MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECT REPORT www.snapfish.in vs www.picsquare.

com
(CUSTOMIZED PHOTO PRINTING AND MERCHANDISING MARKET)

Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

Submitt ed by
Abhijeet Yadav (PGP/14/256)

Aparajita Tripathi (PGP/14/266) Kavya SS (PGP/14/276)

Pooja Gandhi Sakshi Gupta

(PGP/14/286) (PGP/14/296)

Suja Barua (PGP/14/306) Vishal Gagrai (PGP/14/316)

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PART I
INTRODUCTION:
With the advent of Digital Cameras, the scope of photo printing and merchandizing services has vastly increased. It provides the customers the facility to upload, view, share and order online high quality prints of digital photographs. The idea of presenting your beloved a personalized gift seems to be very alluring. Besides giving the facility to customize the products, these services also provide the convenience of not having to go anywhere, but just get it delivered at one click of your mouse. No doubt, this industry is blooming, but there is still a lot that can be done. There are a number of organizations providing the online services to the customers like www.snapfish.in, www.picsquare.com, www.itasveer.com, www.zoomin.com etc. Two such websites www.picsquare.com. under comparison are www.snapfish.in and

The worldwide creative photo merchandise market is expected to grow by a compound annual growth rate of nearly 40 percent from 2009 through 2013. SNAPFISH: Snapfish was launched in April 2000 by entrepreneurs Rajil Kapoor, Suneet Wadhwa, Shripati Acharya, and Bala Parthasarathy in the United States. Hewlett-Packard (HP) bought the company in 2005. It is based in SanFrancisco, California. It offers web based photo sharing and photo printing services. It is the only site, which provides video uploads, apart from the other photo printing services. Infact, Snapfish started the concept of photo gift in this industry. Their concept of photo mug became very popular when first introduced. They are the pioneers in the field of service excellence and customer satisfaction. Its prints are crystal clear and some photos are available in as low as Rs 2.95 in pricing. It was launched in India in 2007 and is one of the fastest growing companies in its field. PICSQUARE:

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Picsquare was started by two young Mumbai IITians Manish Agarwal and Kartik Jain in December 2005. It is based in Bangalore. Infibeam.com acquired picsquare.com in 2008. The service was initially targeted towards the NRI's, as there was a clear value proposition to send photos and personalized gifts from abroad to friends and family in India. However, soon it expanded its base. It provides easy to use interface, competitive prices, consistent quality and quick service. Picsquare has an experienced printing network and a reliable delivery channel to send photo prints and photo gifts throughout India, at your doorstep.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS:

SNAPFISH:

OF

THE

ORGANIZATIONS

Snapfish is among the fastest growing online photo services worldwide including India, where it was launched in 2007. It has a customer base of more than 85 million users in 22 countries and more than 2 billion unique photos stored online. Snapfish has so far remained ahead of the market trends and it still remains dedicated to making it as easy as possible for users to navigate the site. The company is making significant investments in improving its search and browsing capabilities, including the ability to search by various attributes such as designs, styles and colors. It has been continually innovating to meet consumer needs powering the transition from film processing to digital photo printing, driving the continual shift from home delivery to retail pickup, and enabling instantaneous memory sharing across a growing number of mobile and social networking platforms. In celebration of its 10th anniversary this year, Snapfish announced that it will open its application programming interface (API) to allow creative individuals and businesses to be part of the evolution of its leading online personal publishing service. By opening its API, Snapfish has the advantage of differentiating itself in an increasingly competitive market by giving consumers expanded creative choices that go way beyond photos.

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Snapfish, in July 2010 announced an agreement to acquire the video technology platform from Motionbox, Inc., the video sharing site with over 2.8 million members worldwide. This acquisition will enable Snapfish to expand its online video offering PICSQUARE Picsquare started growing in India since mid 2006 and became one of the best photo printing and personalized merchandize sites in around 2 years. It has grown tremendously over the last few years with more than 100% growth year on year and it is still scaling up. Picsquare has more than 5 million photos uploaded online, and has catered to more than 25,000 customers across 250 cities in India. It got acquired by an online retailing company, Infibeam.com, based out of Ahmedabad in late 2008. Picsquare is the first company to be selected for the TiE - EAP Program, which was the first of its kind program started by TiE Bangalore. Picsquare has been making waves and getting recognition. It was awarded the Best Designed Photo Website in the Year 2007 by PC World India and was also nominated for the TATA NEN hottest start-ups contest. Karthik, one of the founder members proclaimed his vision for the future saying "I want to make Picsquare the No 1 branding India for Photo Printing and Customized/ Personalized Merchandize. I want to make Picsquare synonymous to photos/photo gifts, as Google is for search."

