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IS480 Team wiki: 2012T1 Shopaholic Development

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Our Team   Project Overview   Project Management   Development   Learning Outcome   Documentation


Initial Brainstorm

We have decided to improve the current spree model. However, there are 2 approaches we could take as follows:

Path 1 - Providing a plateform as a common meeting place

Providing a Platform for Spree Organizers and Participants to Meet and Transact

Shopaholic Brainstorm Path 1.png

Path 2 - Function as a Spree Organizer

We are the SOLE Spree Organizer handling all transactions with Participants

Shopaholic Brainstorm Path 2.jpg


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Our Chosen Path

Path 1 - A Portal for Spree organizers and Participants to meet

We will be taking Path 1.
We would function as a spree Organizer, and handle the order consolidation, ordering and shipping of items to customers.


Model 2 would involve us having to do all the handling of sprees. We would not have the time to do it. Also, some establised spree organizer has already set up their own sites to conduct sprees. Hence, if we were to go with this idea, it would not be original, and it not substantial and benefitial at all.

We have decided to go achead with spree model 1, to creat a plateform where spree organizers and participants can meet and transact. This model would be self-sustaining, with us just maintaining the portal. Currently sprees are being carried out on livejournal, blogs and forums. It is messy, as it is rather difficult to find specific sprees to join when you want it, as it may be unavailable, or the post has been pushed down in ranking.


This portal would serve as a one-stop portal where people could organize or join spree easily. Our portal would provide the following functions, to ease the spree-ing process:

For Spree Organizers For Spree-ers
'Pin-It' Function to add item from merchant site into own shopping cart Order Management system to consolidate orders
Paying for orders easily without the hassle of adding new payee each time for when spree-ing with different spree organizer Easy consolidation of funds from a spree. Do not need to manually check for payment from each spree-er
Participants would be able to rate Spree Organizer upon completion of spree. Spree-er is also able to raise disputes if necessary, which would hold the funds to be given to spree organizers Rating of Participants to establish one's reputation in reliability when organizing sprees.
Participants would no longer have calculation error when calculating required amount to pay to Spree Organizer

The New Spree-ing Process

For Spree Organizer

Shopaholic New Spree Organizer Flow Diagram.png

For Participants

Shopaholic New Spree-er Flow Diagram.png
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Function List

Pin-It Framework
Information Extraction
  • User Edit Information
  • Capture item Details
Error Reporting
  • Flag sites that users want to access but not supported


Shopaholic Portal
User Management
  • Login & Logout
  • Organizer Account Verification
  • Password Retrival
  • Create/Delete Account
  • User Profile
  • Edit User Profile
  • Tag Items
  • Rate other users (Organizer <--> Buyers)
    • Ratings
    • Stats on Number of sprees organized / joined
Cart Management
  • View Items
  • Delete Items
  • Add Items to Spree
  • Calculation of Item Costs (After adding to spree)
  • Add to Database
Spree Management
  • Create Spree
  • Remove Spree
  • Close Spree
    • Automated
    • Manual
  • Filter ongoing sprees by:
    • Ending Time
    • Shipping cost
    • Handling fee
    • Spree Status
      • After closed, see whether purchased, products received, products sent
  • Advertise Spree
    • Enable embedded codes on other sites
  • Notification Center (automated email notification to users)
  • Address Lables
Credit Management
  • View Credit Balance
  • Add Credit
    • User Top Up
    • Transfer
    • Refund
  • Remove Credit
  • Withdraw Credit
  • Statement of account
  • Bank Account Verification (changed last 24hrs)
Administrator Functions
  • Manage users
  • Restrict account
  • Accounting System
    • Generate reports
    • Audit log, audit trail
  • Bank Account Management
    • Approve User Top-Up
    • Approve User Withdrawal
    • Reject User Top-Up
    • Reject User Withdrawal
Customer Support
  • Resolution Center
    • Report organizer
    • Report buyer
    • Ask for refund
  • Bug Reporting
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The "Tag & Bag" Plugin

