Bens Online Fashion Shop - Case Study Example

Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 E-commerce web sites 4 Internal hosting of the web site 5 Alternatives to self-hosting 6 Website development process 6 Website / Application Requirements Outline 6 Feasibility analysis 6 Waterfall model 7 Analysis / Requirements-Gathering 8 System requirements definition 9 FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS 9 Non-functional requirements 9 System Requirements 9 Design 9 Input design 10 Architectural designs 12 Interface 16 Evaluation of the new site and the success of the project 16 Marketing of the website 17 Disaster recovery plans 18 The web site that will be created will be found on http://benfashion.simplesite.com, it will be an online store for selling cloths. The business is in fashion and clothing industry which is very competitive. To be able to gain competitive advantage the store will be set up to reach its targeted market. Traditional business communication used to be face-to-face and later telephones but technological advancement, there are new form of communication in business. Software developers are coming up with different communication applications that are significant in business transactions. New information technology communication such as the internet gives business different new ways of selling and buying process (Huber, 1989). E-commerce is doing business online. E-commerce is one of the fastest growing online retail segments in the internet. Currently there are many online stores worldwide while there are 20,000 new e-commerce storefronts every week. To be able to come up with an online store one must clearly come up with a business plan. The question of how much capital should be well planned. The type of business is also key success whether it is a sole proprietorship or a partnership. There are many ways of setting up online stores. E-commerce platforms can be provided by professionals to set up and run an online store for you or one can decide set up an online system and run it. The new technology has four characteristics which give them an advantage over the traditional methods. They have high storage capacity of data and transmission speed with faster access to the storage devices. The second characteristic is that new information communications technology offer a shared space where groups or individuals who otherwise could not have accessed similar store or products can do so effectively. The ability to reach many targets in dissemination of information a single web page can be accessed by many people worldwide concurrently. The fourth point is that electronic communication improves with time breaking the barrier of geographical location. The above characteristics have impacted on many businesses which have embraced new information communication technologies. New communications have been adopted into the business culture. Businesses are choosing new internet technology not because they are available but based on their needs. Determining the reasons for using new internet platform is very important. The impact of a given technology to business must be established and have measurable objectives. Choosing the best information communication technology platform that complements business objectives is very important. The target population is an important consideration when selecting an electronic communication media. The characteristics of the customers in relation to use of internet access and use are vital. New technologies that require constant connectivity should be carefully selected, the business should consider its network infrastructure. The website to be designed should have pre-determined and predefined content that it will be able to host. The business perspectives that are to accomplished by the web site should be we stated with measurable outcomes. Some of the outcomes may involve increasing sales of the business by a given number. The target audience is also another metrics to measure the success of e-commerce. The most important question will be about how to do internet marketing to attain the objectives. E-commerce web sites There are several issues that a business person has to consider in setting up online store. The first and most important is the how to host the website the website can be self/internal y hosted. This means that the business has enough infrastructures to set up their own servers and host the website. The other alternative is to host the web site using third parties. These are companies that are specialized web hosting and related services. This report will look at the two methods of hosting our e-commerce web site. Internal hosting of the web site Internal web hosting requires the business to have ICT infrastructure in place. The requirements for internal web hosting include hardware platform which means the processor, storage, networking, webmasters and network administrators to be able to offer quality maintenance services. There should be suitable operating system and web server software. An online business requires that the server hardware be very fast in responding to queries. The storage devices should be scalable since e-commerce can grow very fast with many clients this means larger storage capacity. Linux operating system it is an open source software hence the best operating system in e-commerce. The open source OS will also facilitate getting open source software to run the website. in this case we will use. This operating system will enable us to install open source software hence minimizing the cost. Apache/PHP and MYSQL will be used. The organization will also need to be staffed with experts who understand web server technology very well. If the company does internal hosting it will have other services such as electronic mail services and remote file transfers. The company can also use this system to host websites from other companies. Since the company will have enough experts in web services it will be able to offer many products. It can also be a business opportunity if the company has more than enough space it can host for other businesses. This will reduce the cost of running the infrastructure. Internal hosting of the website requires update of the hardware and software frequently. Securing the internal network by enforcing security measures is another service that should be done after hosting the website internally. Alternatives to self-hosting Internal hosting is not the only way of having an e-commerce web site up and running. If the company considers the cost of setting up the infrastructure plus the hiring the experts is higher then, external hosting is required. Hosting by another company provides experienced services. They already have infrastructure in place and support team which is available throughout 24/7. External hosting always has more than one server in case of failure by one server the system is switched to the servers. The cost of hosting the website if flexible depending on the demand of the company and reduces budget of the IT department. From the above two Website development process Website / Application Requirements Outline Feasibility analysis This is the first stage in system analysis and design and it is the most critical one in the development of the website. It is the analysis of the project to be done if it is achievable. The process also involves evaluating input, output and processing requirements. Other requirements to be evaluated include the required technical analysis, Cost analysis benefits and schedules of the project. Technical analysis looks at the available software tools, hardware and professionals who will use the technology. The following are four major steps in feasibility analysis a. analysis of project requirement b. cost benefit