Recommendations activity and exam case study preparation

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 21, 2005 [3375 views]

Improving an ecommerce site (this weeks activity)

Choose one of the two sites that you have been working with over the last two weeks. Choose the site where you think that you can have the bigger effect.

Imagine that you have been asked to redesign and improve the site in order to help it meet its business objectives. What would you recommend and why?

1. Which site have you chosen?
2. What would you identify as the MOST important business objective for this site?
   1. Generate revenue through direct B2C ecommerce
   2. Generate revenue through direct B2B ecommerce
   3. Streamline supplier or partner relationships
   4. Correct current site faults
   5. Reduce internal costs
   6. Generate potential customers, members or leads
3. Explain why you chose this as the most important objective for this client?
4. If you had to choose an additional objective which would it be?
   1. Focus on the objective already identified
   2. Generate revenue through direct B2C ecommerce
   3. Generate revenue through direct B2B ecommerce
   4. Streamline supplier or partner relationships
   5. Reduce internal costs
   6. Generate potential customers, members or leads
   7. Something else
5. Explain your second choice of objective

I want you to think about up to four significant changes or improvements that you would make to the site to help you meet the business objective that you have identified above. (Descibe each recommendation as clearly as you can and separately explain why you feel it will help you achieve your business objectives)

Report your recommendations using this week’s online survey.

Improving an ecommerce site (preparing a case study for the exam)

Now that you have carried out some analysis of some sites I want you to start preparing for your exam. This time you can work in a group of up to 4 people. I will still be providing individual surveys to provide you with some feedback on your ideas.

1. You need to form your group (or decide to work individually).
2. You need to choose a UK site with a high opportunity for improvement (improving their business not just the look and feel of the site). I would recommend a medium sized business (similar to the ones you have been looking at recently) who are likely to have sufficient budget and unlikely to have a huge in-house ecommerce team.
3. Discuss this and agree with your group.
4. Over the next few weeks you will be researching and analysing your chosen company (using some of the techniques you have met so far and some new ones).
5. Together you will prepare a proposal to the company (in a form that could be presented to the company or organisation).
6. You will also be proposing a budget and time plan for your work and making predictions on the likely revenue/benefits that the company could expect from what you are offering.
7. An outline of the proposal is contained in the module guide.

You will bring this proposal to the examination. If you are working in a group you can each bring the same or different versions of the proposal with you. You can annotate your copy of the proposal with highlighting pens and notes but the proposal must remain legible.

In the exam you will be asked two types of questions. There will be 20 multiple choice questions that will test your understanding of the concepts that have been introduced during the module (business and technology). These will be worth 40 marks with one mark deducted for each incorrect answer (minimum 0).

The second part will ask you three short questions about your proposal which will require you to present and explain key ideas within your proposal using bullet points, short answers and diagrams. This part will be worth 50 marks.

10% of the marks for the exam will be awarded to those people who have participated fully during the course in the preparatory work for the coursework.

Please ask questions for clarification here

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