Web development. Publisher e-commerce website

This is an example of e-commerce job to build a new site with shopping cart, CMS and backoffice integration. Traffic stats, sales information and general opinion of users suggested that the old site had to be reviewed to address various usability problems and to achieve goals as detailed below, in particular: user experience, interaction and retention.

Birlinn wished to expand its’ presence online by creating a web portal to exploit the Internet’s capabilities to reach out to general and business public with a new set of services and information that in effect will complement traditional sales channels with interactive content, services and products that will be focused around creating an online community. 

Project success determined by the following factors:

• on-time delivery; 
• within budget;
• with complete and functional features;
• project web site accessible from anywhere in the world.

Project deliverables included:

• Overall graphic design;
• Templates design;
• Scoping document;
• Templates scripting;
• Evaluation and necessary arrangements for hosting;
• Provision of the necessary web hosting.
• Database design and deployment;
• Content Management System deployment;
• Shopping Cart integration;
• Database population with current data and archives;
• Integration with AIS (Advanced Information System);
• Application testing and de-bugging;
• Project Documentation delivery;

Functional requirements

1. Registration (membership) facility with options to subscribe to newsletters and email reminders;
2. To have sub-sites for imprints and other publishers.
3. Introduce a time-driven content: book/author of the month, e-newsletter;
4. Introduce News section;
5. Introduce events-diary;
6. Introduce auto-alerts;
7. Introduce a pre-order facility (automatic notification once book is available);
8. Introduce readership groups;
9. Articles, events, news, individual book pages to have a "leave comment" facility;
10. Introduce "Trade area";
11. To be able to read a daily stock file from Booksource and update status of books (“in-stock”, “out of stock”)
12. Introduce automatic email updates/notifications:
    1. 'thank you for your order',
    2. 'item dispatched' (see "3rd party dependencies" chapter),
    3. 'pre-ordered title is available’.
13. All email updates to include offers, promotions, top news etc.;
14. Employ a new stable flexible shopping cart solution;
15. Automate sales process by being able to automatically notify Booksource about the order.
16. Introduce facility to configure sales schemes:
    1. Promotional joint offers (Buy A and B for £X).
    2. Discount offer.
17. Introduce: "People who bought this also bought …";
18. All email updates for previous customers to include sales vouchers;
19. All emails to existing user base to include latest news, updates and special offers.
20. Avoid double entry by receiving book information from AIS;
21. Ability to edit content (via AIS and built-in Content Management System);
22.  Ability to control:
    1. 'Book of the month';
    2. 'Author of the month';
    3. Featured books;
    4. Diary events
    5. News
23. CMS to include general database statistics on:
    1. Members,
    2. Books,
    3. Authors,
    4. Orders.
24. Future stages (out with the present scope, but to be kept in mind):
    1. Pod-casts (per book, per author);
    2. Wish list feature;
    3. RSS feed.
25. 25. Integrate Google Analytics.

(example of user interface)