WEBSITE PLAN.
The second assignment is another two-part assignment which includes the following components:
• Section One. The first component is a short (750 word) piece of writing which presents your newly educated perspective on how business is changing in the face of an increasingly connected digital environment and where you stand personally on that change.
• Section Two. The second component is a plan for your website, basically a short business / technical / creative plan that details how the website will look, feel, function, be administered, offered to potential customers, and also be promoted.
Due Date & Weighting
Due Date: Week 7.
Weighting: 35%.
Word Length
The website plan needs to be approximately 1500 words.
Referencing Style
The referencing style will be APA 6.
Section One: Technology, Humanity, and Business
(text with references, 50 marks, 750 words)
Section One requires you to reflect on the advent and offering up of the Internet for mass public consumption, and how it has forever altered the way humanity and business function.
This assignment aims to challenge you to generate a personal, yet academically rigorous, philosophical standpoint on the impact of technology on society and business.
Position yourself: Extreme viewpoints or somewhere in the middle?
In particular, whether technology is an inherent component of human evolution and therefore, simply ‘the medium in which we play this infinite game’ (Kelly, 2005), or whether technology is currently leading humanity down a path where ‘the creative becomes subservient to the structure of giant computers’, ‘human expression becomes a peasant activity’ (Lanier, 2013), and one that will ultimately ‘cheat us of being in touch deeply with those breathing right next to us’ (Lin, 1951). Or you simply acknowledge both of these extreme viewpoints, however, position yourself somewhere in the middle.
The choice is entirely yours. You are being provided freedom to express your own viewpoint so embrace this opportunity.
Putting the two together:
At the end of this section you should also (a) link your current business idea into this written piece and (b) detail that the way you will market your business within an online environment adheres to your own personal philosophy on technology, humanity, and business.
Important Note I
You are free to support your arguments however you wish, however, as the first few lectures of this course have been focused closely on such philosophical discussion, it would be in your best interests to at least leverage a few of the key individuals you have been introduced to throughout the lecture series.
Important Note II
This section is worth 50% of the overall marks associated with this assignment.
Section Two: Website Plan
Section Two requires you to plan and discuss the design of your website in a very concise manner – using dot points, tables, figures, and sketches. This is an opportunity to be creative and think innovatively.
Here you are essentially trying to pitch your ideas of how the business’s website should look, what it will contain, what it will focus on, and how it will function (you are the website creator and administrator!!!).
You are showing off your knowledge of the business by detailing its specific goals, its current competitors online strategies, a targeted sketch of your ideas which include an idea of how the home page (or the most important page) would look, how the site would be navigated by users, how it will be maintained, and also how it will be marketed.
Goals (dot points, 5 goals, 5 marks, 150 words)
We want you to give us five business goals. Be specific here. Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and have a due date (timely) – SMART. 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.).
For example:
• Increase the business’s weekly profit from $1500 to $2000 over a 6-month period (the 6-month period to start from June 30th 2013 and will end on December 30th 2013).
Your goals should also include the online aspects of your business – specifically detailing how your website (and the associated online social media) will assist your business to achieve its overall business goals. Your website may aim to share information, promote your brand, focus on rapid communication of specific information, foster collaboration, generate a sense of community, and provide easily accessible ways to purchase your product or service online, etc.
For example:
• Increase the number of unique visitors to our company’s website to 25 per day by December 2013. Another could be, Increase the volume of purchases occurring online to 25% by December 2013.
Competitor Website Analysis (table, 3 competitor sites, 10 marks, table)
Analyse 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 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 (Table 1).
Table 1. An example of the table requirements for the ‘Competitor Website Analysis’ section of this assignment
Company Website Strengths Weaknesses
Website One
Website Two
Website Three
Sketch (figure, 10 marks, not included in word count)
The sketch component requires you to submit a rough plan for the business website you will subsequently create. This requires you to consider various design issues that need to be considered before developing a website. The submitted document should contain rough ideas and sketches of what it is you are planning on creating and further, detail specific resources that will that will help you achieve that goal (detailing notes on the business, technical aspects of their planned website, and importantly, ideas on how the website will look, feel, and run). In this context student will be encouraged to submit a digitized version of their rough notes and sketches. You can do this using Microsoft word, taking a screen shot of your own page, or by drawing a rough draft of your page using pencils. This draft page must be labelled and include items such as font, colour, size, them, images, menu’s etc.
Your Tutors will provide more information on how to achieve this in the workshops.
Site Map (figure, 5 marks, not included in word count)
Detail exactly how the different sections of your website will be organised and how the page hierarchy will be constructed. Best way to do this is with a storyboard or sitemap (an image, text-based, 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. Clean, simple websites that are easy to navigate are the most successful (Figure 1).
Figure 1.An example of the figure requirements for the ‘Site Map’ section of this assignment
Behind The Scenes (table, including up to 10 tasks, 10 marks, 60 words)
This section is where you will detail the stuff that goes on behind the scenes of your online marketing channels. Think website, social media maintenance, and online shop processes.
For example, how often the website will be updated, who deals with emailed 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 you respond to comments and inquiries, will client’s / fan’s comments be moderated in some way. There are three main components to this section: maintenance task, personnel, and frequency (Table 2).
Table 2. An example of the table requirements for the ‘Competitor Website Analysis’ section of this assignment
Maintenance Task Personnel Frequency
Featured Announcements Owner / Web Administrator Once per week
Product Updates Owner / Web Administrator As required
Online Shop Tracking Sales Staff/ Web Administrator Daily (9am-5pm)
Order Responses Sales Staff/ Automatic 24/7 (automatic email system)
Product Deliveries Sales Staff Daily (9am-5pm)
Customer enquiries Company Secretary Daily (9am-5pm)
Social Media Monitoring Sales Staff/ Web Administrator Daily (9am-11pm)
Marketing (text with references, 10 marks, dot points)
Detail how you will direct people (potential clients) to your website. 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, and a real budget). 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. There are three main areas to focus on here – traditional advertising, social media, and search engine optimisation).
• Search Engine Optimisation: ……
• Social Media: ……
• Leveraging Posts: ……
• Traditional: ……
• Budget:……
Important Note I
This section is comprised entirely of dot points, tables, figures, and creative sketches. It has been set up in a way to allow you to begin thinking in an entirely different manner – specifically creatively, technically, and pragmatically. Keep it concise. This section could actually be used to pitch your idea to an actual business.
Important Note II
This section is worth 50% of the overall marks associated with this assignment.
Please contact your tutor for further clarifications
• Students are required to ADDRESS ALL ASPECTS of the assignment (see table below)
• Each assignment aspect will be assessed on its ACCURACY AND QUALITY
• Document needs to be approximately, but not exceeding 3000 WORDS
Assignment Aspect (Format, Word Count) Score
Technology and Business (text, references, 750 words) /50
Goals (dot points, 160 words) /5
Competitor Website Analysis (table, 400 words) /10
Website Demo Sketch (figure, not in word count) /10
Site Map (figure, not in word count) /5
Behind The Scenes (table, 100 words) /10
Marketing (dot points, references, 400 words) /10
TOTAL /100
Comments
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