Big Website

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL I agree that the information provided by MCM. is confidential' proprietary and may contain trade secrets. I understand that it will be provided in confidence. I agree not to disclose this information to any third parties and that my obligation of confidentiality shall extend for a period of three (3) years from the date of disclosure by MCM INC Table of Contents Project Objective Summary and outline of the website Page Descriptions Full details on how the site will be setup Optional Additions Options we feel can add value to your website Other Notes Important Project Objective and Outline Project Objective: Establishing a project objective for this website has been challenging since there is conflicting criteria upon which the goals for the website are established. On one hand we have a well thought out, but task heavy site definition. On the other hand, we have a strong desire to keep the budget for the project controlled to a minimal figure. As such, some requested functionality will need to be dropped, or replaced with more affordable alternatives, and scalability for future growth will need to be part of the development process. The project objective is getting the site you need now that can become the site you want later. Considering your target audience, graphic appearance will be important. You can't appeal to a young audience on a subject matter of music and success in the music industry without an exciting look and feel. Although we understand the gist of what you are looking to accomplish design wise with the site, we are not coming to the table with a pre-determined design concept. Instead we bring an open mind, a creative set of designers and the ability to communicate ideas with you to establish the right identity for the MCM INCbrand. Some initial design concepts, such as the vending machine Flash concept I discussed with Sandi and Kyle during our initial meeting, is sadly left out of this proposal strictly for budgetary reasons. However, I included some additional Flash options that can be worked back into the website should you wish to reconsider adding this back in. After we sign off on the proposal we setup an initial design meeting to address the identity of the site. If you do wish to move forward with adding Flash back into the project, I recommend holding off until after the initial design meeting so we first have a clear direction for the website's identity. We might determine a Flash concept established in advance might not fit with the site identity established after meeting with our design team. One item I listed as an option for you is setting up a blog. I will be honest and say I hope this is an option you can fit into the budget because I believe it is a crucial step towards driving traffic to the website. Your target audience is young and plugged into the whole internet landscape. There is no shortage of music blogs out there that cater to developing unsigned and indie music artists. Having your own blog can get you linked into this community and drawing from it. This also addresses online social networking in general and how important it will be for you to utilize it. It takes time to develop these channels, but the results are worth it. There is no quicker way to build traffic, interest, buzz and search engine good will than utilizing all of the online inbound marketing tools that are available to you. While much of this is an extension beyond our website development services with you, we can help you map out this post-development marketing plan and consult with you as needed. We want to continue to be of value to you and service to you 3 Project Outline: The following items will be addressed on the website: 1. Design, Layout & Page Setup a. Home Page b. Vault (Studio) Page c. Effections (Video Production) Page d. Fan (Become a) i. Multi-Step Signup Form ii. Login for Fans with Fan Account iii. Fan Account e. MCM INCArtists / MCM INCProducers i. Artist Intro Page and Video ii. Multi-Step Signup Form iii. Login for Fans with Fan Account iv. Artist Detail Pages 1. Rate Artist 2. View Ratings 3. Contact Artists f. MCM INCProducers g. Team BDO i. Team MCM INCDetail Pages h. Calendar i. Promotions j. Give Me A Chance i. GMAC Event Schedule ii. Registration Form iii. Online Payment 1. PayPal 2. Return PayPal Feed to Database k. Sponsors l. Investors i. Login ii. Investor Document Library m. Newsletter 2. Content Management System a. Add, Edit, Delete Content b. Different Administrative User Roles (4) i. Users (Fans) ii. Artists iii. Admin Managers c. Reporting d. System Training Descriptions — Design, Layout & Page Setup 1. Design and Layout — Freelancer will redesign the website for MCM INC Records. a. Home Page — The home page will give an introductory overview of MCM INC records. Up to 3 paragraphs of text will be on the page that will be carefully composed to communicate clearly to potential clients as well as to fit criteria needed for positive search engine placement. To achieve this we will modify the text you provide for the home page. We will tweak this text so as to be search engine friendly for your 5 most important search keywords — these will be the keywords that best summarize your business — we can help you to determine these keywords. The navigation and color scheme for the entire site will also be established here. A consistent and visually appealing page header will be used on all of the pages on the website. This header will contain imagery, logo and a navigation menu. Most importantly, we will not lose sight of the fact that this website needs to appeal to a mostly young audience and will need to have a creative and fresh graphic look. Also, you will need to list up to 10 MCM INC artist photos on the home page. The photos will link to the Artist Intro Page and Video where users can either sign up to be a fan to view artists, or log in if they already have an account. Text and photo content on this page, including the 10 artist photos, can be edited via the content management system (see #2 below). b. Vault (Studio) Page — This page is the showcase for your recording facility. It will feature up to 10 photos of the studio, studio staff and the gear utilized. Studio gear will be displayed in a gear list. A text introduction of up to 3 paragraphs can be on this page. Freelancer will make (or suggest) changes to the text so that it is better optimized for up to 3 keywords that are best related to the content on the page. A