Aiman Asyraf's Port-Folio



IntroductionIn today business environment, the internet is considered an important tool for companies both big and small to help them create sales. We can see more and more businesses set up their own websites in order to have some part in the market share. Not only is the cost of using the internet as a marketing tool cheap, it is also convenient and easily managed with adequate knowledge. The internet is able to help companies broaden their market of customers by having their product available to everyone around the world. It is also beneficial to the customer as information is accessible easily when required. However the use of internet does have its disadvantages. Its flexibility sometimes creates confusion as most companies tend to focus on irrelevant things on their website as well as not having a good relation with customers who visit their website. This will result in the company having a bad name among the virtual communities and the results will be more negative than positive. That is why we were given this assignment, in order to identify the criteria’s required by a good e-commerce website and to develop an example of a good e-commerce website. Our group had decided to compare the websites of 3 different hotel brands which are Le Meridien Kuala Lumpur, Palace of the Golden Horses and JW Marriot KL. In this report we have inserted our thoughts and observations of their websites using the 7C format provided by our lecturer.Palace of the Golden Horses Marriott KL Meridien KL’s FrameworkAll comparison and analysis of this webpages will be done by using the 7C framework that was given by Mr Vijayan as reference.The details of the all characteristics inside the 7C framework are shown in the table below;ContextFocuses on how the site has been designedContentFocuses on ‘what’ is presentedCommunityFocuses on interaction between site usersCustomizationFocuses on ability to be tailored individuallyCommunicationFocuses on between site and its usersConnectionFocuses on linkages to other sitesCommerceFocuses on the sale of products on siteComparison and AnalysisWe have prepared a table to make comparison between the 3 websites so that it could be understood easier and an analysis of all 3 websites according to characteristics of the 7C Framework.7C FrameworkLe Meridien KLJW Marriott KLPalace of the Golden HorsesContextSimpleSimpleThemedContentInfo DominantInfo DominantInfo DominantCommunityStrongLimitedLimitedCustomizationNon-customizableNon-customizableNon-customizableCommunicationOne to Many,RespondingOne on One,RespondingOne on One,RespondingConnectionHubHubHubCommerceHighHighHighContextBoth the Le Meridien and JW Marriott websites are simple in terms of context where the design of the website is more catered to being functional giving visitors of the website the necessary information required. They do add pictures into their websites but these are also displayed as a necessity to give visitors something to look at and it gives off a feeling that not much effort was put into the visual aspect of the website. The website of Palace of the Golden Horses however was far from simple as it was more visually attractive compared to the websites of the other 2 hotels. They had a gold theme in their website where the background was gold in colour and even the important wording fonts were in gold. The functionality is almost similar to the other 2 website but the effort put into the visual aspect of the website made it more appealing to us.Content All 3 websites are very information dominant. They provide visitors with all kind of information such as information about offers, restaurants, events, and locations in order to attract the visitors into staying at their hotel. It seems that the usual or common questions that people have when trying to find a hotel to stay in can be answered by the information that is available on these hotels website. The reason we believe these websites are heavy on information is because the information that they made available on their websites are for the benefit of the hotel in the long run. All the information posted is helping to make the hotel more attractive in the eyes of visitors thus making it more likely for them to book a room at that hotels munityIn the Le Meridien website, they have set up a page for pass guest or visitors to write a review about their stay and experiences. Visitors of the website are allowed to read these reviews and post questions to the writer of the review. This page allows the community to interact with each other through the website and is monitored by the site owner. However, the website of JW Marriott and Palace of the Golden Horses seem to not have a way for the community to interact with each other through their websites. Although they do provide links to their company Facebook and twitter, these links often connect the visitors to the main company’s profile that consists of different branches from all over the world and not to specific hotel from which the link was found. That is why we decided to categorize these website communities as limited.CustomizationThe websites of Le Meridien, JW Marriott and Palace of the Golden Horses do not have any option for visitors to customize the website according to their preference. All of the functions and windows shown in the website are permanent and there is no way to change their position and appearance. It would be nice if the site owner could implement some ways for visitors to customize their website to make it be more comfortable for them use the website. This would be a hindrance to visitors visiting the website as it reduces the amount of freedom available to them thus making them feel restricted and controlled. Thus, there is a probability that negative impressions may surface and hurt the ability of the hotel to attract municationThe communication between the site owner and site user for Le Meridien website is one to many because as mentioned before the website has a page where users can write their own review about the hotel. Questions posted on this page can also be answered by the site owner and these answers are viewable to everyone. They also have their own announcement page where they post recent events or happenings at their hotel which is accessible to everyone.The communication between site user and site owner for websites of JW Marriott and Palace of the Golden Horses however we categorized as one to one because the only available method of communication between these two parties are via email or through phone calls. This means that any answered questions are only known by the person who contacted the site owner and other visitors of the website are oblivious to these answers. ConnectionAll 3 websites serves as a hub for their respective partners. Links to the partner’s website are available to visitors in the website. These links are usually links to restaurants, other hotels, and utility websites. The site owner has made a good use of their website to promote the business of their partners by giving visitors a link to their partner’s website. Being a hub for another company also means that your website will probably be made known on your partner’s website increasing the surface area of the hotels potential customersCommerceWe decided to categorize all 3 websites commerce as high due to the fact that the option to book a room is shown at the front page of all 3 websites. The website of Le Meridien and Palace of the Golden Horses also seem to have made the booking option available in every page that is available for viewing. The JW Marriott website also has a link that connects visitors to a page where they sell their merchandise such as towels, pillows, bathrobes and shower gels. Moreover, most of the information that can be found on all 3 websites are all focused on convincing the visitor to book a room in their hotel. That is why we made the decision to categorize the commerce of all 3 websites as high.Own Web Page DesignLenora HotelOwn Web Page Analysis7C FrameworkLenora HotelContextSimpleContentInfo DominantCommunityVery StrongCustomizationHighly CustomizableCommunicationOne to Many/One to OneRespondingConnectionHubCommerceHighContextWe decided to create our web page using a simple design similar to that of Le Meridien’s web page because we think that by having a simple, easy to understand, non-cluttered web page the people that visit our web page would have a higher percentage of staying and the percentage of them browsing our links would also be higher. We decided to make our webpage less boring by adding more colours into the webpage via banners and also the availability of changing username colour in the chat box provided to give more visual appeal to visitors. Links are simplified into easily understood terms and given more eye catching fonts in order to make the webpage more manageable and user friendly.ContentBecause the purpose for creating a web page for the hotel is to obviously sell rooms, we designed our web page to be very information dominant. The information made available to visitors is information that makes the hotel more attractive to visitors. By making the hotel more attractive to visitors the chances of visitors booking the hotel will be higher. Besides that, the information given could be relevant and useful to friends or family visitors that are in the market for hotel accommodations and they can easily reference this webpage to munityWe wanted to design a web page with a strong community and we had done so by including a chatbox on the web page where visitors can register a username and talk with other users sharing their views, opinions and suggestions. We also decided to set up a forum function for the website where visitors can sign up and post questions, events or helpful topics for other users to view and respond to. We hope that by making these 2 function available in our web page, a strong and friendly community could be develop and in the long run the community could help to attract more customers to the hotel in the form of positive feedback. These functions would obviously be moderated by selected staffs of the hotel to ensure that flaming or discussions of sensitive topics do not happen. It also helps to generate trust as the positive feedbacks of other guests can be seen by others and potential guest are prone to believing good feedback from people in the same situation rather than feedback made by the hotel itself.CustomizationThe design of our web page gives freedom to visitors to customize our web page based on their preferences. Most of the available information on our websites can be minimized so that visitors can hide whatever information they deemed unnecessary and it can also be maximized so that if a certain piece of information interests them, then can easily enlarged said information and have a better view. The chat box is also customizable as there is a setting function where visitors can turn the chat off if they do not want to be disturbed by a constant wave of text and they are also given the option to open the chat box in another tab if they wished to do so. The customization option of our webpage gives visitors the chance to reduce and tidy up the web page and it also helps visitors that have slow internet speed by reducing the amount of MB required to be downloaded in order for the webpage to function properly. This will help people with slow bandwidth to surf our webpage faster saving their time and increasing their satisfaction. CommunicationThe communication of our webpage is one to many and we have put in a lot of ways for the site owner to interact with site users. Enquiries in the chat box can be answered immediately by on duty staff and questions posted on the forums can be addressed by moderators at any given time. All of these communications are made viewable to everyone visiting the website thus it not only helps the visitor asking but also helps other viewers who may be viewing or browsing the forums at a different time or date. By having good communication methods made available in the web page we can provide to visitors to our webpage good customer service and that will build good rapport for our hotel which will lead to an increase in sales. If the visitor however wants his privacy to be respected, we have set up a special email account where all messages sent can be dealt with swiftly and privately.ConnectionAs a business in the hospitality industry, we find it extremely important to be a hub for a lot of different type of businesses. We have set up links and banners to other hotels, banks if our visitors or guests are in need of financial aid, air flight companies and even to insurance companies. By being a hub to many different businesses we hope leave the impression to our customers that if they are experiencing any sort of problems, those problems can be easily solved by just visiting our webpage and clicking the related links that will refer them to a business that can help them solve it. It also helps us to have a larger surface area for attracting companies as we do not limit our available links only to other business that is in the hospitality merceOur webpage focus on commerce is also very high. We make the booking tab available on all of our websites different pages. No matter where the visitor chooses to surf, the option for them to make a booking is always made available. We also decided to post seasonal or special discounts on our webpage in order to attract even more customers. ................
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