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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Feasibility Study
Project Aims
To create a new internet shopping portal offering a selection of original, high quality and
niche market shops providing a better, more interactive and personalised shopping
experience. We will provide a medium, which will offer visually strong advertising
opportunities based on tried and tested real world models, which are currently not
utilised on the internet.
Organisational
Does the project have realistic aims?
There are a vast number of original, high quality and niche market shops in the U.K. of
which many already have their own website but are difficult to find through traditional
search engines and portals. We intend to persuade a large number of these
establishments to join our site, which will immediately increase their profile.
For those shops who do not have websites we intend to offer a design service which a
partner company will provide. By encouraging consumers to register with us, we will be
able to personalise their shopping experience by welcoming them by name to the site
and providing them with a weather forecast for their area and headlines from their
favourite newspaper. They will also be provided with a shopping street, which will
contain shops recommended by us, based on their profile as well as a street which they
can build themselves and fill with their favourite shops from the site. There will be an
opportunity to read and write reviews of all shops on the site and there will also be a
request/recommend option whereby a shop or type of shop can be suggested for
inclusion on the site.
Contrary to the current internet trend of banner advertising, which scrolls every 30
seconds, we intend to build our advertising structure on traditional, real world models.
These will include billboards, hoardings, actual buildings and taxi cab panels, which will
be sold to advertisers for fixed amounts and agreed time periods, based on 90-day slots.
Our initial pricing structure is based on a full page, full colour advertisement in a niche
market magazine. This gives us a relatively low fee, which can be increased according
to traffic through the site and in particular, traffic past an individual advertisement. As we
obtain registration details we can produce demographics which will also enable us to
accurately target advertisers and charge a premium rate for selected advertising
locations.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Project Objectives
i) To create a visually stunning and ergonomic shopping portal, based on a "virtual life"
model making it a more natural shopping experience than the current, mainly text-
based sites. This model will be as diverse and expandable as the real world, with the
ability to grow organically as new areas and facilities come to fruition and are
constructed.
ii) We will be responsible for the ultimate quality of the portal and all retailers will have
to adhere to a business practice agreement including the Data Protection Act, The
Distance Selling Directive and The E.U. Electronic Commerce Directive. This will
bring maximum service and protection to customers and add to consumer
confidence in the site.
iii) Strong advertising and product placement will be a major feature of the portal which
will move away from the current clicks per thousand (CPM) model and instead
encourage advertisers to purchase fixed site advertisements for a set fee and an
agreed time period.
iv) The portal will operate at the limit of technology, which is currently available to the
mass market. This will often mean we cannot utilise the latest technology as it is
released but only when the majority of users can access it. In doing so we can
maintain a large user base whilst continually developing as and when new
technologies become appropriate.
v) To expand into the international market creating individual, national portals for each
country which will all still be part of the niceandeasyshopping.com wide area
network.
Can the project achieve the objectives?
i) The site will have a graphic user interface (GUI) which will be styled around an
island model on which various facilities will be “built”. Initially the first construction
phase will consist of building a small town in which there will be streets populated
with shops. The town will appear on the island and will be an active hyperlink to a
more detailed map of the town. On this map will more active links to areas,
streets or buildings in the town. For example, each street will have seven shop
fronts of which five are actively trading companies and the two outer shops or
units will be advertising sites. We have chosen seven units as the optimum
number to avoid overcrowding a screen, given today’s computer standards. When
a cursor is moved across an active shop, the window will expand to show what
the shop sells and the door will open to encourage entry. At the same time a side
bar on the browser will also highlight which link is being looked at. The customer
then has the option to enter the shop or continue browsing. Whilst in the shop,
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
niceandeasyshopping.com will retain control of the customer’s browser by
capturing the shop in a browser frame so that they have to return to the
niceandeasyshopping.com site before leaving for somewhere else.
The town will contain businesses which already have a web presence and
perhaps do not require any web design or internet, merchant account services.