Flow of events when the "Tag & Bag" Button clicked

Shopaholic BagIt flow diagram.png

How data is Captured

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4
  • Merchant URL
  • Product URL
  • Currency
  • Product number [input]
  • Product Name [input]
  • Price [input]
  • Color (Available) [dropdown]
  • Size (Available) [dropdown]
  • Picture x1
  • Product Category [dropdown]
  • Default Price [hidden]
  • Chosen Size
  • Chosen Colour
  • Custom Field

Interface Considerations

Inspirations from currently available "pinterest-style" sites

Since the birth of Pinterest, many have been tapping on the concept of "Pinning" images, where the image, and the data related to the image is being captured, and kept for own's bookmarking/scrapbooking purpose. The concept of "Pinning" objects is simple. One just simply have the bookmarklet on the browser's bookmark bar, and it works! No cumbersome installation is required.


We realised that this tool is very useful if we could incorporate it to the current Spree model in Singapore. It had a lot of potential to revolutionize the way people spree, as the process of spree-ing is breing eased tremendously with this "pinning" tool.

Users can happily click away to "pin" the images of the things they fancy, with all the details of the items being captured at the same time. Afterwhich, they can return to review all the items they have "Pinned" and proceed to confirm their purchases with the Spree Organizers.


We researched on how this tool is being used to come out with the best way to use it to our advantage, and to come out with the best design for great usability.

Pinterest Listly Nuji

Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard.

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.
People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.
Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

Listly helps curate lists of things people care about inside your blog posts.

Collecting and sharing our passions is the new norm.
Sharing is shifting to live embeddable content, so you can share content, community and engagment across multiple blogs.

Nuji is your social wish list.

Nuji helps you save and discover products you love from all over the web.
With Nuji, you can save items you like from any online store using our simple bookmarklet.
Also, you can follow people with similar taste and see what they're discovering. It's an easy way to find new products you like and save the ones you want to your wish list.

Shopaholic-Pininterst-2.png


Shopaholic-Pinterest-1.png

Shopaholic-Listly-plugin.png

Shopaholic-Nuji-1.png


Shopaholic-Nuji-2.png

Challenges Faced

For different product types, there would be different attributes which would require users to select. Hence, our plugin needs to be robust enough to be able to detect all the attributes which users need to select.

Here is the example of the different attributes which needs to be captured for different product type, taken from Victoria Secrets Clothing Section:

1200X1000px


Our Design

Userbility Metrics

Completion Rates

As “Tag & Bag” is a new concept we are introducing, we want to ensure that users are able to understand what the “Tag” and “Bag” function is for. Instructions/guides we provide on how to use the Plugin should be very clear, and easy to understand. Hence, we expect 100% Completion Rate for the given task to users. Users must be able to complete the following task:

1. Drag & Drop bookmarklet to bookmark bar [Mid-Term]
2. “Tag” items they want to review later [Mid-Term]
3. “Bag” items they are able to confirm their purchase on [Mid-Term]
4. Checkout items in a Spree. Participants to ibank to Spree Organizer Directly [Mid-Term]

5. Spree Organizers & Participants are able to communicate within a Spree [Final]
6. Checkout items in a Spree with our Credit Management System [Final]

Task Time

To check if our “Tag & Bag” function is really bringing value to users, we need to gauge if it does really help ease the current Spree-ing process. Our goal is to eliminate tedious form filling process, and improve accuracy of the item details captured. As mentioned before, the form filling process takes about 5-7 minutes. Now, we hope to reduce this time to merely 30 Seconds. This includes the time taken for users to check the item details, and make any amendments if necessary.

Accuracy

The ability of the Plugin to accurately capture the required details would affect the user’s satisfaction. If details are not captured accurately, users would need to manually edit and add in addition details, which would in turn lengthen the time taken to complete a task as well. It is not realistic to expect our Plugin to be 100% accurate, as the merchants controls the products, and the attributes of the product varies with the variety which the merchant offers. We aim to expect the Plugin to be accurate for 7 out of 10 times a user tries to capture the details of an item for a Merchant.

Conversion

Adoption of a new Merchant Site

We aim to be able to adopt a new merchant site within 24hours after a request have been recieved.

User Adoption Rate

In order for our product to be successful, we need to be able to convert users to use our Plugin to make a purchase from a spree. We hope that 4 out of 5 people who have “installed” the Plugin would eventually make a purchase in a Spree.


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