than for universities.

http://www.collegebooksdirect.com/default.jsp?id=google&gclid=CN7-os3H2YgCFRMWFQodhgYxow

This Web site (above) appears to sell used books only, but it has a nice look to it. Also – includes Customer Service.

Here are the Web site links if you want to check out Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If this particular document gets any larger, I won’t be able to send it by email attachment.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=465600

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/index.asp?z=y&pers=n

Here’s one more:

http://www.powells.com/booksforstudents.html

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:

1. Have a complete understanding of how the site/store needs to function, what limits and restrictions are there, etc.
2. 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.
3. Identify the budget and resources available for the project.
4. Identify the Schedule Requirements.
5. Identify Internal and External Dependencies such as
• Communication with External Networks and Databases
• External Customer Interactions and Communications
6. Have sign-Off Teams.

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780587&subtopic=1&s=yes

Managing the Project

Here's a list of additional design elements that will increase the sites usability:

1. 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
2. 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
3. Give team members their first assignments

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780588&subtopic=1&s=yes

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!

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780589&subtopic=1&s=yes

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.

1. WHAT POSITION DO WE WANT "TO OWN" IN THE MARKETPLACE?
2. WHO IS THE COMPETITION?
1. SIMILAR MARKETS? SIMILAR PRODUCTS? SIMILAR INDUSTRY?
3. WHO IS THE COMPETITION WEB AND NON-WEB BASED?
4. WHAT ARE YOUR COMPETITIVE STRENGTHS?
5. WHAT IS THE LONG TERM CONDITION OF THE MARKETPLACE?
6. CAN WE TAKE THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE MARKETPLACE AS A GIVEN AND MATCH OUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES TO IT?
7. WHAT RESOURCES DO WE HAVE TO COUNTER COMPETITION
8. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF OUR WEB SITE
1. TO THE CONSUMER?
2. IN CONTRAST TO THE COMPETITION?
3. TO SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNERS?
9. CAN YOU BUILD A DISTINGUISHABLE ELEMENT IN STRATEGY THAT WILL SET YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE/BRAND APART FROM COMPETITORS?
10. CAN YOU DEVELOP OR TAKE AWAY COMPETITOR’S BRAND LOYALTY?
11. WHAT ARE THE RESOURCES THAT OUR COMPANY WILL REQUIRE OVER THE YEAR? WHEN WOULD WE EXPECT PROFITABILITY?
12. DO WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE TO INTEGRATE OUR COMPANY INTO THE INTERNET ENVIRONMENT? WHAT WOULD BE NECESSARY FOR MAINTENANCE? FOR GROWTH?
13. TO WHAT EXTENT WILL WE BE INTERNET PURE? WHAT SERVICES/COMPONENTS WILL WE RELY ON OTHER THAN WEB SOURCES?

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780591&subtopic=1&s=yes

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.

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780593&subtopic=1&s=yes

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.

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780594&subtopic=1&s=yes

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.

http://ilmsim.embanet.com/data/p.cfm?course=METTM648_FA06_G&lesson=31334621&topic=10780595&subtopic=1&s=yes

Questions to Consider

Agree that your idea is worth considering. Basically, the students would be renting the text books instead of purchasing them. Since you asked for us to play devil's advocate, here are some questions to consider:

How would this concept tie in the professors? The assignment requires that we have a text book company for students and professors.

How would this company make money? The turnaround for a DVD is a lot quicker than the turnaround for a text book.

What about the books that can't be reused because the professor decided to go with an updated version (which happens a lot)?

business tactic

I'm throwing this idea out there...please play the role of devil's advocate and remember...this is a stepping stone and an idea.

Tell me what you guys think about having a business model similar to Netflix...
- Instead of spending tons and tons of money buying a new book only to sell it back for less than 10% of what you purchased it for...why not have a service that is similar to netflix. It links up to the different school curriculums and class offerings, automatically sends you all the books you need via mail at the "used price" and once you're done using them, you just send them right back in a box back to us. Plus, we'll add an incentive for sending the books back (like 10% off the next semester or something like that).

So if a new book costs $100, the used price will cost you $50
Instead of selling it back to the school for $10 and netting a cost of $90, you'd still save b/c you only spent $50 on the book. Let's say we get 30% of the books back, we can continue to re-use those books and continue to 'rent' those out at the $50 price, eventhough they may be slightly used. Granted, the used book price should be competitive and not be more than the on-campus bookstore.

As far as advertising goes, we can tie in with Myspace and Facebook. Both websites allow you to add your school and list the classes you're taking. So when you pick the classes you're taking you'll be shown a 'pop up' window for My-books.com with a message that reads "order your e-commerce books for Boston University now at half the price".