Abstract

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Abstract

• For my major project, I proposed to design and
  build a dynamic eCommerce website that would
  allow users to purchase goods (sports club
  merchandise for Darlington FC) over the Internet.
  
• There are many reasons why I chose this route,
  but the main reasons are simply Currently
  Darlington F.C. doesnt offer an online club shop
  and I discussed the opportunity of using mine,
  however since starting the project, the club have
  decided to use a Web Design company rather than a
  student.
• However this isnt too much of a setback as the
  plan is to still create a fully operational site
  with the aid of PayPal.

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Goals

• The whole idea behind the website is that it
  would give an online method of buying items in a
  world where online purchasing has become more
  prevalent. Therefore my intended goals were
• That any user, regardless of computer knowledge
  or disability, wishing to buy an item can do so
  hassle free and with very little effort.
• That the website offers the user with several
  means of product search capabilities and that the
  user should be able to retrieve their information
  as quickly as possible.
• The interface should be professional and user
  friendly as well as easy to use.

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Competitive Analysis
Four years ago, most official Football League
websites underwent a dramatic change when a deal
was struck with Premium TV to grant them
exclusive internet rights for the next 25 years.
It was a lucrative deal for the clubs and meant
major changes in the way that clubs presented
news to the fans. Example 1 Charlton
Athletic Andy Houldsworth of Digital Ink
produced an impressive eCommerce solution through
the aid of excellent photography, where he
admitted that the amazing photography made it
easier for the site to look good.
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Example 2 Hull FC
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Project Structure

• The database software that will hold all this
  information is MySQL. MySQL is a relational
  database management system, which means it stores
  data in separate tables rather than putting all
  the data in one big area. This adds flexibility,
  as well as speed.
• The site will use a core of 6 tables
• tbl_Categories
• tbl_Sub_Categories
• tbl_Customers
• tbl_Admin
• tbl_Sizes
• tbl_Paypal_Status

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Design Sketches
Before I started diving in and creating a site,
first I needed to sketch up some ideas of how I
wanted it to look. The user should be able to
progressively add items to the basket during
shopping poor designs often display only the
currently selected item onscreen. This encourages
users to leave before they reach the checkout,
fearing that they might be double-billed, or that
theyve done something wrong. It is also advised
to avoid designing shopping carts that float over
the entire desktop because this perplexes novice
users and distracts them from the purchase. So
when designing the site, each vital application
within the site e.g. Basket, Gift Search and
Content, has its own section on the page so as
not to confuse the customer.
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Design Sketch 1
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Design Sketch 2
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Design Sketch 3
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Site Mock-Ups
When I had settled on a site design (Sketch 3),
the next stage was mocking up what the site
should look like using Photoshop. The colours
used should be part of the brand, which in this
case are Red, Black and White. However as colour
schemes go, these colours arent great so they
are used more as secondary colours than the
primary pastel colours which are used for the
background. Mock-Ups
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Site Implementation Part 1
Once the site design had been finalised it was
now a case of creating the mockup into a webpage
and implementing the different parts of the site
so that they worked. Such examples include
Login, Pagination of Different Items, Change
Currency Tool, Setting up Sessions, Gift Search
(and the values it finds) and the Basket
itself. I aim to leave the basket till last
because when researching football merchindise and
VAT I was made aware that no VAT can be charged
on childs clothing by The FA The retail sale of
goods including shirts, scarves and badges will
generally be standard rated unless any of the
items qualify for zero-rating as childrens
clothing/footwear or as relevant publications.
Zero-rating applies to articles designed as
childrens clothing and in practice this means
clothing and footwear suitable for children up to
13 year olds as determined by the British
Standards Institution.
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Site Implementation Part 2
Whilst designing and implementing the different
parts to my site I often hit stumbling blocks
which caused me to rethink certain things. One
such example was the change currency tool. The
tool itself is part of a form and I wanted the
user to be able to click on an image which would
then choose their selected currency. This wasnt
a problem for 2 of the major three browsers
(Firefox and Opera) however Internet Explorer
still hadnt the capability to deal with the
attribute and with IE still being the
most used browser it would be bad design, not to
mention business sense, to not get it working
across all 3 browsers, therefore I had to resort
to radio buttons. Ive got the groundwork in place
but in some instances, work still needs to be
done to ensure that there are no problems on the
site. Problems Im dealing with at the minute
include Gift Search Results (1st page is fine
but if there is more than 8 items it doesnt
allow the user to view the next page) and
implementing PayPals code into my own code.