However, we intend to build a village which will contain small businesses with
limited product lines that do not have any web presence at all. These shops will
be brought into our village and will be completely exclusive to
niceandeasyshopping.com. They will still have a unique URL, hosted by
niceandeasyshopping.com, but this will automatically link to their shop front in our
village. This dramatically increases our USP of niche and original shops as well
as adding a B2B element to our business plan.
As in any real world, island or town, facilities have to be included to provide extra
value for the residents. We intend to duplicate this process on our site, whilst
maintaining the original nature of the content. For example, specific buildings
which will be constructed will include:
Art Gallery, exhibiting and selling works by new artists from degree shows or
little known artists seeking greater exposure and perhaps new forms of cyber-
art which can only exist in electronic or virtual form.
Job Centre, listing jobs in niche markets e.g. orchestral, scientific, arts, etc.
Games Hall, where internet based games can be played. Some of these will
be multi-user games and others may be for download. We would intend to
have an niceandeasyshopping.com game developed, which would be
exclusive to our site.
Airport, containing airline ticket desks, car hire firms and some travel
companies.
Ski Resort, selling ski and other winter sports equipment as well as winter
holidays and up to date weather reports and content from major winter sports
events.
Other constructions are too numerous to mention and range from television
stations to cinemas and concert halls to libraries.
ii) Our objective is to have a high quality site which is reflected in the standards of
service from the shops on the site. Our legal counsel will draw up an appropriate
code of practice and standards document that all shops will be required to accept.
This will include all areas of data protection as well as E.U. commerce and e-
commerce directives. The site will be monitored for content and will be
maintained as a family site, free from unsavoury elements such as pornography,
violence and gambling. This will have the added advantage of helping us to sell
into the Middle East and other religious regimes as well as making our site
completely suitable for the television based internet market. By allowing
consumers to review shops, we will also be able to monitor the general
perception of shop content and advise shop owners of any problems, which may
arise. Whilst we intend to manage the overall quality of the site and its content we
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
will not be able to accept final responsibility for that failure of a shop owner to fulfil
their sales obligations. We will, however, endeavour to act on behalf of a
dissatisfied consumer as far as it is expedient to do so.
iii) Banner advertising on the internet is proving itself to be unpopular with
consumers as well as advertisers. Consumers find the large number of
constantly changing and flashing banners, distracting and are increasingly turning
to specialised software which can delete the vast majority of them from the
website being browsed. Advertisers are finding that people are generally unaware
of the ad contents, which again comes from the persistently annoying nature of
the banner structure. Site owners are finding that revenue is dropping as it is
based on a clicks per thousand (CPM) model, which requires that consumers
click on a banner and the number of clicks is then translated into revenue.
Our advertising strategy is based on a traditional model whereby advertisers
purchase a fixed site for their product, such as billboards, hoardings, actual
buildings and taxi cab panels, which will be theirs for as long as their contract
allows and will not scroll or rotate to any other companies advert. This contract
will take the form of a fixed fee and will be renewable in 90-day periods. Product
placement can be quite varied and may take the form of things such as, news-
stand boards, drinks machines, coffee shops by e.g. Starbucks, the aeroplane
which drags an advertising slogan across the sky could be rented by an airline,
etc.
Each street will have 2 main advertising locations taking the form of a billboard or
hoarding and a building on a corner location, which would be “owned” by an
advertiser. These ads could well be active links to services provided by the
advertiser but may equally be purely a static advert. Other devices to be included
will be the search engine taxicab, which will be available for “re-sprays” and will
be seen driving along the streets. As previously mentioned there will be an
aeroplane, which will drag a slogan across the sky above the shops.
iv) The technology philosophy for the site is that we intend to provide as interesting
as possible content given the constraints of the mass user base currently
browsing the net. In effect this means we have to make sure our site is
compatible with technology which is not state of the art. For example, there is no
point in designing a site which only works well on a 21” monitor, requires an ISDN
connection and the latest shockwave plug-in if the vast majority of users have 15”
monitors, 28.8k modems and have old browsers which do not support plug-ins.
