26338 The Internet & Ecommerce 2010/11 - Feedback on Assignment Part 2

First of all, there were lots of great sites, and some (fewer) excellent justification documents. The comments beow
extend and explain the individual feedback you’ve received. Not all of the notes below will apply to you but nearly
EVERYONE had their marks impacted by not prototyping beyond phase 1&2 of the ecommerce business relationship.

Documentation

For almost everybody the documentation is bit weaker than their prototype site. Generally there is a sense that you
know what Information Architecture IS but lots of the reports struggle to say why a particular IA was chosen.

Several of you sensibly said words to the effect of “no more than 3 clicks” (though most of you didn’t get the marks
you might have done because you didn’t cite where that ‘theory’ comes from) but to be a justification this ‘rule’ has
to be true in your site. You MUST show that it is true, for instance by explaining a couple of different crucial tasks
(you choose) and talk them through via your diagram showing how your chosen structure does allow this task(s) in 3
clicks or fewer. Though you might want to look at www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_threeclicks/ (it really is a
myth you know) and consider, as a couple of excellent reports did, using ‘information scent’ rather than ‘clicks’ as
your guiding principle. But whatever you use, you have to USE IT to explicitly justify the structure of the site.

A few of you used the document to give a word diagram of the site structure; perhaps because of a lack of
confidence that the actual diagram was clear. Words describing are not justifying. The diagram HAS to be referred
to; you have to justify why the site is THAT shape and not the infinite variety of other shapes it could be. It is tough
to do, we are far more comfortable saying “this is what I did” than we are in digging out “this is why I did it this way”.

As with the first semester’s assignment, if I have said on your work that there are not enough specifics (or not
enough depth/detail/or whatever) and yet you know that you’ve used all your word count then it will be that you’ve
wasted that word count. Too many reports just don’t focus – there’s no value in going back to defining what the
internet is, what ecommerce is, or even what IA is. Sections on Look & Feel or on Content are from previous year’s
work and simply steal words from the report you have to write justifying your site structure. Most of us can use lots
of words to say very little unfortunately! Even the best never covered structure beyond the top level (from the home
page) – but there’s lots of structure below that and it too needs justifying.

Generally the Information Architecture literature was well used. Some of you are perhaps understandably confused
between the terms ‘references’ and ‘bibliography’ (I know Turnitin is a pain in this regard). References = actually
cited within your report whereas a bibliography = anything read but not cited. Your requirement was to list your
references – so only those things actually cited. There’s a subtle difference between the usability literature and the
IA literature; in essence, IA is a subset of usability so not all usability materials apply and that tripped up a few. Of
more concern is that some of you were not looking at the IA theory literature at all – tutorials, opinion pieces etc are
interesting and helpful up to a point, but they are alternatives to lecture material, they are NOT deeper reading.

