The indispensable aspects of estimating an e-commerce project
1. Face to face communication is
essential
In any project, first and foremost factor is communication. As we know,
estimation is an ongoing activity throughout a project, so is communication. An
e-commerce project starts with a face to face communication with your client.
Set up meetings with your client to understand their expectations and
requirements. You can conduct workshops as a platform for such communications
so that both the parties can share their views & ideas. This will help you
to analyse all the key requirements and proposed solutions for the project. It eases
your project estimation.
2. Outline your e-commerce business plan
If you know what you want exactly, it is easy to accomplish your project.
Hence, enhance the requirement gathering skills of your project team to outline
an e-commerce business plan. It is one of the corner stones of an estimation
process as it defines the clients’ requirements and expectations well. Your
business plan should answer the following elementary questions. What could be your
business goals? What type of website is required? What are the design and
technology requirements? What must be your website content? Do you have any website
prototype? etc. this plan provides you a rough estimation about your project
initially.
Remember, the business plan must explain how you are going to market your
website to create interest among customers.
Now you have clear understanding about client needs and ready to create a
project estimate.
3. Select a platform & suitable team
Choosing the right platform and technologies are the key aspects of an
e-commerce project. Select a platform that can support well and foster your
business. You must also have skilled design teams and technology experts. They
can suggest you the best platform that suits to your business requirements as
well as provide you with latest technologies to set up a successful e-commerce
website. We can say that implementing an e-commerce website is a constantly-evolving
process. Hence, we must often revisit our estimation throughout the project. It
involves mainly time and cost estimations.
4. Different Estimation methods to be
applied
Estimation procedures and methods vary from projects to projects. Many people evaluate the assigned project
based on previous project experiences rather than experimenting and predicting new
things. This helps to derive more précised project estimation.
There are three main methods to assess time and cost of the project.
· Task based assessment: this is the most common estimation method the design team
follows in web-based projects. It determines the effort hours and hour cost by
resources. Here, the project is divided into small tasks and sub-tasks and
decides the required time to perform each task. Then, a collective time and
cost is determined based on the hourly rate for completing each task. This will
be presented as the evaluated time and cost of the project.
· Benchmark based assessment: in this method, estimation is done based on the relevant
historical data from your previous similar projects. This provides a useful
comparison between old projects and current project. Use your previous
lesson-learned database to improve the estimation process. Various -time
tracking will help you to create a benchmark. Web designers choose this method
as it is quicker and easier.
· Tool-based assessment: it is a simple method in which various project estimation
tools are used to establish time and budget.
5. Breakdown Project into different
phases
Consider breaking the project into various phases so that estimation can
be more realistic. E-commerce projects are usually break into the following
phases: 
· Research & planning
· Solution design: it involves creating
wireframes, sitemaps and user workflow
· Web design
· Front end development
· Back end development
· Content writing
· Testing
· Go-live
Do an in-depth research and planning about the project and develop
a detailed design during the estimation process. List down all the features and
technical details. Prioritize them and evaluate the amount of effort required to
get these features done. This will aid the development team to focus on tasks
which are ‘must have’ and ‘nice to have’. Web design focuses on designing a
home page and additional pages. Also provides, contents about products and
categories that the site will uphold. Front end development mainly defines the
user experience. During the initial estimation, we define users and functions
that may need to the project. Back end development involves setting up CMS and
configuration, creating contact forms and other functionalities like shipment
processes, payment gateways and security essentials. Then the contents must be uploaded,
and all the functionalities need to be tested before presenting it to the
clients.
6. Deadlines are crucial
Value the time. Everyone in the project should understand the importance
of deadlines and the consequences if they are missed. Sometimes, time-consuming
things can occur that are unexpected. For example, the client may wish to add
or remove some products or categories during the final phases of the project.
This is an additional effort to be applied that has an impact on the overall
structure of the website. It may intrude some extra costs too. Such unexpected
tasks must be considered during the evaluation process. Analyse such hidden
risks like technological challenges that may arise. Some unique features that
have never done before in any projects can be difficult to evaluate. Such
constraints we should keep in mind while assessing the project.
Keeping the
above aspects in mind, you can excel project estimation with greater accuracy.
Remember, every e-commerce project is unique. Their goals and purposes may
vary. Hence, thorough understanding of the project is the core mantra of a successful
project.
References
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