Group Project: Electronic Commerce Business
Planning and Analysis Assignment
Submission deadline: May 6, 2010
Method of submission: print a hardcopy and submit it to
the instructor in class on May 6, 2010 and also submit a soft
copy at Blackboard via its digital drop box.
Format: Word document.
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Should have page number on each page.
Should have consistent section and subsection
headings.
Mark the main author (and/or co-authors) for each
section.
Have a consistent citation format such as APA
format.
Insert captions for figures/diagrams and tables and
refer to them properly (see Figure 1 and Table 1 as
examples).
Table 1. Sample Table
Name
Minder Chen
John Smith
Jay Strong
Assignments
Project Leader
Web designer
Technical writer
Figure 1. Garage Sales
Project: Create a new E-Commerce web site business plan for a
new business or an existing business.
It is by default a group project, the length of the project report
should be 8*N ~ 12*N pages in length including references and
diagrams where N is the size of the group and 3<= N <= 5. You
should not assume people reading your group project business plan
know the technical terms and theories applied; therefore, you can
and shall provide some background information as if you are
writing a research paper. Please include proper references for
articles/books/online resources cited (at least 5 references cited for
each individual member’s own writing).
Each individual member should be responsible for the writing of
specific sections of the business plan. Please put your name to the
section that you are responsible for. Only in very special cases,
the project can be done as an individual project.
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Describe your business ideas in a one-page executive
summary.
Define your business models (B2C, B2B, C2C, etc.)
and you firm position in the industry-wide value chain
Describe what products/services to be offered and why
you group choose these products/services.
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Describe what your target audiences are.
Use at least one of the Porter’s models (Value Chain
Analysis; Five Forces Model; and/or “Three Generic
Strategic”) to analyze your business strategies.
Analyze your revenue streams analysis (How are you
going to generate revenues and make a profit?)
Define the basic requirements/functionalities for the
Web site design.
Depict the navigation diagram for the Web site.
Create a prototype of the Web site. This web site
should contain at least 4 pages described as follows:
a. You home page for the web site. This page will
then link to the other pages
b. a page which introduces products/services
c. a web page which gives company's introduction;
d. a page which provides contact information
including your email, phone numbers address and
so on.
e. Obtain a Google AdSense account and
incorporate it into your Web site.
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Describe your hosting plan for your Web site.
Explain how you may use some of the Web 2.0
features in your Web site.
Conduct a Comparative/competitive Analysis:
Compare your proposed business with both online and
offline competitors
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Describe how you are going to measure the success of
your web site.
Describe how the project teams use collaboration tools
to support their work. (Please use Skype,
DimDim.com, Google Docs, Email, Phones, face-toface meeting or other collaborative tools. You are
strongly to try to use online collaborative tools.)
Document your collaboration efforts in detail and your
assessment of the effectiveness of these tools. This
has to be done by each project members.
Describe your marketing/promotion plan. This
should include finding an available domain name
using GoDaddy.com (Please include a screen snapshot
of the search result in your report). You don’t need to
register (pay for) the domain name. Please also
describe or even demonstrate how you are going to
use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to
market your site and to reach out to your target
customers.
Create several usage scenarios for the Web site from
the different user’s (i.e., roles) viewpoints.
Describe the backend/frontend ERP, CRM, or SCM
systems that you need to deploy to support your
business.
Emphasize some innovative approaches of your Web
site
Write up your privacy policy statement for your web
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site. (1 page or so)
What kinds of data you are planning to collect from
your visitors and how you may want to collect and
analyze the data that you have collected from your
web site? (Data Mining opportunity)
Describe your financial plan (cost-benefit analysis) in
a written statement and backup by an Excel
spreadsheet (http://highered.mcgrawhill.com/sites/dl/free/0073052337/315745/chap11.ppt
)
Create a process model (using Visio or other tools) for
two core business processes of your e-commerce site’s
operations.
Grading Criteria based on your Writing
1. Contents (50% of the total grade)
2. Organization (20% of the total grade)
3. Format (10% of the total grade)
4. Grammar/punctuation/spelling (10% of the total grade)
5. Readability/style (10% of the total grade)