Deliverable B - Business Case
Case Background
Orange Music School is a non-for profit organization that provides musical instruction and training to local, national and international students.
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Value Proposition
- Create the ability to sign up for programs, view schedules and confirm registrations, buy material.
- Create the ability for teachers to post their programs, syllabus, necessary material, and hours.
- Provide streaming video of classes, for the students that cannot attend.
Business Model
- Business to Consumer (B2C)
- Revenue generated from various sources:
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- Class Fees (On-site and online)
- Private Event Fees (concerts or recitals)
- Material and Merchandise
- Sponsors
Competitive Review
- American Music Institute
A non-profit music center, located in Hinsdale, IL and St. Charles, IL, that offers a variety of private lessons. They offer private lessons, group lessons, and various other programs that also include music theory, summer camps and pre-schools. - Merit School of Music
A music center located primary in Chicago's West loop. They offer different levels of music instruction, ranging from Beginner level to Advanced (college prep) type instruction. Similar to other music schools they also offer private lessons and summer programs. - Midwest Conservatory of Music
A music center located in northwestern Chicago. They offer one on one instruction in piano, violin, viola, cello and oboe. They also offer a wide range of level instruction from beginner to advance. They also provide workshops for their students and conduct music recitals. They also offer the option for consumer to purchase music online. - Sherwood Conservatory of Music
A part of Columbia College Chicago. This school is located on the south side of Chicago and offers programs similar to other music school sites. Main difference is that this school has admissions and offers financial aid for students 18 and younger. - Wheaton College Community School of the Arts
A community arts school based out of Wheaton, IL. They offer similar programs to the other sites with pre-school programs and beginner to advance instruction. They also offer a variety of performance opportunities for their students, stemming from children's and adult choirs to Concerto and Ensembles concerts. In addition to the basic musical programs offered, they also offer programs in Visual art as well.
Rationale for Internet Initiatives
- Increase exposure and awareness of the music school to local and non-local audience
A presence on the Internet will allow us to reach more potential students and teachers who would join the school, and bring the quality higher. - Encourage website interaction
Access to the basic info through a website will make it convenient for students or faculty. These features will include classes offered, schedules, class materials and fee balances. Faculty can sign up and post their lectures and hours. Also, share extra material with students. - Create new exposure for sponsors
Due to the web presence, sponsors can read our mission, and have the opportunity to donate.
Intended Customers
Primary:
- In class participants
- Kids and teens for Professional programs (2 to 16 years old)
- Middle age to senior for leisure programs (30 to 60 years old)
- Young and middle age professionals Church/Community programs (22 to 50 years old)
- Professionals, Church/Community Musicians, Leisure or die hard fans
- Local candidates that can participate in class
Secondary:
- Online participants
- All ages
- Customers located in city, suburbs, and rural geographic locations throughout the U.S.
Project Phases
Phase I: Establish an online presence and create online brand consistent with business
- Create design and requirements for website needs and functionality
- Include information and provide basic tools to ensure a simple and user friendly experience
- Research, develop and implement functioning e-commerce website for selling services and products online
Phase II: Build on functionality to increase interest and participation
- Design interactive tools to increase user traffic and participation to the site
- Implement additional user functionality to the website
Phase III: Incorporate partnerships and add additional user functionality
- Incorporate recommended vendors advertisements on ad space on the website
- Implement customization tools for individual user member profiles
Customer Attraction
Impulsive
- Although music is more designed for patient people, we have quick and easy programs for leisurely intended players.
Patient
- Someone that wants to study music seriously will have some of the world renowned faculty to do it.
Shopping Experience
- - Although we mainly sell services and not products, we still want our customers to feel like they are gaining quality and something that lasts forever.
- - Our website will be mainly Utilitarian in that, people will use it to view class offerings and register for classes, check for concert times and dates, and/or offer their musical lessons online.
- - Our website will be slightly hedonic in the sense that people generally like music and will most likely browse to our page to watch any of the concerts or events offered through flash.
Conversion Factors
- Audience Relevance: Identify 3 or 4 main areas of interest to site visitors and give those areas equal emphasis on the homepage.
- Provide some text links further down on the homepage to cover remaining interests.
- Targeted Marketing: Based on the top interest, create search engine keywords to promote the website and to provide articles on a regular eNewsletter.
- Differentiation: Visitor Features
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- Awards and Certifications
- Programs, Schedule and Learning Path
- Students/Instructors Advice, Reviews or Suggestions
- School Location
- Measurement: Google Analytics on site traffic and AdWords on landing page.
e-Commerce Value Chain
- ATTRACT: The main attraction will be uniqueness, availability of services and convenience, there will be free concerts offered through flash, some services will be marketed at a very low price, if not free to help get as many people viewing our site. We will spend some time analyzing the site and conducting surveys to make sure that visibly this is what users want.