The site has to work well on all browsers unlike some, which appear to have
problems with Netscape, and must be cross platform i.e. PC, Mac, Linux, etc. It is
our desire, however to continually develop the site technology and as it becomes
apparent that new technology has become widespread we will immediately adopt
its functions for our site.
To achieve these goals we intend to have close ties with a web-design company,
which will be contracted to develop and maintain our site’s interface. It may
become necessary to bring these facilities in-house if the economics show that as
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
a way forward and at that time we would set up a web-design department,
perhaps even buying the initial web-design company.
In order to maintain knowledge of how ergonomic our site developments are, we
intend to carry out regular market research in the form of beta testing our new site
technology on a small (50 – 100) group of the public. They will be given access to
a computer and given a questionnaire to help deduce reactions and this should
enable us to bring new facilities to the site, which we know to be effective.
v) Initially, niceandeasyshopping.com will be a U.K. based site which will have the
majority of its shops based in the U.K. This will make the site an attractive
proposition to local shoppers who should be able to expect a fast turnaround on
their orders. Consumers may also feel more secure in the knowledge that they
are protected locally by U.K. law.
Our intention is to expand into other countries after a relatively short time in order
to maintain our market advantage. We envisage this expansion beginning after 6
months taking the form of initial research into suitable shops in the target country
and going on-line within a further 3 months maximum. As in our U.K. strategy, we
will employ a local researcher to seek out companies and shops, which fit our
remit. The first countries we will look at are the more net aware countries such as
Finland, the most connected country in Europe and Australia, a rapidly
developing country in terms of the internet. Interestingly France has almost the
least number of connections despite its digital telecomm’s network and is
therefore a less attractive proposition at the outset of expansion. All individual
national sites will have their own national internet address such as, co.uk, .au, etc
but these will all automatically access the .com address and conversely the .com
address will give access to all the other countries as required.
Are the constraints realistic and practicable?
Finance.
In order for niceandeasyshopping.com to have an appropriate impact on its inception
we feel it has to have a national presence. This implies that an initial first round
funding or proving time on a small scale would not be effective and could destroy our
market advantage. It is, therefore, our intention to obtain funding at the outset which
will enable us to achieve a U.K launch and subsequent development. Large scale
funding (£1-10m) is available in the U.K. from various investment sources providing
the business plan is a good enough proposition and that it shows a good return and
attractive exit strategy for the investor.
Time.
The internet is an extremely fast moving and competitive market and as such, time is
of the essence. We are planning to secure funding and be online by mid-October,
2000, which will give us a web presence in time to catch the Christmas rush. This
infers that funding would have to be in place no later than September, which gives us
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
8 weeks to do so. This is perhaps a little optimistic but is achievable given a good
enough business plan and a suitable investor.
Management Team.
Niceandeasyshopping.com is managed by co-directors, Bert Buchanan and Ernie
Weir. We have identified the following areas of management responsibility: Sales
and Marketing, Finance, Operations, Design, Technical, R & D and CEO. Of these,
Design and some Technical will be out-sourced to partner companies, some of the
other areas will be dealt with by Bert and Ernie, which leaves the areas of
Finance/Operations and Sales/Marketing to be filled. We need to appoint these 2
positions to the Board of Directors and intend to seek help to find suitable
candidates.
Sales Force.
Whilst we are able to commence an initial sales drive ourselves, we feel that we
need a separate sales team comprising of a local (national based) researcher and
probably 2 sales executives on the road. They will be responsible for selling the
concept of niceandeasyshopping.com to potential retailers and also encouraging
advertisers on to our site. This sales team may have to be expanded but to maintain
a control on cash-flow at the outset we would rather employ the basic required staff
and then expand as necessary.
Premises.
We recognise a need for some basic premises, which would preferably be of the
managed style i.e. complete with basic reception/secretarial services, which would
again help with initial cash-flow. We have already looked at such premises run by
Govan Initiative but as yet have not found anything suitable. Ultimately it is our
intention to look at purchasing our own premises which would be of sufficient size to
accommodate our needs and also provide extra space which we will rent out and will
help cover the purchase cost.