mission statement of the studio and contact information for studio staff can also be on the page. If needed, a video of the studio can be embedded, where appropriate, on the page. Photos and text can be updated via the content management system. c. Effections (Video Production) Page — In the same fashion as the Vault page, this page is the showcase for you video production services. It will feature up to 10 photos of your video production facilities, video production staff and the equipment utilized. Studio equipment will be displayed in a equipment list. A text introduction of up to 3 paragraphs can be on this page. Freelancer will make (or suggest) changes to the text so that it is better optimized for up to 3 keywords that are best related to the content on the page. A mission statement of the studio and contact information for studio staff can also be on the page. If needed, a video of the studio can be embedded, where appropriate, on the page. Photos and text can be updated via the content management system. d. Fan (Become a) — In order to view information on MCM INCartists and producers, users will have to become a fan of BDO. Each page on the site will have a login for fans that have already created a fan account to enter their user name and password. If a user clicks on the Fan page they will come to a place that gives them a quick overview to the benefits of becoming a fan. A short description paragraph will be followed by an Artist Intro Video that you have produced. This video will give an overview of everything that is available to them once they become a fan. The user will be prompted to fill out a sign-up form in order to create a fan account. i. Multistep Signup Form — To become a fan, a user needs to fill out the multistep signup form. There will be 3 steps in all. The first step will simply require general contact information and their password — username will be based on email address to avoid duplicate entries. Once the first step is completed, the user will be emailed a confirmation link that they must respond to in order to verify they are a legitimate individual. Once verified, they will have access to all MCM INCartist and producer detail pages. The second and third steps to the signup process will be more subtle. After the first form a basic account is created to view artist and producer detail pages and to vote for their favorite MCM INCartist or producer. The fans favorite artist or producer will become associated with their account until they change it. When the fan requests other fan features, they will be prompted to provide additional information. Rating artist and producers will require an additional form step to fill out (up to 10 fields). The user will be gently prompted to fill out additional information before posting their first rating. Fans will be able to contact their favorite artist or producer, but the first time they will be prompted to fill out another form that collects additional information that you are gathering (up to 10 fields). To contact their favorite artist or producer, a fan will fill out a text box and hit submit — since they are logged in, their contact information will not need to be collected on the artist/producer contact form. Fans will not be able to see the email address of the artist or producer they are contacting. ii. Login for Fans with Fan Account — If a user has already signed up, they will have the ability to login with their username and password without having to go through the signup forms again. If the fan has forgotten their password, they can request their password emailed to them. iii. Fan Account — Once logged into their account, fans will be able to view artists, vote for their favorite artist or producer, rate artists and producers and view the total ratings of all other fans. Additionally, fans will be able to communicate with their favorite artist or producer and update the information they have entered in their account. e. MCM INCArtists / MCM INCProducers — This is where users will go to view information on MCM INCartists and producers. Users will need to be registered and logged in with a fan account before they can see artist and producer detail pages. If a user has an account but is not logged in, there will be a "log in here" section on the page for the user to fill in their username (email address) and password. Otherwise users without a fan account will view the intro video and click a link to take them to a sign up page. i. Artist Intro Page and Video — Unless a user is a fan and is logged into their account, they will see an artist/producer info video you have created that gives a promotional overview of MCM INCartists and the benefits of creating a fan account. ii. Multistep Signup Form — The multiple signup form will involve 3 forms. These three forms will be presented at different times during a user's experience on the website. The first form will collect contact information, basic personal information (birthday and gender), ask how the user heard about you and requested password. Once this information is submitted the user will be emailed a confirmation email. Once the user clicks on the link in the confirmation email the site will register the user with a fan account. This will get them started on viewing the artist and producer detail pages. The next form will be presented to the user (now logged in as a fan) when they wish to rate an artist or producer. The third form will be presented when the user (now logged in as a fan) wishes to communicate with the artist or producer that they have tagged as their favorite in their fan account. All three of these forms will only need to be filled out once by a user. iii. Login for Fans with Fan Account — Users will be able to bypass the initial signup form by filling in their user name (email address) and password on the Artist Intro Page. Note that there will also be a login link on every page on the site. iv. Artist Detail Pages — Each MCM INCartist will have their own detail page. Each detail page will have a bio on the artist, upcoming calendar events for the artist, MP3 files, an embedded video that you produce and up to 12 photos of the artist — each clickable to a larger version. Note that the calendar events will be in a list format with fields for event name, date, location, time and a short description. 1. Rate Artist — On any artist or producer page a logged in fan (who has also filled out the required form) will be able to rate the artist or producer using a 5 point system — 'Needs Work', 'Potential', 'Hot', 'Platinum' and 'Diamond'. 