TASK SHEET ASSIGNMENT TWO (WEBSITE PLAN)

Transcription

1 TASK SHEET ASSIGNMENT TWO (WEBSITE PLAN) Assignment Description The second assignment is for the most part, a plan for your business concept and its associated website and online marketing strategy. It is basically a business plan with some technical aspects that detail how a website can benefit your specific business and how the website will look, feel, and run. Essentially, you are trying to sell someone on the idea of having a website created for a particular business where you are the website creator and administrator. You could be pitching the idea to the business owner (if not you) or you could be pitching the idea to a panel of your colleagues and team members (if you are the business owner or somehow aligned with the business). Either way, think of the Website Plan as a pitch to a potential client or a team of your colleagues, showing off your knowledge of the core business and the business s specific goals, describing how websites can potentially increase market share and most importantly, providing evidence of your prowess in website design, administration, and successfully utilising social media marketing techniques. It is a pitch that ultimately promotes the purchase of a website (designed and administered by you) or the creation of a website that you will take a large role in, where the website and its associated online marketing strategies can greatly assist a business achieve specific goals, increase their market share, and ultimately their profit margins. Due Date Friday Week 7 (6 th September), 5.00pm. Weighting 35%. Submission Process Submit a printed copy of your assignment into the Library. Your assignment should have a title page and also a completed Griffith University assignment cover sheet. The Griffith University cover sheet will be attached to the front (i.e. it is the first page). You will also submit an electronic copy of your assignment to Safe Assign. You will be given the opportunity to submit drafts to Safe Assign prior to the due date. The teaching team will provide more details regarding this process during week 4.

2 Word Length The website plan needs to be more than 2000 words and cannot exceed 3500 words. Referencing Style The referencing style will be APA. You can find out how to do this on by using the resource bank. I will also provide you with a document on the guidelines. Ideas To Get You Moving 1. You need an idea (a business concept you going to create a website for). You should already have something going here as it is heavily linked to Assignment One (The Expression of Interest). Your idea could have relevance to and be focussed on your degree major (i.e. hotel, event, tourism, sports management) but it is not mandatory, you are free to choose a business concept that you have a passion for if you like. 2. Without an idea or some sort of business concept, you have no starting point. So move quickly here and run your idea by your tutor so you know you are on the right track. 3. You will also need a name for your idea or business as this allows you to generate a domain name and subsequent website address (for example; If you are struggling to come up with a name for your idea or business concept, do not worry too much. It is only really relevant when you start to create your website however; it would be nice to have in your website plan and would help you come up with a title for your report. 4. INTRODUCTION: To start your report or website plan, write a short introduction describing what the report will focus on. Lead the reader into the report. You should also take this opportunity to impart some of your new found knowledge on how business is changing in the face of an increasingly connected digital environment (you know the sort of stuff we have been talking about in lectures). Always provide evidence to back up your statements if you make any broad, sweeping comments on this sort of stuff (i.e. tourism, sports industries, leisure industries, business marketing trends, or any comments on why websites are now essential business tools). You must provide evidence to back up anything you write that would most likely have some previous information available and also when you are using someone else s ideas, speech, or published work. Use journal articles, newspaper articles, text books, website articles to back you comments up. Use Google Scholar for this (not Google) and ensure you always reference the original author(s). This section is worth 10 marks (out of the 100 on offer in the marking criteria) so do not skimp here and put in a decent effort. 5. BUSINESS BACKGROUND: You need to write about the background to the business or idea. Detail what it is the business actually does (what product or service does it provide). Detail what makes the business special, what makes it stand out from its competitors (it value proposition and why it is unique). Also detail the location of the business if it does in fact have a physical location. Provide as much information as you think is required in order to get the business idea across and so your tutors and markers know what you are talking about.