Business Infrastructure.
At present, Bert and Ernie are running the entire business operation but recognise
the need for extra management skills, especially in the areas of Sales/Marketing and
Finance/Operations. These gaps in experience have to be filled with personnel who
will be appointed to the Board of Directors. Ideally they will also bring “grey-hair”
experience as well as the appropriate management skills required to fulfil their
positions on the Board. Recruitment of these individuals has yet to be done.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Have the problems and issues to be addressed been defined
correctly?
Designing a site, which has an attractive GUI but has a fast download time as well as
easily viewable by the majority of users.
This is easily achievable given today’s technology using either Flash or perhaps even
traditional html, integrated with a good database. Care will be taken to ensure our
site is compatible with Netscape and Internet Explorer as well as any cross-platform
issues that arise, thus ensuring we have the maximum user base.
Attracting shops on to the site.
Initially, shops will be given 6 months free presence on our site to encourage them to
participate but after that we will discuss terms and fees, such as a monthly site rental
or a percentage of sales or perhaps a combination of both. Shops will be attracted by
the fact that the site is a niche market site and will attract the kind of customers they
are already trying to reach. It is also a family, friendly site and this may also reassure
some retailers given they will not be associated with other businesses of dubious
content. In time, our brand recognition will bring added value, as it will attract an
ever-increasing number of quality customers to our site. Potential shops will also be
assured that they will be part of a select group, limited in number, and will therefore
not be swamped in a flood of similar shops.
Attracting customers on to the site.
The USP is the niche and original nature of the shops contained in our site. This will
attract potential customers who are looking for something different, unusual or
difficult to find either in the real world or on the internet. The graphical nature of our
site is also unique and provides a quick and easy way to navigate, which is more
ergonomic and recognisable to the average user. It will not provide a confusing and
over-extensive choice, which is indiscriminate in content and quality. Rather, it will
offer a choice selection of the best, most original and niche market shops, which will
be presented in an attractive form. When customers register their details with us we
will offer them a discount voucher which can be used in selected outlets for their first
purchase.
The registration process will not go into too much personal detail as we do not need
to know individuals’ telephone numbers or street information but we do need to find
out about income bracket and home town. This should further allay customers’ fears
about privacy issues.
Keeping customers on the site.
When customers link to a shop they will not leave our site but rather the new page
will be held captive in a frame on our browser. When they leave the shop they will
have to return to our site if they wish to continue browsing.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
An incentive to exploring the entire site, will be hidden gift vouchers under random
URL’s which can be used in any shop or building on our site. A number of these
vouchers will be hidden each day. Once per month we will hide a “star prize” under a
URL which may take the form of an item from a particular shop or site advertiser.
These incentives will initially be paid for by niceandeasyshopping.com but we
envisage a partial or perhaps complete sponsorship arrangement for these prizes at
some point in the future.
Once registered, customers will be able to personalise their own street by adding
their favourite shops from all around the site. They will also be offered a customised
street, recommended by niceandeasyshopping.com, based on their personal
preferences. In addition they will be welcomed by name to the site, given the weather
report for their local area and the headlines from their favourite newspaper.
As the site evolves and new buildings and facilities are constructed, customers will
find more and more interesting things to see and do. These will include online
games, email services, education and unique pay per view events.
Developing customer loyalty.
Personalisation of the site will bring customer loyalty to a degree and as we add
further services and buildings we expect customers to choose our experience.
The site will be family friendly and will not contain any information or links to sites,
which contain information pertaining to pornography or gratuitous violence, etc.
Customers will be given the opportunity to write and read reviews of all the shops
and buildings on the site, as well as suggesting new shops and services for inclusion
on the site. In this way, niceandeasyshopping.com will become in part the creation of
the people who use it.
Attracting advertising.