analysis c. technical feasibility d. feasibility report Waterfall model Waterfall model integrated with Iterative model was used. It was selected since it ensures that the project is designed in stages where each stage is complete before moving to the next one. This reduces scope creep since all the requirements needed are exhausted before moving to design stage. Iteration ensures that the website will be upgraded regularly to meet the innovations and emerging trends in a dynamic technology area. Fig 1. Waterfall model Analysis / Requirements-Gathering Software requirement specification is the second stage which include; collecting of the requirements from the stakeholders, analyzing and validating the requirements. This step also provides the schedule of the project on how each task will be accomplished. This stage is where stakeholders give their requirements. They respond to questions asked by the system analyst about what they want the system to do for them. This stage answers the questions “what” and “why”. The information can be gathered using different methods such as observation, discovery meetings, answering of the questions and reviews of the current system. In this case Ben’s online fashion store wants to migrate the old system from external host to internal host. They also want to have an additional module developed which will allow clients to purchase products online. System requirements definition FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS This describes what the system should do, the functional requirements for the project are: a. User information is captured into the system b. Clients should be able to place orders of products online c. Validate payment details of the farmers Non-functional requirements a. Users should be able to register and log into the system within minimum time possible b. The system should provide a good user interface System Requirements a. The system should be Pentium IV with 2.4 GHZ and above of the processor speed. b. At least 20GB hard disk c. Windows XP or higher version or Linux OS Design This is the implementation of the requirement specification of the system. Logical and physical models are designed I this stage. The new website will be designed based on new requirements. This begins the iterative process of: Input design The design below shows how users interact with the system while inputting data. The clients after browsing through the products once they want to buy the must have an account. They are required to register or log in if they have an existing account. Once they are logged in they can now place orders and pay for the products. Fig 2. Input design Processing design Fig 3. Flow chart for processing of data Architectural designs The design of the system is a description of the structure of the software to be implemented,the data, and the interfaces between the system components. The design of the system involves identification and formulation of data flow diagrams which constitute architectural design model and data structure for the application. The above architecture ensures that clients securely purchase items from the website and at the same time protecting the site against malicious people. Database specification Database structure of Ben’s online fashion store will be MySQL. a. Conceptual model The conceptual model is designed from a high level description of the entity relationship diagrams. From the previous design phases and flow charts it can be established that the following are the entities in the system 1. Clients of Ben’s online fashion store 2. Staff of the company 3. Product orders b. Logical model This is the logical schema of the database to be developed. The entity relation table are used in designing the logical model. The goal of the schema is to normalize the tables to remove redundancy in the database to ensure that the database is stable, flexible and scalable. c. physical model Fig 5. Physical design Use case of the user Fig 6. Use case of user placing an order of fashion item Use case Description View catalog Actors: Customer The customer browses the catalog to see different products and order what he/she needs Validate Customer Actor: System The system validate the user once they log into the system by checking the password and user name used. Track order Actors: Staff and Customer The two actors track the order in all stages during processing, packaging, shipping and delivery. Ship order Actors: Staff The staff use the provided address by the customer to ship the ordered products Establish account Actors: staff and system The system validates the account details input by the customer. The staff also evaluate the account details to ensure that the customer has enough money to purchase the product. Table 1 use case description Interface This is the sample interface of the women dress. The site has its menus on the left side. With the number of visitors which shows how many have visited the site. Evaluation of the new site and the success of the project The achievement of the main goals and objectives of the project are best indicators of the success of a project. The main objective of this project was to design e-commerce website for fashion store which will be hosted externally. The other objective was to develop an additional application for online purchase of the product. The most important goal was to ensure that the e-commerce site is up and running. The performance of a website can be evaluated with the following checklists. The usability of the website implies that the website is easy to use and users are impressed with the interface. This can be tested by carrying out a survey if the users like the site and would like to use it again. Navigation, is how easy the uses move from one page to another to get what they want. The content of the website can also be used to evaluate the performance if the users are satisfied with what they wanted. Browser compatibility can also be used to measure the performance to the website.. the overall performance of a website can be measured by evaluating the number of users using the website and successfully placing their orders. Marketing of the website Television, radio and print media were the traditional way of marketing a business. With rapidly growth of online business, there are many tools of communication that can be used for marketing that are accessed easily by consumers and merchandisers. New technologies have been adapted by many in the industry where most of them are gaining competitive advantage. The main online communication tools that will be used include internet Facebook, Twitter, Google+, online catalogues, YouTube, Corporate Blogs, and chat groups. Currently fashion industry is gaining presence in the social media. The use of the social internet marketing has increased sales revenues, wider market audience reach, more cost-effective advertising and promotions, improved brand awareness and reputation, and improved customer relationship according to studies in other online stores. Disaster recovery plans Having internal hosting is critical because you do not have anyone else to blame for failure of the system. Internet is a place where disasters can strike in different dimension. There can be major dictators such as hacking and fraud. Simple but significant disasters such as power cuts and prolonged internet downtime can also occur. Regular backup of data is one of the methods to ensure that the organization is covered in the event that a disaster strikes. Having standby automated power supply ensures that power cuts are well management. To ensure that the server system is not affected by the power cuts and switch uninterruptable power supply UPS will be installed. 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