3 6. BUSINESS GOALS: You now need to write about the goals of the business or concept. Be specific here. Your goals should be specific, realistic, measureable, and have a due date (i.e. Increase the business s weekly profit from $1500 to $2000 over a 6-month period (the 6-month period to start from June 30 th 2013 and will end on December 30 th 2013). Ultimately you are trying to define what your business is trying to achieve (in terms of market share, profits, public exposure, positive public perception, number of members, booking rates, occupancy rates etc etc etc). Your business may have a number of business goals however; this will differ based on the underlying concept. Please give me at least three specific business goals in this section. 7. WEBSITE GOALS: Your website goals are closely linked to your business goals (as your website and online marketing strategy should be heavily linked to your business s overall aims), however, they are not the same. Remember this. It is important. DO NOT just copy your business goals and paste them in this section (it might sound funny but it happens all the time and you will get zero for this section if you do this). Your website goals should detail how your website (and the associated online social media) will assist your business achieve its overall business goals. Depending on your idea or business concept, your website may aim to share information, promote your brand, focus on rapid communication of specific information, foster collaboration, generate a sense of community, provide easily accessible ways to purchase your product or service online, etc. The website goals will differ from idea to idea, and should relate well and provide a means to achieve the original business goals. An example of a website goal (linked to a business goal of increasing brand awareness) could go something like this: Increase the number of unique visitors to our company s website to 25 per day by December An example of a website goal (linked to a business goal of increasing the ease with which clients can either book or buy your products or services online) could be: Increase the volume of purchases occurring online to 25% by December There are a lot of website goals you can come up with that will suit your business concept and also link extremely well to your overall business goals. Please give me at least three specific website goals in this section. 8. TARGET AUDIENCE: Now you can put forward your knowledge on your company s target audience, clientele, or targeted clientele you (and your idea or business concept) are trying to capture. Again be specific here. Talk ages, socioeconomic status, demographic location, amount of disposable income, mobile phone preferences, Internet usage preferences, anything you already know or can find out about your target audience. The more you know about your target audience, the better you can tailor your products and services and furthermore, the better you can tailor your mix of traditional and online marketing techniques. I will show you a number of reliable sources offering this type of information and more in the lectures, however, in the meantime, see if you can find out some of this information yourselves using targeted Internet searches. 9. FORECASTED USE ENVIRONMENTS: This is the section of your report where you define the use environment specific to your target audience or market. For example, what sort of computing environment do they predominantly use, would they normally access online information whilst on the move or at home (i.e. I-Phones and wireless networks or home-based PC s respectively). Explain how the business takes into account all those factors (target audience information and possible use environments), is therefore structured to attract that particular market, and how the business s online resources will be managed as a result. 10. COMPETITOR WEBSITE ANALYSIS: You now need to do an analysis of your competitor s websites (not the business themselves, but their actual websites). Find websites that are promoting similar business ideas or concepts and describe what you think is good and what is bad about these websites (talk about things like colour schemes, ease of access to information and user tasks, website layouts, the amount

4 of white space, the amount of clutter, anything you think is worth mentioning). You need to describe which of the ideas associated with these particular websites you will take on board and utilise in your own website (the good) and which parts will you leave out (the bad). You then need to state your reasoning behind these decisions. This is a good place to use a table in your document. It keeps the information brief and to the point and also breaks up the document style. Sometimes a document full of test can be tiring to read. 11. WEBSITE TEMPLATE DESIGNS: Now you need to actually show the reader how the website will look and feel and how certain website aspects will be included. This is where you will describe (and also display) your website templates (how will they will look and be constructed). You will need to provide a template for the home page layout, the normal page layout, and the post page layout (as you will be required to use posts in your website in order to showcase your technical skill in this area). I will show you, in the lectures, different ways of displaying your templates in diagrammatic form within your document (by using word document boxes, images, and if you have got your website to a certain point by this stage, a screen capture of your actual website pages). Note: You also need to provide specific details about the design of the website template (i.e. template width in pixels, banner logo width and height in pixels, image width and height in pixels, font type, font size, the colour scheme you plan to use etc.). These sort of specifics assist the reader in gaining a full understanding about the website you are pitching them. They also show that you are aware of the importance of attention to detail. You may also like to add images in the template that will help create a good display of the overall theme for the website. A logo might also be appropriate but is not essential in the plan. Remember, the more detail, the better. A pitch of this sort should provide the reader with a good understanding of how the website will look so spend some time on this section. 12. WEBSITE STORYBOARD / CONTENT: You now need to detail exactly how the different sections of your website will be organised and how the page hierarchy will be constructed. This is where you add in a storyboard or sitemap (an image, textbased, or box-based description of how the pages will link together and how the menu system will provide users access to every page). Try not to use more than three levels your website. Why? Because no-one wants to spend ages finding what they want on your company s site and most people will not go past three clicks in order to get somewhere on any website. Clean, simple websites that are easy to navigate are the most successful. Again I will show you different ways to generate a storyboard in word in lectures and tutorials. In the same section you can elaborate on the simple storyboard representation of your website s layout by providing some additional detail on the sort of type of information you will be placing on the website (i.e. THE ACTUAL CONTENT). For example, provide a short paragraph that elaborates on how it will be organised on your website (i.e. content is broken up into six sections covering the business info, product descriptions, pricing structures, transaction sections, community areas, contact details etc). You could also detail the actual content (text and images if you like) that you will include on each different page of your site (i.e. what is going to be included on the about page, the product or services page, the booking or purchasing page, the community page, the latest promotions page, the contact page etc) and include it into your website plan. There is a fair amount of flexibility here so talk to your tutor to see if what you have in mind will work. This section not only shows that you have an emphasis on attention to detail but if you put in some effort here, you can just copy and paste the content into your actual website when you create it in the next assignment. 13. USER TASKS / WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS: You then need to write about the 'user tasks' (what can users actually do from your website. For example, download specific forms, book accommodation, tickets or reservations online, make comments, make reviews, chat, view galleries, make purchases, be automatically linked to payment areas, be automatically linked to anything else you think would be