EVALUATION OF WEBSITES:
Both the websites gives customers an opportunity to upload, view, share and order online high quality prints of digital photographs with options of creating a number of customized products and getting them delivered at their doorsteps. The product categories offered by the two websites are as attached in Annexure-1. There are many common feature in the two websites such as both the sites provide customization design options like Color and size of border of the

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photo, Title below each photo, Background, Shuffling the position of the photo etc.

However, some differences with respect to different parameters such as function, user friendliness etc. has also been observed in the websites which are mentioned below:

FUNCTION:

There is flash application on the home page of Picsquare which successively shows the top products, new products, gift certificates, photo prints etc. There is no such application on the Snapfish home page, but one of its newest product i.e. Canvas Print has been highlighted.

In Snapfish the menu on the left side of the page is based on classification of all the photo services according to different parameters like 1. Category 2. Occasion 3. Product 4. Favorites

In Picsquare, the different bases for classification are: 1. Occasion 2. Top Products

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3. Other products

In Picsquare, besides uploading our photo, there is also a provision of browsing through some other designs and then get them printed on the product. No designs apart from the photos can be printed in the products bought from Snapfish.

One very attractive product provided by Picsquare is a gift certificate, which is not provided by Snapfish.

Picsquare has many options from where one can upload the photo that one wants on the product. They are 1. Computer 2. Picasa 3. Flicker 4. Facebook 5. One can send a CD 6. Album created on Picsquare However, all these options are not available in Snapfish.

If the photos have a low resolution, a warning message is displayed in Snapfish which is not available in Picsquare.

USER FRIENDLINESS:

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In Picsquare there is a search utility function, on right top to search for designs, products etc, which is missing in Snapfish. This function makes the search of the users easier.

Snapfish allows photos to be uploaded only from ones computer or album created on the site.

Picsquare does not allow you to edit your photos once you upload them

The new products can be easily figured out in Snapfish because of the NEW tag before each such item. There is no such demarcation in case of Picsquare.

Picsquare has interface problems while designing- its difficult to rotate or tilt photos, arrange different elements. This can however be done in Snapfish.

The step-by-step ordering process at Snapfish is quite simple. Be it a computer novice or a computer professional anyone would be able to upload and order pictures easily. We also liked a small but great feature - when you ordered prints, Snapfish lists your tracking number directly on your status screen.

Tracking system is not that efficient in Picsquare.

The Help feature of Snapfish is very comprehensive and easy to use. There is no help feature in case of Picsquare.

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FEATURES SUPPORTING THE BUSINESS STRATEGIES:

Picsquare provides the users 10 free trial prints and 10 prints for every friend who signs in citing the users reference. This helps in attracting new customers.

Customer Service: Picsquare has good customer services- prompt replacement of orders in case of defective items. Even the delivery period is less than that of Snapfish.

The printing quality of Picsquare is far better as compared to Snapfish. Picsquare uses Fuji crystal Archive paper while Snapfish uses HP paper.

PRICING AND DELIVERY:

1. Snapfish Delivery within 4 to 8 working days. On an item of Rs. 398, Courier and Packaging charges Rs. 79 (20%) Service Tax Rs. 49 (12%) The only way to pay is through Debit/Credit card.

2. Picsquare Delivery within 5 to 7 working days.

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On an item of Rs. 398, Courier and Packaging charges Rs. 20 (5%) Service Tax Rs. 38 (10%)

The ways to pay are Debit/Credit card, ITZ Cash cards, Paypal and Paymate.

In addition, both the sites have an option of payment through coupon. These coupons are earned while buying stuff on the site.

