Essay: Understanding Prototypes and Functionality: Enhancing Customer Interaction and Conversion Rate

It’s crucial to understand that the prototype is the stage where businesses test the products prior to manufacture and the Functionality is the range of operations that is capable of aiding the purpose for which it was designed. The limitation of the prototype and the functionality has been briefly spoken about down below.
Promotional Pop up
To promote customer interaction and recruit loyal customers, I have come up with the promotional Pop up section. This functionality hasn’t been implemented fully and it’s not possible without any back end functionality. Once the functionality has been added, it will help me to engage customers with my brand, build interest and ultimately convert customers into paying customers.
Shopping cart
The functionality for the shopping cart hasn’t been fully implemented however to make it functional I will be using JavaScript to allow data to be transferred along with the viewer as they move from page to page. To make shopping cart effect, keeping in mind to store the information somewhere is crucial. User’s cookie is the easiest way to store the information as the viewer moves from page to page without having to invent new method of writing to the user’s hard drive.
Checkout
Checkout provides customers a mobile ready payment experience which is important for my site since it is an online site. To make this prototype functional, a single line of client side code can be used which will always update automatically without a hassle to change a thing. For the submissions of payment, a secure HTTPS connection will be used for the secure payment.
Designer/Enamel/Lapel Pins
For this page, a customer will be able to add the item of their choices on the shopping cart by clicking on the “Add to Cart” button. This functionality hasn’t been fully implemented.
Signup/ Log in
This prototype doesn’t work at the moment but to make it functional, the database needs to be created. Once the database has been set, the users will be able to sign up and log in by entering their email address and password.
Live chat
I have also included live chat where the functionality is fully not implemented. The functionality allows customers to chat with any available advisors in real-time to ask questions, get advice and build confidence during their shopping experience which helps improving the conversion rate for my business.
Google Map
This prototype isn’t fully implemented. To make sure customers are getting the right direction for them to plan the journey to get to the flags store, the back end functionality is important to implement.
Part-2
Launching a new business means developing a marketing plan and sizing up against the competitors. The strategic plans that we decided to use on cw1 has all been implemented- how the website will look, what service we offer, what type of pins we selling, who we targeting as our audience etc along with some additional prototype to make the site more appealing, engaging and giving that great user experience to the customers.
[1]One of the analytical techniques I will be using is SWOT analysis which is an effective way to find any potential issues in my strategy. No significant investment of time is required but an advantage of generating success is likable.
A SWOT analysis is very important in order to shape my business strategy because it gives me an opportunity to see things in a different perspective.
It will help in leading to discover any previous untapped niche in the market and find an unseen obstacle that could harm the growth of the business. It’s very crucial to understand the strength and weaknesses of my business which will help me to shape new opportunities and defend any external threats.
There have been some changes in designing specification to implementing a prototype in this coursework. Some new strategic plan that wasn’t included in my previous coursework has been added on this CW and they are listed below:
Buy, Trade and Sell
Promotional Pop-up
Live Chat
Custom Pins
User Requirements
For the Buy, Trade and Sell; after researching and analyzing the competitors, they seem to be lacking to provide buy, sell and trade service all on one website. Keeping that in mind, I have included this prototype which will help me to bring more users to visit my site and possibly make some purchase. Trading helps customers to give an opportunity to exchange any unwanted pins with a new one either for free or some additional charges depending on the value of pins. Going back to SWOT analysis, using other website’s weaknesses has definitely helped me to attract more customers hence making this as one of my strength.
Promotional Popup is one of the prototypes that I have implemented to engage customer interaction, recruit loyal customers and also keeping in mind on how to grow my business or expand the existing customer base.[2] Critical Success Factor (CSF) is the Analytical techniques that I have used to focus on to be successful.It’s very important to identify CSF’s, which allows an organisation to focus their exertion on building their potentialities in order to meet the CSFs. Keeping the CSF technique in mind, the promotional pop-up strategy is perfect to attract more customers, engage them, make them loyal customers and possibly make them spend some money which will increase the economy of my business resulting in a success.
Live chat is one of the prototypes that I implemented on this CW. After researching and analyzing the market, Surprisingly this is the feature that wasn’t available to the customers by most websites. I decided to implement this prototype on my website because customers can get an immediate help. Usually, the waiting hours on live chat are low compared to calling the call center or even dropping a query and waiting for at least 24 hrs to hear back from the company. Focusing on the CSF analytic technique, live chat will improve customer experience by answering any doubts they might have in regards to buying the product hence increasing the sale of the business.
Custom Pins is available for the customers to create any pin of their choices. Referencing the SWOT analysis, this prototype hasn’t been implemented on other competitor’s website which will help benefit my business. By implementing this feature on my site, I will be attracting more customers that have a design they want to bring live.
Lastly, user requirements are requisite for the website to fully function and give customers a great user experience. This will include features like checkout, log in/ sign up, password recovery, shopping cart, updating quantity, log out, purchasing items, and lastly processing the payment. All of this prototype is implemented on this CW but not functionality wise.
In conclusion, my store will only specialise in certain pins; Designer, Enamel, and Lapel using the B2C solution which sells the product to the customers directly. Changing the focus from only targeting business industry to business as well as fashion industry. This will help me get more customers to visit and possibly buy it from the site benefiting my business.
Therefore, those are the major differences in designing specification and prototype implementation.
[3]Cloud Computing is the term given to the use of multiple servers over a digital network as if they were one computer. The Cloud itself is a virtualization of resources-networks, servers, application, data storage, and services which the end user has on demand access to. The aim is to provide these resources with minimal management or service provider interaction. Cloud computing offers user’s resources without the requirement of having knowledge of the systems or the location of the systems that deliver them. Therefore, the aim of the cloud is to provide users and businesses with scalable and tailored services.
[4] Since my business is new and an online business, there are a lot of factors i need to consider. I have carefully chosen the Platform as a service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as a cloud computing source.
The first cloud computing Solution is Platform as a Service (PAAS).
Being a computing platform, it allows the creation of web application easily and quickly without the complexity of buying, maintaining the software and infrastructure underneath it.
Sometimes, PaaS is used to extend the capabilities of applications developed as SaaS. While earlier application development required hardware, an operating system, middleware, a database, web servers and other software, with the PaaS model only the knowledge to integrate them is required. The rest is handled by the PaaS provider. Salesforce.com’s Force.com, Microsoft’s Azure and Google’s App Engine are the examples of PaaS.
The consumer doesn’t control or manage the underlying cloud infrastructure including operating systems, network, servers or storage but has control over the deployed applications and possibly to configure settings for the hosting environment,
The Second Cloud Computing Solution is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). IaaS delivers servers, network, storage and operating systems- typically a platform virtualization environment to consumers as an on demand service, in a single bundle and billed according to usage. A popular use of IaaS is in hosting web sites, where the in house infrastructure is not burdened with this task but left free to manage the business. Examples of Iaas are Rackspace, GoDrid and Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, deployed applications, storage and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g. firewalls).
[5]There are many reasons on how the business could utilise cloud computing as it offers a number of distinct benefits to companies compared to more traditional approaches:-
Cost Reduction:-
By allowing organisations to avoid the up-front capital expenditure associated with expensive servers, software licences, and IT personnel, shifting this responsibility to the cloud provider which allows small firms have an access to powerful computing infrastructure which they might otherwise not being able to afford.
Scalability/Agility:-
Provisioning- on-demand enables organisations to set up the resources they require and remove unwanted resources on an as needed basis. When a project is funded, the organisation initiates the service, and when the project terminates the resources can be relinquished. This supports business growth without requiring expensive changes to an organisation’s existing IT systems.
Improved Reliability:-
By utilising cloud computing in business the provider can give 24/7 support and high level computing for all their clients at once, rather than each client requiring its own dedicated in house staff. This leads to a more redundant and safer system.
Access to New Technologies:-
By ensuring that organisations have access to the latest technology, including access to hardware, software and IT functionality that would otherwise be too expensive to buy.
Increased Competitiveness:-
Delegating commodify infrastructure and services allows organisations to focus on their core competencies and further develop capabilities that can differentiate their organisations in their respective business markets, thereby increasing competitiveness.
More Flexible working practices:-
Cloud Computing allows staff to work more flexibly. Staff can access files using web-enabled devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones. The ability to simultaneously share documents and other files over the internet can also help support global collaboration and knowledge sharing as well as group decision making.
Cloud Computing also have some risks to businesses compared to more traditional approaches such as:-
Network dependency:-
Perhaps the most obvious drawback to cloud computing is its dependency on the network. Power outages and service interruptions will prevent access to the cloud facilities. In addition, cloud computing is also susceptible to simple bandwidth issues, for e.g. at peak hours of demand. If the cloud provider’s servers are being strained at peak hours, both the performance and availability of its services will suffer. There is always the risk of unforeseen events, outside attack or server failures any of which will threaten client access.
Lack of Control:-
Organisation may not be in full control of its data if they commit data to the systems that is managed by a cloud provider. They won’t be able to deploy the technical and organisational measures that is necessary to keep the data safe.
Lack of integrity, Lack of confidentiality, Lack of availability and Lack of isolation may arise as a result.
System Dependency:-
An organisation may be highly dependent on the availability and reliability of the cloud provider’s system. The result could be catastrophic for the organisation if the provider fail to provide adequate disaster recovery.
Cloud Provider dependency:-
Ideally the cloud provider will never go broke or get acquired by a larger company. If this were to happen, it is possible that the service would suddenly terminate and organisation need to ensure they are protected against such as an eventuality.