BLISS+E-Business+Solutions

=BLISS E-Business Solution=




 * __The Issues:__**

The current set up for B.L.I.S.S is based around Facebook. Members and alumni keep in contact with one another through Facebook messages, and while this is adequate for keeping in contact with friends the fact the members are forced to keep up-to-date with information found on multiple websites. Their main tasks involve attracting new applicants, keeping in contact with alumni, organizing events and raising funds either through donations or though company advertisements on their website. Since most of the contact is done through Facebook completing all of these tasks can from time to time become difficult and it is certainly not the most convenient setup for currents members of the sorority. //We would wager this is what most peoples events tab in Facebook looks like.//

__Attracting New Applicants__ In order for the sorority to continue, it is vital to attract new applicants in. This is done mostly through various school events. This is where their current usage of technology creates problems. The first problem involves letting current community of members as well as prospective applicants know about these events. Yes it is possible to set up a Facebook event that can reach a large number of users but too often people ignore these event. Creating awareness of these public events to promote the sorority is paramount to their continued success. The second issue is centered around what happens when a prospective member is identified. Currently they are forced to “friend” several members of B.L.I.S.S on Facebook. For one it forces the prospective member to remember the names of the B.L.I.S.S recruiters to add them later on Facebook. If this prospective member does successfully add all of the necessary recruiters, there is no current way for the recruiter to identify them on their friends list as an applicant (without manually adding them on such a friends list on Facebook). While all of this can be managed through Facebook it requires more work from sorority member and new applicants than is necessary.

__Creating and Organizing an Event__ As discussed in the “Attracting New Applicants” section creating an event can be a cumbersome process. We previously discussed the issues with creating events for recruitment purposes, but planning events for the purposes of community is also important for keeping the community together. An active community helps to promote the sorority and keep it alive. This community also helps members build contact which can be used to help them somewhere down the line. Once again the same issues are encountered. Facebook will not adequately serve the needs of the sorority as contact between a large group of people can become a disjointed process. Users ignoring their events page or ignore Facebook altogether. It seems that recently Facebook has become a cesspool filled with useless applications, events, and messages. To wade through all of the nonsense to find the information that one is looking for becomes a test in ones patience. This is why we feel Facebook does not adequately serve the needs of B.L.I.S.S and can be improved monumentally for the purposes of creating and organizing events.

__Keeping in Contact with Alumni__ While we want to address the problems surrounding keeping alumni in the loop with what is going on with Sorority events, this issues also extends to contact with any member of the organization. Even though Facebook does send out an email notification for event invitation or messages or wall posts, etc…, alumni member of the sorority often keep their university email as their primary contact for their Facebook account, however because they are no longer in school they rarely, if at all check their university email account. At the same time there are users who have blocked any emails from Facebook, so relying on this as a means of contact has become a tremendously frustrating experience. This is why many people within the sorority have expressed that contacting members is one of the major issues they would like to resolve going forward. Improving contact can only strengthen the sorority by bringing members closer together.

__Raising Funds__ While all of the other issues are important to improving the community aspects of the sorority, the raising of funds allows for the organization to continue operating by maintaining the company website and planning events. The more the funds that B.L.I.S.S can raise the more events that it will be able to hold. The more events that it runs the more prospective members they can attract, the more members they attract the easier it will be to raise funds. Raising funds comes primarily from two places, one is from member of the sorority, mostly alumni, the second source of revenues comes from local businesses who advertise on the main website. The problem with raising funds from alumni is that once member finish school their connection with the sorority tends to dwindle as there is not main place for them to keep up-to-date with sorority affairs. Maintaining a connecting with alumni will be a key part of maintaining donations. The hardest part of gaining support from local business is that they tend to feel there is little return on their investment. Since the website is not the focal point of sorority life, traffic on the webpage remains low. If we could increase the number of visitors to the sorority webpage the easier it would be for them to attract donations. Clearly all of these problems are interrelated and will require a complete overhaul of the sorority’s infrastructure to properly address them. Maintaining a community will be dependant on attracting new members, which will require better contact with older member. Contact amongst members will be necessary to plan at carry out events, which will continue to attract new members and strengthen the existing community, by doing all of this they will be poised to increase their number of donations and improve their ability attract local business to sponsor the sorority.