5 useful for the users of your website). follow this up immediately with information on the tools with which you will generate the website. You need to describe the tools you will use to pull all these user tasks together (i.e. Wordpress is a tool you will be using, you may use a PayPal plug-in to take care of the transactions, you may use a Flickr or Cincopa plug-in to display product images in creative ways, you may use different sorts of image link plug-ins or social media widgets to create links between your website and specific social media applications, you may use You-Tube plug-ins or links for video, you may use mailing widgets to automatically update your users when new information is posted on your site etc). Think outside the box here. Be creative in how you achieve specific user tasks. 14. PROCESS ANALYSIS: This section is where you will detail who the website will be owned by and who will be the primary authors and administrators. Someone owns the website, someone owns the information, someone maintains the whole thing (get the idea?). The most important component of this section, however, is the information you provide detailing things like how often the website will be updated, who deals with ed comments and how often this will occur, who deals with the purchasing orders and how often is this dealt with, who deals with the day to day maintenance of the website, how often will new content or promotions be uploaded to the site, how often will you link new information on your website to your social media pages, who monitors the online chatter of all your social media pages, how do they respond to comments, will client s / fan s comments be moderated in some way (if so how will this work) etc. etc. etc. There is a lot you can talk about here but the bottom line is that you need to be specific about all these things. We will talk about it more in lectures and tutorials as well to help you along. 15. MARKETING TECHNIQUES: How you will direct people (potential clients) to your website. This should be a solid section as it is extremely important. A website is useless if no-one knows it is there. Will you use a targeted social media campaign (utilising social platforms such as Face book, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Vimeo, You Tube etc) or will you use more traditional marketing techniques (newspaper advertisements, pamphlets, stickers, t-shirts, street advertising, sports advertising etc). If you plan on using both, what sort of mix will you use and why. Provide some evidence on why you would do any of these things (i.e. link it into you target audience information, your use environment information, and your underlying business and website goals). Something to think about for this section, would you consider search engine optimisation (working on ways to increase your business s visibility on the first page of different search engines) a marketing technique? If you would, how do you plan on achieving this. We will talk about this in lectures also. 16. CONCLUSION: Finish your report up with a conclusion. Always finish your assignments with a conclusion. Always. Remember, this is a business pitch so in a few sentences make a very strong argument as to why this website will achieve the goals it has set out to deal with and why a business should hire you to create and administer this particular website. This is your last chance to seel your idea. 17. REFERENCES: Last page is always a reference page. Don t forget it as it is easy marks and shows the markers that you have a good understanding and respect for copyright and creative commons issues.

6 Headings This Assignment Should Possess 1. Introduction 2. Business Background 3. Business Goals 4. Website Goals 5. Target Audience 6. Forecasted Use Environments 7. Competitor Website Analysis 8. Website Template Designs 9. Website Storyboard / Content 10. User Tasks 11. Development Tools 12. Process Analysis 13. Marketing Techniques 14. Conclusion 15. References Important Final Points 1. Open up a word doc, save it to your H-Drive as Information Systems Assignment One. 2. Type the headings provided above straight into a word document. 3. You can elaborate on these headings. It will make it easier for you to begin writing. 4. There is nothing worse than finding yourself in the situation where you are staring at a blank word document a couple of nights out form the assignment due date. 5. So get started now. 6. You can use dot points and / or tables in some sections to minimise your word count however, make sure everything is done in a professional manner and is easy for the reader to follow. 7. Keep your report neat, clean, and tidy. Make it look good. Style is important here too. You need to make the reader want to keep reading your proposal. 8. Make sure you always back up your work on an external USB hard drive. 9. Use the marking criteria provided on Learning@GU to ensure you have added everything the markers want into your report. Use it like a check list. 10. Creating a PDF document from your completed WORD document is a good way to lock everything down and make the document impervious to alterations (no-one can alter what you have written and nothing can move around which can sometimes happen when you have a lot of images, tables, and diagrams in a WORD document). That is all I can think of guys. All the best. Talk soon. Jason Harding.