Initially advertisers will be offered heavily discounted rates in order that they can
assess the potential returns from our site without incurring large costs or risks. As
site traffic increases we will be able to charge larger and more accurate fees to
advertisers. We intend to move away from the traditional banner advertising
approach, which is rapidly decreasing in favour across the internet. Our site will offer
more traditional advertising methods based on billboards, hoardings and shop fronts.
These will be available for short or long-term rental, based on 90-day periods and will
provide advertisers with static advertisements or displays, which will be available at
negotiated prices.
As a result of customer registration and monitoring site traffic, we will be able to
produce accurate demographics which will be valuable to advertisers, agencies or
ourselves. This will enable us to match individual locations with specific advertisers.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Maintaining control of site content.
It is our intention to produce a code of standards document which will require all
shops to adhere to its content. This document will cover issues such as data
protection, unsuitable content and European legislation pertaining to e-commerce
and distance selling.
The site will be constantly monitored by niceandeasyshopping.com for content and
any infringements of the code of standards will be dealt with immediately by
niceandeasyshopping.com. If infringements are not genuine mistakes and not
corrected immediately, offenders will be removed from the site.
Customers will be able to make direct complaints to us and we will endeavour to act
on their behalf as far as possible without accepting liability or responsibility for
another company’s misdemeanour.
Customer reviews will also be monitored for content and will only be posted when
they have been vetted. This is not to say that we will censor comments but rather
monitor offensive language and potential law suits. These reviews will also help
provide us with a source of information about the shops on our site and the service
they provide.
Alternate revenue sources, apart from advertising.
Shop rental
Commission from shop sales
Pay per view activities such as concerts, sporting events, etc
Pay to play games
Art Gallery sales commission
Job Centre listings
Web Site creation
Merchant Account Services
Marketing.
High Profile, expensive campaign including TV and Radio ads, billboards and
newspaper / magazine ads.
A viral, creative PR campaign, using partnerships with existing internet sites,
ISP’s and large terrestrial businesses. This would be progressive and cheaper
to execute.
Competitions, which would be hosted in various popular magazines or
newspapers, involving extensive site navigation in order to find the answer to
a question.
Media links whereby we would supply editorial content for a variety of suitable
publications which would increase our public profile.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Management Team.
We acknowledge the gap in our experience as far as sales/marketing and
finance/operations is concerned. We intend to recruit individuals to the board of
directors to meet this need but have not done so as yet.
Personal contact with suitable individuals is the easiest way to find new board
members but our circle of contacts is limited. We intend to post our requirements on
the First Tuesday bulletin board to find suitable candidates and will also approach
potential partner companies for individuals wishing to take on dual directorships.
It is possible that incubator companies can provide us with the necessary people to
fill the perceived gap in our management team.
Staffing Levels.
As the only two directors of niceandeasyshopping.com we are aware that there is a
requirement for greater staffing levels. As mentioned in the previous section, we
need two further directors in charge of sales/marketing and finance/operations.
A researcher is required to efficiently maintain our expansion programme.
Two sales executives to promote our site to potential advertisers as well as to new
shops.
Receptionist/Secretary (not required at the outset if we are in a managed office
system).
Web/Server Administrator (perhaps initially supplied by web hosting company).
Competition.
Amazon.com:
Obviously, the best known site on the Internet and the largest shopping site to
date. They offer a fairly good homepage with excellent levels of customer service
and comment options. They differ from us in that they actually sell goods
themselves and have begun to dilute their site with the inclusion of z-shops,
which is a detraction from what they are good at. The site is text based and is
becoming very busy and complicated by too much information.
ShopSmart.com:
A shopping portal in it’s most basic form. This site is the classic boring text based
experience which gives customers too much choice when given a search
command i.e. 1000’s of sites all offering the same type of goods with no real
description of what is being sold or how good the shop is. Very confusing.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
LastMinute.com:
Another very confusing site with far too much text information requiring too much
time to decipher what is actually being said or sold and by whom.
ShoppingArcade.co.uk:
The nearest site to our concept and as such, the closest competition. They have
a street style presentation but they are limited to an arcade design with no current
way of expanding to include other activities. They have chosen for some reason
to make their site only compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer and as a result
have excluded tens of millions of users of Netscape Navigator or Communicator.
They do have some basic advertising but the site is still very conventional in its
presentation. The impression is one of staid technology and ideas, definitely not
fun. Shopping Arcade do not own the .com URL.
VirtualMall.co.uk
This site is designed around a floor plan of a multi-storey department store. The
look of the site is very cluttered and distracting because the links to each shop
have been made using the logo from each company. These links are very small
because of the large number of shops on each floor and as such are almost
impossible to read, even on a high definition display which most people do not
have access to. There is no search engine and there is no easy way to navigate
about the site to find what is sought after. The shops on the site are generally not
niche market in any way and there are links to some very large retailers which is
not the direction we wish to take. VirtualMall do not own the .com URL.
EC Land.co.uk
This is a shopping site with good 3D movement and the visually strongest
shopping mall we have found. The main drawback of the site is that it requires the
presence of a CD-ROM or a 1.3Mb download in order to work. This download is
not a once only process, but will be required each time the site is updated. A
download of this size will be very unattractive to large amounts of users because
they do not have fast connections to the internet. Although this software does
allow the site to be browsed offline it is not possible to access any of the shops
without connecting again and perhaps requiring an update. Also, the software
contained in the download is platform specific and excludes all Macintosh and
Linux users. The site only has 12 shops at present with an already large
download; it does not bode well for future expansion. EC Land also requires that
all sales from the site be delivered by the vendor to their own warehouse before
final distribution to the customer. This only leads to further, unnecessary delays
whilst at the same time increasing logistical problems.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Economic
Is the project affordable?
The project is not affordable through personal finance from Bert and Ernie but requires
some form of seed capital or first round funding from Angels or VC’s.
How much will it cost for:
Likely hardware, software and services?
Rental options for all servers, switching, software and web administration is approx.
£5,000.00 per month. To purchase the same equipment as specified for the rental
option would cost around £150,000.00 plus the ongoing cost of web administration of
around £25,000 per annum.
Implementation?
Pre-Start up costs: Individual Fees £12,000.00
Expenses £1,500.00
Laptop £2,500.00
Start up costs: Salaries (3 x Directors @ £30k p.a.) £45,000.00
(6 months) (1 x Researcher @ £24k p.a.) £12,000.00
(1 x Sales Exec @ £25k p.a.) £12,500.00
Managed Office Rental £3,000.00
Computer Hardware £12,500.00
Software £5,000.00
Office Furniture £2,500.00
Sales Car £2,500.00
Car Expenses £3,000.00
Sales Expenses (£100 per day) £7,200.00
Directors’ Expenses (Overnights + flights) £10,000.00
Web Design £150,000.00
Marketing £100,000.00
Entertainment £10,000.00
Miscellaneous £5,000.00
Printing & Stationery £5,000.00
Legal Fees £5,000.00
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Accountancy Fees £1,500.00
Server Rental £30,000.00
Total £437,700.00
Maintenance?
In the initial six months, all the purchase equipment is under warranty and the rental
equipment will maintained as part of the rental agreement, so it is anticipated that
these costs will not come into the equation. The managed office rental also covers
any property maintenance and cleaning costs.
Administration?
The managed office costs cover all initial administration costs.
All estimates produced at this point are purely ballpark.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Technical
Is the technology currently available?
All the required server, switching and software to enable the site and background
administration is currently available and is tried and tested. Our intention is to use
Sun servers, Cisco switching and Oracle Software for the main, background system
and software along the lines of Flash and Cold Fusion or alternatively html/xml as a
front end.
Will the system be sufficiently :
Reliable?
The system will be designed on a dual-redundant array with multiple servers which
will protect against any failure of the system.
Expandable?
Due to the nature of the equipment we intend to use, the system is easily
expandable at any time.
Secure?
The system will use dual firewall technology for the servers and will employ 128-bit
encryption, where possible for cash transactions. The 40-bit encryption for
transactions as required by British Banking, is well within system specifications.
Supportable?
The back end of the system is comprised of industry standard equipment and is
therefore supported globally. The software front end or GUI will be designed to run
on any browser and all common computer platforms i.e. PC, Mac, Linux.
Will the response times be quick enough?
Our own server will be connected to a high bandwidth backbone which will be fast
enough to deal with any requests, we are not able to control the speed at which the
customers’ own servers connect at. Through beta testing our system, we will ensure
the fastest possible response times.
Sales response times are not our direct responsibility but our Code of Standards
agreement will require companies to be as efficient as possible in that area and we
will attempt to remedy any under-performance as it is brought to our attention.
We will endeavour to respond to all incoming e-mails within 12 hours.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Can the capacity of the proposed equipment, hold and deal with
anticipated loads?
The system is designed to exceed our requirements and expected loads by a wide
margin.
Will the proposed equipment cope with predicted growth of:
Data? Users? Etc.?
The equipment has been designed with expansion in mind and will initially cope with
any expansion quite easily. It is also easily supplemented and will therefore cope
with any growth beyond prediction.
Locations?
As the system grows into other countries we intend to add new servers and other
hardware, etc in the new local area as appropriate. These new server locations may
not be country specific but may continent specific i.e. Europe, far East, Australasia,
etc. This will help us keep the overall system performance at peak efficiency and
maintain our connection standards to customers.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Social
Will it be acceptable to those who use it?
The site will have a family friendly content, which will be monitored by us. This means it
will be free from and have no association with, any sources of pornography, gratuitous
violence, gambling, etc. Our Code of Standards agreement will require all participating
companies to adhere to our content policy, which will also include data protection, etc.
The site is intended to be more acceptable to the user in its graphical user interface
(GUI), which is more intuitive than the current, text based sites.
Will it be workable by those who use it?
The GUI, by its nature, makes the site more workable than any other site currently on
the internet. Extensive beta testing will be employed before each site development to
ensure the workability of each new facility.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Schedule
Can the project be completed and delivered in time?
It is our intention to make the site active in mid-October, 2000 and it is possible to
achieve this if we secure funding in the near future. This schedule is tight, but
manageable. It would require funding to be in place no later than the end of August,
2000.
How long will it take to become fully operational?
It will take between 6 – 8 weeks for the site to go online and a further 6 months to be
completely operational with some added features such as the Art Gallery, Airport and
Job Centre. At this time we would also be looking to expand into at least 2 other
countries e.g. Finland and Australia.
How serious would delays be?
While delays would not put an end to the project, they could impair the sites ability to be
first to market and hence its sales advantage. We would miss the Christmas rush in the
U.K. which would not only reduce our ability to attract customers to the site to buy
interesting presents but also reduce our chances of being included in any press
coverage of new internet shopping sites for that period.
Can they be overcome?
The delays can only be overcome by receiving funding within the allotted time-scale or
by reducing the site requirements and facilities for the initial launch.
Is the project time-critical?
The project is time critical in as much as it is important to be first to market with our idea.
The internet does move more quickly than the real world and this does put some time
pressure on the project. However, we do not intend to launch with half a site and partial
technology as this would only serve to harm our efforts at creating a brand.
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Prepared by Tom Caira
Anjech Ltd.
Legal / Ethical
Will the implementation of the project infringe upon any laws?
It is our intention to work closely with our legal counsel to ensure the site stays within all
present and future global, legal requirements. Our Code of Standards, which will be
drawn up for our exclusive use, will ensure that all participating companies will also
adhere to these laws and regulations. All legal codes of practice and liabilities will be
published on the site for public scrutiny.
Does the implementation of the project raise any ethical issues, e.g.
privacy?
The project will require to be registered with the Data Protection Agency in order to
protect the privacy of all site users and will also adhere to the E.U. Distance Selling
Directive and Electronic Commerce Directive. Our site registration, which requires
customers to give us some personal details, will refrain from requesting such details as
street name and number, or telephone number and this will provide a further level of
data protection as we will not hold that data in our company at all.
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