Picsquare also provides the option of reward points. These points are proportional to the amount of purchase made

SITE PERFORMING THE BETTER JOB

Comparing the two organizations on the basis of their overall performance, Snapfish has maintained its lead in the industry.

However, from the comparison of the websites drawn above in terms of functionality and user friendliness, Picsquare scores above Snapfish.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

By the face of it, the Snapfish site looks very dull and drab, not of the sort that can generate interest among the users easily. On the other hand, the Picsquare site looks reasonable attractive. So, some flash application can be implemented on the home page.

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As a large share of these items is purchased as gifts, the option of sorting the items by prices can help the price-sensitive customers who have a fixed budget in mind.

Forums can be included for getting the customer feedback regarding the features and services of the site.

The option of editing the intricate features of a photograph can be incorporated.

ANNEXURE-1 PRODUCT CATEGORIES

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PART II
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Proposal
Objectives:
The objective of this project is to develop an e-commerce website to facilitate online transaction of Gift Items. This process will make us familiar with the life cycle of any software development process. We will get exposure to the way in which an e-commerce site works .The flair of programming associated will help us develop our analytical and logical abilities.

Requirements Analysis:
Our requirement is to develop an e-commerce website facilitating the user to Book and send the gift items. We have analyzed two websites providing the same facilities to the customers which will help us understand the requirement at the basic level. Also we did a comparative study of both the websites to find out is there anything which these websites lacks and we will incorporate the shortcomings in our Website. The main requirements are listed below The website should have an easy to use interface. The home page should list the categories of Gifts offered through our website. The website should have the contact details of customer care as well as a Help Page to guide first time users. The user should be provided number of methods for online payment. Any new feature or offer should be shown in an eye catching way on Home page. The website administrator should be able to see how many orders are placed till that time and see whether Inventory needs to be replenished.

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The gifts should have a textual description attached with it to inform user about the specifications of that product. The delivery details should be Cross checked with the customer to avoid any delivery problems. The total amount the customer is going to pay (including deliver charges, any other fee) should be shown before customer chooses the payment method. The approximate delivery time should also be shown at this point of time depending on the location of delivery address entered by the customer.

Design Implementation:
Flow Diagram
Star t

Homepa ge

Help Help page is display ed

Choose a

Contact Us Contact us page is displaye

Category

Products

Customer & Receivers Data

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Confirm order & Select mode of payment Payment Window

Payment Acknowledgement En d

The design in flow diagram shown above will be implemented using Java Netbeans IDE.

Testing:
As per the standard practice in Software Development, following Testing will be done: 1. Unit Testing: Every page will be tested for the functionality included in that page in this stage of testing 2. Integration Testing: In this second stage of testing, all the pages will be tested in terms of Interface between the different pages. The correctness of data carried to the next page from any page will be the main focus in this stage of testing. 3. System Test: The website will be tested for actual usge volume, Scalability and other system related compatibility issues in this stage of testing. 4. User Acceptance Test: In this last stage of testing, the website will be tested for the user environment and any defects observed will be logged. The Defects logged in any phase of testing will be taken care of and the testing process after every correction cycle will start from stage 1 onwards.

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Test Cases: Test Cases (both positive and negative) are designed taking into consideration all the steps of flow diagram and will be used in respective stages of testing.

Platforms and Tools:

The website will be built upon JAVA using the Netbeans IDE 6.9 .For database
related requirements the internal Database management system available for Netbeans will be used.

Project Plan:
Ste p 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Activity Identifying and analyzing the E commerce websites and analyzing the functionalities available. Requirement gathering for our ecommerce website taking into account the advantages / flaws of existing system. Deciding a process flow diagram to be used. Identifying the tools and IDE to be used Final Draft of project proposal Submission of Proposal Preparing the Detailed Design based on Time frame 23.7.2010 25.7.2010 26.7.2010 28.7.2010 30.7.2010 31.7.2010 9.8.2010

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8 9 10 11 12 13 14

the requirements Submission of Detailed Design Building the Website Testing Submission of the code in Moodle Documentation of User Guide Upload these documents in Moodle Presentation of the website in classroom

10.8.2010 20.8.2010 23.8.2010 25.8.2010 30.8.2010 31.8.2010 10.8.2010

Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode