E-Commerce Sports Store Website Design - Case Study Example

E-Commerce Sports Store Website Design Document 6.0 Design Viewpoints This section of the e-commerce sports store website will deal with defining the various design viewpoints in terms of the design languages chosen and the various design concerns according to the website users, administrators, requirements and functions. This section will also establish the specific design entities required for each of the concerns and how the functions by the administrators and users relate to each other. This will include information on the functions’ design for the stakeholders/users of the website, the design elements for the functionalities, relationships, attributes and appropriate design languages for the services on the website. 6.2 Context Viewpoint This section draws a system boundary for the services offered by the website and its actors, and delineates the website’s scope of use and operation. This being an e-commerce sports store website, the main service to be provided on the website is the advertising, exhibition and sale of an assortment of articles used in sports. The website’s design will provide functionality for facilitating the marketing activities for the articles on sale. The design will include product specification and exhibition functions, web administration functions, web user identification, profiling and login procedures, a product database, and e-cart payment software. The website will provide a platform where internet users can find advertisement and catalogue information of sports articles and buy them using electronic money transfer options for payment. The users will be able to view sports products’ catalogue information and select among the various items on offer and add them to a list which they can make checkout payments electronically and get the items shipped to them by international courier postage. On the back-end, the website will provide the enterprise management with facilities to enter and update the advertisement content displayed on the web pages and will facilitate the entry and manipulation of customer information and product data. The website design will also incorporate a database system to store the user, customer and product data, with facilitation of client profiling, identification and editing of entered information. Personal information entered by the customers will be used by the enterprise’s management to process and complete the sales of products bought. The website will be designed to operate with most available browsers and will also have modifications for enabling mobile-device access. To facilitate these, the website will require a database system for managing the information on the items on sale and for the visitors, vendors and other users. The web pages on the website will contain advertisements by various vendors and sports items’ manufacturers and will also contain an online magazine for product review periodicals and release news. The e-magazine will contain news on upcoming sporting events and on past reviews of major sporting competitions around the world. 6.3 Composition Viewpoint The online shopping mall website is divided into 4 major modules which implement the main primary functions for the website managers and the users. They are the graphical user interface forming the front-end, the product marketing and order payment module, and the account authorization module and the information database module. The graphical user interface module comprises of the HTML and PHP language web pages and accompanying web page application scripts which will display on a browser and provide the web users and website management with access to the content. The web pages will contain other action-scripts that will enable more specialized display and access functionalities including data entry and dynamic user content necessary for advertising, information entry and payment options. The GUI will provide users with facilities to browse and search content by category and to select items for purchase, with automatic suggestions for similar products and recommendations. The product marketing module will comprise of the advertising and payment functionality for offering and selling the sports articles on the online shopping mall. This will include the advertising content placed on the web pages and their periodic updating, a product management system for tracking and updating the various items on sale, and shopping-cart software for facilitating electronic payments. The shopping-cart software will provide a check-out system connecting customers with the marketing enterprise and banks, and will be able to store in the database order information and maintenance, and status checking enabling return visitors and cancellation and return of purchases. The account and authorization module will comprise of the access management system for logging in users and administrators onto the website. This will define the various usage privileges, priority, authority and access controls for the management and for the classes of users of the website. This function will be achieved through login and password details into the administrator control panel and for user profiles maintained on the website database. The information database module will be comprised of the server storage and information access software, which will be managed using the SQL database language. This will provide access privileges for adding and editing information pertaining to products on offer ant the online mall for administrators, and profile information for web users and customers. The database will also store browse and search user history for easy retrieval in subsequent visits by users to the website. 6.4 Logical viewpoint This section outlines the rationale for the choice of the different elements used in designing the website. The HTML and PHP webpage scripting are the universally used languages for creating web pages on the internet. The current version is HTML-5 and PHP-3, which will be used to ensure compliance with current W3C web development and browser software standards. The use of HTML-5 precludes usage of flash-media content which has been blamed for making web pages heavy and difficult to load in most browser software. The design will make extensive use of the PHP language for action-script contained on the web pages. The use of HTML-5 for the website will enable its web pages to be compatible with browser software contained in mobile and palm-held devices and will provide ease of navigation for most computer browser software. The website design will make use of the SQL database scripting and access language owing to its universality and freeware nature which would make the data storage to be compatible with most computers currently in use in the client’s organization. The website will make use of the Magenta shopping cart which is widely in use and compatible with all electronic payment options available online. The payment options to be made available are bank wire, electronic money and credit-card transfers. Other industry standards to be adhered to in the website’s design include security of payment and for user information stored on the website database. Full-time 24-7 service, minimum down-time and recovery of the website will be achieved by using mirror web servers. Ease of navigation for visitors to the website will be ensured through categorization of information according to menus and search classes. 6.5 Dependency Viewpoint This viewpoint specifies the relationship of interdependence, interconnection and access for the design components, administrators and users in terms of shared info, prescribed order of execution and parameterized interfaces. The GUI, marketing and order processing, and access control modules will be able to automatically access the system’s database according to rules set out in the SQL database scripting. This will enable universal retrieval of information as required by the components of the system. The administrators will be able to edit and control the access privileges for users while logged into the system. Visitors and customers will be able to access the online shopping-mall from their computers and smart-phone devices and make payment for items selected from anywhere in the world. The website design is made compatible with most common web browser software in use for computer terminals and on palm-held devices. The visitors to the website will be able to add items for purchase to their shopping-cart profiles, which can be saved for later completion of payment. In effecting the payment, customers will enter details of their payment option which will be forwarded to the respective financial intermediaries for confirmation. Once accepted, the items purchased will be mailed by courier service to the customer destination of choice, for which upon receipt payment will be completed by the financial institution. 6.6 Information Viewpoint The website will mainly host product catalogue information for sporting items on offer for sale and will provide a source of information for visitors and users on up-coming and past major sporting events held around the world. The information will be kept up-to-date through an automated blog system that will be used to monitor and manage daily and weekly marketing and editorial features relevant to the sports world and for buyers. This will provide a medium for information flow between manufacturers of sports gear and their customers through news and product release articles featured on the website. The website will make use of both web-user browsing and order information and administrator input which will be contained in the website database. The system will also collect and store relevant information pertaining to user browsing and search activity, which will be retrievable and used in their next login sessions. The management of the information contained in the database will be done by designated members of management in the client’s organization. The database will store numerical information in spreadsheet format pertaining to the prices, number of products, number of visits by customers individually and collectively amongst other information. This information will be retrievable from the spreadsheets and tables in the database and represented on the web pages in suitable fields. Read More