side-in approach will probably be driven by the need to reduce the costs of outsourc-
ing, poor delivery of services by the supplier or simply a need to concentrate a
strategic core resource in-house.
2 Inside-out. A company starts to implement e-business using existing resources within
the IT department and marketing department in conjunction with recruitment of
new media staff. They may then find that there are problems in developing a site that
meets customers’ needs or in building traffic to the site. At this point they may turn
to outsourcing to solve the problems.These approaches are not mutually exclusive, and an outside-in approach may be
used for some e-commerce functions such as content development while an inside-out
approach is used for other functions such as site promotion. It can also be suggested that
these approaches are not planned – they are simply a response to prevailing conditions.
However, in order to cost e-business and manage it as a strategic asset it can be argued
that the e-business manager should have a long-term picture of which functions to out-
source and when to bring them in-house.Web site prototyping
Prototypesare trial versions of a web site that are gradually refined through an iterative
process to become closer to the final version. Initial prototypes may simply be paper
prototypes, perhaps of a ‘wireframe’ or screen layout. These may then be extended to
include some visuals of key static pages using a tool such as Adobe Photoshop. Finally,
working prototypes will be produced as HTML code is developed. The idea is that the
design agency or development team and the marketing staff who commissioned the
work can review and comment on prototypes, and changes can then be made to the site
to incorporate these comments. Prototyping should result in a more effective final site
which can be developed more rapidly than a more traditional approach with a long
period of requirements determination.
Each iteration of the prototype typically passes through the stages shown in Figure 7.4,
which are:CHAPTER 7· DELIVERING THE ONLINE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEPrototype
A preliminary version of
part or a framework of
all of a web site, which
can be reviewed by its
target audience or the
marketing team.
Prototyping is an
iterative process in
which web site users
suggest modifications
before further
prototypes and the final
version of the site are
developed.Figure 7.4Four stages of web site prototypingPrototype
producedStartTest and
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