 * __The Proposed Solutions:__**

The current website is limited in its offerings, while its main goal is to raise the profile of B.L.I.S.S a new website with enhanced features could successfully reach this objective and provide a much better community experience. A complete overhaul of their website is our proposed solution. The redesign must focus on several key areas: - Users must be able to create profile -Member profiles must have current contact info -All correspondence must be sent to current email addresses. -The ability to have official sorority events and personal events -A calendar application -New members section -Prospective members section -Better integration of pictures -The formation of a donations section -Better integration of sponsors on the main page as well as in the emails Website hosting costs have come down considerably and can be paid for even by the smallest of not-for-profit organizations. The highest costs associated with implementing a new website is the actual development cost. In our interviews with various members of the sorority some of them showcased their own portfolios of websites that they have designed. Since much of the website design can be done in house, development costs drop to almost nothing. __Users Created Profiles__ The ability for users to create their and update their own personal profiles will help make the website feel alive, and also give users a way of sharing information about themselves that they feel is relevant to sorority. With Facebook users may shy away from sharing too much about themselves as it is such a public venue whereas the B.L.I.S.S website will be limited only to members. With the ability to keep a personal profile the aim will also be to keep users on the site for longer periods of time. __Current Contact Information__ Having current contact information will help to address two problems. One when there are prospective members being courted to join the sorority they will be able to create a profile on the website, once they have a personal page it they will be able to view other members phone numbers, email addresses which they can use to get more information about B.L.I.S.S or maintain a personal contact within the sorority. It will also help to address the issues surrounding contacting users with events and news. All sorority correspondence will also be directed to a current email address where members will be able to access it quickly, rather it being sent to a dead email account. __Events__ Ideally in the redesign the website would relay information about events better than it currently does. There would be two types of events that could be found on the main page, the first type would be official B.L.I.S.S events which will involve school events and various recruitment events. The second type of event would be a user created event, such as a get together. By offering these two types of events on the main page and having any information about it sent directly to members current email addresses will help to address some the issues involved with Facebook invitations. No longer will sorority events get clustered with all the other events that fill up a users Facebook page. This information must also be made to sink with the calendar application. This way users will have the ability to view up coming events as well as archived events in a clean and simple layout. Lastly this calendar application must have the ability to sync with Google Calendar, and perhaps Microsoft’s Outlooks calendar. __Member’s Section__ The new members section will relay information about the events and news that pertain strictly to new members, it will also be used to help new member to find each other and interact. This will allow them to better build up some contacts. The prospective members section will display information about what type of recruitment the sorority is currently doing and where recruitment events will be held. This section will help people who want to join B.L.I.S.S find the appropriate information needed to become a member. A section for existing members can be used to display administrative information such as financial information and a members list which can be divided into new member, existing member and alumni. __Integration of Pictures__ Pictures are important for maintaining a community and for attracting new members. Since the sorority holds many events locally hosting this content might become costly, so out recommendation to them is to store a few pictures from each event on the main page, and at the same time host the full offering of photos on a Flickr account. Allowing another website to handle the cost of hosting this content will keep annual fees for the website down and still offer visitors to the website a full offering of event photos. Since the sorority is currently trying to raise their profile with their website, photos will have to be integrated properly into the main page it currently does a good job keeping photos in the eye of the visitor, it will just have to give front billing on the main page to a photos tab, perhaps with a mini-viewer in one of the upper corners that will give a slide show of photos. __Raising Funds__ The main focus of the website overhaul must not be centered around the idea of raising money, however this process must not be ignored. It is vital to sustaining the sorority and this means that integrating advertisements into the website and emails will help to cover the administrative costs of running a website and planning events. If the redesign is successful in moving all sorority functions over their own website then the new website will see a significant increase in traffic. Building into the website the ability track usage statistics such as number of users and average time spent on the website by users may be a vital tool in attracting sponsors. Raising funds from alumni will mostly come from offering a better user experience on the website. Aside from perhaps a monthly new letter which would be used to solicit donations this will be left mostly up to good will. The redesign of the website is mainly focused on maintaining a community, in doing this the sorority significantly increases its chances of getting donations from alumni. This does not mean that Facebook has to be eliminated, our proposed website should just be the primary focus of communication amongst members. Facebook should be a complementary service to relay information to help reach the broadest possible audience. However the website will be the main focus of sorority affairs and events. It will be the central hub for all things B.L.I.S.S