The diagram caused some of you some difficulties – it is complex if your site is large. It is sensible to simplify
somewhat if that makes it clearer what your IA decisions were but just putting in your site map page is generally not
helpful. Quite a number of diagrams didn’t match the actual site. For some reason several of you believe that ‘top
level’ in a diagram sense means ‘links listed at the top of the screen’ in the page layout sense. In structural terms the
‘top level’ pages are going to be ALL of those that link from the home page. Most of the sites I’ve seen are wheel
shapes (or like a spider web perhaps describes better). They have the home page as a hub (hyperlinks on the home
page a clues, since most are doorways into another page) plus the sites include many links
between pages. Sites have LOTS of pages linked from the home page; and yet so many diagrams
drew the site structure as if the home page has only half a dozen or so pages linked from it. I
suspect that it was assumed that only the pages linked from the ‘top bar menu’ mattered. This is
not so. You’ll see exactly what I mean if you count the links on your own home page – now look
at your own diagram (this is an exercise we did in a couple of lectures – if you weren’t there that
might explain your confusion).
Prototype sites
Usually your strong point – but I saw quite a lot of ‘pretty but empty sites’. Travellary are employing you to for your
ecommerce business decisions, not your graphic design skills and not for your web development skills. For you to
‘earn’ the marks then you’ve GOT to show Travellary these decisions. Your prototype HAS to cover all customer
categories and all phases of the business relationship. This means that your prototype has to have pages that
address these decisions. You have to prototype (ie simulate/fake) pages to show all through Travellary’s business
process – otherwise you can get no marks for so many areas that you may fully understand. A few of you got a few
marks that wouldn’t otherwise come your way just because your site map (or other menu items) hinted at what
areas might be covered. However for real marks a prototype of a page simply listing on it is needed. In text form
only is fine - but put it is better if you put the text in relevant positions rather than just as a bullet list. Such an
example page lets you show your decisions about the main content AND to indicate what is integrated into THAT
page (so what additional value-adding things and what x-selling things have been triggered by this example. For
example, forums (whatever you call them). You can have them in their own area, but to be FULLY useful you must
put specific parts of them ALSO in the specific page for a specific booking/trip/insurance/etc. Have a look at how
Amazon do this as they are an excellent example of keeping ongoing customers rather than creating a site that is a
sales catalogue only – remember it is cheaper to keep a customer than to have to constantly find new ones. I do feel
many of you piled so much content into your DWT page (which I guess felt efficient) that your site couldn’t adjust to
reflect the SPECIFIC content relevant to the purpose of an individual page; so special offers were going to be the
same whether the customer was interested in a long volunteering trip, or a short cultural event. Misses the point.

Generally sites are superb as an on-line brochure; you prototype up to the point-of-sale very well. Very few of you
have any trouble taking the ecommerce business decisions about what to put on the home page or how to present
the products to the categories of customers that Travellary have. A small number of you do ignore a category or two
(odd given that the exemplars and the lectures have defined these for you). A small number of you don’t do a great
job of sequencing your menus (putting trivial things like ‘about us’ at the top for instance) or don’t entirely grasp the
implication of the ‘F shape’ (putting trivial things like the kiosk link at top left, or putting attention grabbers like
rotating images at bottom right for instance). But generally home pages and the pages dealing with phase 1 of the
business relationship are great.

But . . . Travellary explicitly require from you decisions on how to create ecommerce that ISN’T just an online
brochure. They want full ecommerce exploitation across ALL FIVE of the stages of their business relationship with
their customers. You’ve got the list of required content from the exemplars so it is simply a matter of putting in
enough prototype pages to show where this content goes and how it is integrated (a key ecommerce decision is
what to offer TOGETHER on a specific page, see the note made above about what NOT to put into the DWT file). Do
you remember the practices of semester 1 in which you listed how much time customers spend in which stage of
their relationship with Travellary? If you do remember, you’ll recall that in terms of time, phases 3, 4 and 5 are BY
FAR the most significant phases. So can it be enough to prototype ONLY phases 1 & 2?
A relationship timeline (in weeks)
↓and everything after here is ‘behind’ the login remember for a Travellary customer going on
a one-month volunteering trip next
1 2 3 4 5 year (just an example).

I would take an analogy to an exam in which there are 5 questions (ie the 5 phases), each work 20 marks.

Each Q worth 20% Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5

Pages you write 18 1 0 0 1
Maximum mark you can have 20% 5% 0% 0% 5%

So the maximum marks you could earn if your answer book followed that pattern would be 30%. You could do the
same calculation for the categories of customers (6 or so). If you don’t cover things, the marks from the ‘left out’
areas don’t move across – you’ve thrown them away. Now of course there was much more to grading your site than
just this, but many (most?) of you threw away this amount of the marks for the site content. I know that this is the
last semester of your final year and you may wonder why bother considering this sort of feedback. But although you
will rarely be judged explicitly via marks (unless you go on to an MSc); you will have your output continually judged
by managers/employers/clients, who will constantly form judgements of your performance against requirements.