INTE2047 Assignment 1 - Milestone 1: Business Feasibility and Website Design

As a first step to creating an online business, you must

1. Come up with ideas for the business and undertake some preliminary investigations, such as determining its feasibility.
2. Design a website for it.

In this milestone, you will complete both of these.

Business Feasibility

To determine the feasibility of the business, you will need to carry out some simple activities, such as determining your business idea, name, goals, description, and partners.  You will need to investigate the availability of suitable domain names, and calculate some basic costing information (e.g., domain name and web hosting costs).  Furthermore, you will need to understand the environment in which your business will operate, particularly who your competitors are and what they do.

Business Description

Describe your business. Ensure you consider the following.

• Business Name.  Select a name for your business that is appropriate, catchy, easily remembered and/or associated with the product or services you are selling.
• Business Team.  Select your business partners carefully and select an appropriate team name.  (As this is an academic exercise, you will need to list the student numbers and names of your team members).
• Business Idea and Description.  Generate a good idea for your B2C online business.  Describe both the idea and the business at a high-level. The description of the business at this level should be along the lines of an “elevator pitch” (refer to Lecture 3 for more details).
• Customers.  Determine who your customers are and how your website will help them either fulfill their goal or address their problems.

Business Details

Once you have identified some rudimentary aspects of your business, you will need to develop these in more depth.  Ensure you consider the following.

• Business Model. What is the business model for your online business?  Address the Eight Key Elements of a Business Model.  In particular, your online business should have a strong or unique value proposition and an appropriate revenue model (please note that not all revenue models are suitable for this assignment – discuss these with your tutor).  Refer to Lecture 3 and Tutorial Task 3.5 for more details.
• Leveraging E-Commerce Technology. As your idea is for an online business, how will it leverage the eight unique features of e-commerce technology?  Will it leverage all or some of these technologies?  Why or why not, and what significance do these have for your online business?  Refer to Lecture 1 and Tutorial Task 1.5 for more details.
• Category of E-Commerce.  In what category does your B2C online business idea fall into?  Determine this by identifying the market focus of your business.  Refer to Lecture 3 for more details.
• Analysis and Planning.  What do you want your e-commerce website to do for your business?  What information systems capabilities will it need to help you achieve your business objectives?  What information elements does the website need to produce to achieve the business objectives?  Refer to the section on Business Objectives, System Functionalities, and Information Requirements in Lecture 2.

Business Feasibility

After understanding your business idea and its details, you will need to determine if your idea is feasible. While a full feasibility study is out of scope for this assignment, you will need to investigate the following.

• Availability of Domain Name. You will need to find an available and suitable domain name for your business.  Note: As this is an academic assignment, you will not need to buy the domain name, however, you will need to provide a screenshot as evidence that it is available.
• Setup Costs. Determine the setup costs for the business. In particular, determine the costs of the domain name registration and web hosting for five years. (There is no need to determine labour costs as your team members have decided that they will implement the website themselves to save on this cost).

Competition

Another aspect of determining the feasibility of your business idea is to understand the business environment.  In particular, it is important to know who your main competitors are and what they do.  Investigate your main competitors and provide the following about each them.

• Name.  The name of your competitor.
• Website Address.  The website address of your competitor.
• Website Analysis.  Analyse your competitors’ websites and determine, what their websites do well, and what they could improve.
• Summary. A summary of your competitors, such as what their business is, what they sell, what they do well, and what they could improve upon.

Website Features

You need to determine what your website will be like and what features it will have. You will need to understand the business environment and current practices and trends in website design.

As you are investigating competition businesses, you should study their websites and identify a list of pages and features that you could incorporate in your website to ensure that is competitive with other websites in this niche. While studying your competitor’s websites, you should

• Create a list of pages you should include in your website.
• Observe how orders for goods or services are taken.
• Determine how goods or services are paid for, and the advantages and disadvantages of these methods.
• Create a list of functional features that the websites offer.
• Create a list of design ideas that you should include in your website to impress your customers.

Website Design

Once you have determined that your online business idea is feasible, you need to design a website for it.  Your design should incorporate the name of the business, the website address, and the features you have identified in your website features (refer to the "Website Features" section).

To create your website design, use a wireframing tool, such as Balsamiq Wireframes (Links to an external site.), to create a mockup of your website.  Your mockup does not need to show every single page that your website will contain or every single element that will be on your web pages.  Instead, it should contain the right amount of detail to give a good illustration of the “look and feel” of your website.  It should definitely display the main elements of your website and the most important or interesting features.

Ensure that your home page on your website clearly states the purpose of the site, and has a call to action.  Refer to Lecture 05 for more details about the Top 10 Guidelines for Home Page Usability.

For more details about website design using Balsamiq Wireframes, refer to Tutorial Task 6.6 – Website Design.

Deliverables

You will need to present this Milestone to your class and tutor.  If you do not present your website to your class and tutor, you will receive no marks for the Milestone.

Develop presentation slides to:

1. Present the feasibility of your proposed online business (as described in the previous sections)
2. Demonstrate your Balsamiq Wireframes (Links to an external site.).

You will also have to complete a peer evaluation of your team members for this milestone.  For more details about this, refer to the Tutorial Task 5.2 – CATME: Account Creation and Rater Calibration Exercise.  You will receive an email instructing you when to complete the peer evaluation.

Submit the following to Canvas by the milestone due date:

1. Presentation Slides: Your presentation slides, which includes screenshots of your website prototype in Balsamiq Wireframes (Links to an external site.).
2. Balsamiq Wireframes Project: Your Balsamiq Mockup Project (.bmpr file).
3. Meeting Logs: Any form of communication between team members about the project as evidence of participation by team members. These can be in a variety of formats, including text transcripts or audio files (e.g., if you audio recorded meetings).

Advice

Domain Name Registration

Find domain name registrars by searching online for "domain name registration".  Use a number of them to find the best deal for your business.

Web Hosting Costs

Find web hosting companies by searching online for "web hosting".  Review the plans from a number of them to find the best deal of your business.