- INTERACT: The user friendly website will make it easy for anyone to get the information needed. People will be able read the available courses, select the classes they would like to take, click on watchable content, and use the calendar/event viewer to see which concerts are coming up.
- ACT: Simple steps and procedures will allow students and teachers to want to work with this website. In other words, students will be able to register and submit the list of classes they want to take. Teachers will be able to post the classes they are going to offer, both online and at the school.
- REACT: Proper support and updates will be important for customer satisfaction. Surveys will be offered through the mail and e-mail to get visitors feedback to help make the site better, there will be a contact us page that will allow for visitors to e-mail and call us for information or anything else they may need.
Multi-Channel Strategies
Off-line
- The main way we will promote the school and website will be through special events, local media ads and word of mouth.
On-line
- Online we will use different common postings where we can market our services. E.g. CSO.org, DePaul community partners, etc.
Seven Essentials
Availability and Uptime
- In order to satisfy the base demand of our clients, we will ensure that the website has both high availability and uptime through multiple strategies. The first will come from our commitment to identify a quality hosting provider. We will ensure that they have at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and will also demand that the backend architecture is scalable so that we may satisfy increased future demand. Although the site is not expected to be high volume, we will offer unique media content and will have a significant bandwidth requirement. Beyond these, we will require a full-feature control panel that include site monitoring and reporting tools such as those provided under CPanel.
User-centered design and application development
- We understand that the vast majority of the visitors to our website may not have the most technical background, so designing a site that is easy to navigate and has a natural flow to it is important to our success. So that we may properly match the design with user expectations, our plan is to complete a number of interviews and surveys to determine base site functions. We will also use this information to come up with our primary user personas to help the design and functionality stay focused. Following this, we will create prototypes of the websites that align with derived customer personas, and conduct further interviews with best-fitting clientele. This information will all be gathered and used to complete a final design that will be ready for user testing.
Rigorous and strategic coding standards
- Although our website is not going to feature thousands of products, each requiring a unique page, we will make use of standard templates to ensure consistent site look and feel. We will take lengthy steps to ensure that all pages are compliant with existing standards, and will ensure a consistent cross-browser experience. Because we will be relying on search engines increase business, a focus will be placed on ensuring the proper use of meta-information along with a logical and streamlined layout. While our clients will primarily make use of the standard browsers, we will also support mobile devices serving custom-tailored content that will display properly on a small screen. Though this information will be limited, our targeted audience will be satisfied in finding contact information, class scheduled, upcoming events and similar information.
Streamlined backend systems to allow for quick response
- As is standard for the web community, our visitors will demand fast response from our website, no matter if this is merely browsing the page or if it is contacting an instructor for additional information. Our expected page layouts will use a only a tasteful amount of graphics in order to keep the overall size down, and will not include burdensome flash or other types of media unless necessary for a specific function. To ensure fast communication with our clients, we will include our standard phone number with hours along with an after-hours support email address that will be monitored by designated school personnel. This will have an indication of anticipated response time in order to properly set client expectations.
Cross-channel Governance
- As we believe strongly in the value of compliance, we will strictly follow the guidelines and standards established by the industry. This will not only include coding practices such as those established by W3C, but also those to ensure customer data privacy. While the company we represent is rather small, we will ensure that a governance process is in place to require proper authorization and change management. While the site will not be hosted locally, it will be the focus of this group to see to regular audits of the hosting company to also ensure industry best-practices are being followed.
Behavior and satisfaction monitoring and optimization
- To truly understand the needs and satisfaction of our customers, our primary strategy will be to focus on randomized customer satisfaction surveys and self-tests of site operations through mock purchases. As our site develops, we would look toward more formal monitoring options such as those provided by WebtTends.
User preference tracking & customization / personalization
- Once our system has successfully delivered the foundational requirements, we can look toward providing a richer interface for our users; one that allows them to customize their experience and that allows us to gain an understanding of this behavior. Expectations include features such as a personal home page, providing account management, payment, selected programs, and suggested materials. Understanding use of these pages will allow for enhanced site development and provide an all-round better experience for new customers.
Team Contributions
Stelu Aioanei
- Case Background, Value Proposition, Business Model, Competitive Review, Initiative Rationale, Intended Customers, Project Phases
Lucas Gatling
- Competitive Review
JJ Sandvig
- Corrected Issues
Nicole Adachi
- Conversion Factors
Tom O'Malley
- Developed Deliverable Page, Seven Essentials
Roland Landry
- Corrected Issues