2. View Artist Rating — Logged in fans will be able to see the rankings for any artist or producer. This will be a total score and not individual ratings. For example, a rating for an artist might say "This artist has an average rating of Platinum by 376 fans". © 2009 MCM INCRecords, INC. 3. Contact Artists — A logged in fan will be able to tag one artist or producer as their favorite artist and will be able to contact them via a text box. The first time a fan attempts to contact their favorite artist they will be prompted to fill out one of the three forms that are required to have full use of the fan accounts. When a fan fills out and submits a text post to an artist, that post will be recorded in their account. Whenever an artist responds back to them, they will see the response in their account next to their posting. Fans only see the artist postings made to them but artists will see all of the fan postings in their account. Postings will continue to accumulate unless deleted — each post will have a delete link next to it. f. MCM INCProducers — Note that MCM INCproducers will have all the same features as BDO artists — in the administrative area of the website, you indicate if an individual is listed as an artist or as a producer (separate categories). This category setting will determine where they display on the website. . Team MCM INC— This page will give an overview of the staff that makes up BDO Records. The page will start off with up to 3 short paragraphs of text that you provide. Freelancer will make (or suggest) changes to the text so that it is better optimized for up to 3 keywords that are best related to the content on the page. Following the text will be a listing of team members. The team member listing will show a thumbnail photo for each team member along with their name and title. Clicking on any of these team member listings will take the user to a detail page for that particular team member. i. Team MCM INCDetail Pages — Each team member will have their own detail page. Each detail page will feature a full size photo of the previous thumbnail version on the Team MCM INCpage. There will also be a full description of the team member along with contact information. h. Calendar — The calendar page will be a list based calendar that will be populated with all of the event entries from your artists and all event entries that are entered by the site administrator. All the events will be in a list format with the soonest upcoming events listed first. Events will remain on the calendar until deleted. Note that artists can only add and delete their calendar events whereas the site administrator can add and delete any events. i. Promotions — This will be a page where you can post upcoming promotions. Everything will be listed on one page — no detail pages will be involved. Each promotion posting can have a title, short description, photo and any relevant contact information or date and time. If there is an accompanying PDF for a promotion, you can upload it as well and it will be displayed on the page. You will be able to order the listings to determine which promotion gets listed first. Via the content management system you will be able to add, edit and delete postings as needed. j. Give Me A Chance — This section of the site will focus on your Give Me A Chance contest. i. GMAC Event Schedule — When a user clicks on the "Give Me A Chance" navigation link, they will come to a page that gives an overview of the contest. With text that you provide, Freelancer will work with you to help determine the best 3 keywords to focus on for the page and make recommendations to make the text more search engine friendly. After the contest overview, the page will list all of the GMAC locations that you have entered in the administrative area of the website (aka contact management system). Each GMAC location will give name, date and location. A link to register for GMAC will be prominently displayed on the page. ii. Registration Form — Clicking on the GMAC register link will take the user to the registration form. The form can have up to 25 data fields with up to 10 required fields. The current GMAC locations that you have entered in the content management system will automatically populate into a drop-down box on the form for users to select which location they want to attend. When a user submits the form and the PayPal processing has completed, the data will be captured in the site database where you can access the information as a report. i i. Online Payment — When submitting a registration a user will be directed to the PayPal website to process payment for their registration. 1. PayPal — Payment for registrations will be handled by PayPal — users will be directed away from your website and to the PayPal website to make payment. You will need a proper PayPal account for us to have registrations directed to them. Once payment is complete, users will be returned to a thank you page on your website. 2. Return PayPal Feed to Database — After payment is made the MCM INCwebsite will need to know that a registration that has been submitted to the database has been paid for. This will require handling a return feed from PayPal that can be used by the site database. k. Sponsors — This page will list your sponsors. Each listing will feature the sponsor's name, a thumbnail of the sponsor's logo, a short description and the sponsor's URL. Clicking on the URL will open a new browser window containing the sponsor's website. At the bottom of the page will be a small form that a potential sponsor can fill out to inquiry about becoming a sponsor. This form will be very short at only 4 data fields — Name, Email Address, Phone Number and Comments. Once the form is submitted it will be emailed to you so you can follow up with the potential sponsor as needed. All of the sponsor information on this page can be updated via the content management system. l. Investors — There can be a hidden link for investors, if needed; however, we recommend putting a link on the navigation for this section of the site, at least as a text link in the bottom footer of the page. Once an investor clicks on the link, they will be taken to a login screen. i. Login — The login screen will simply be a page containing two fields to enter a username and password. The user will have to successfully enter the username and password that you have provided to them in order to proceed to the next page. You will be able to generate a new username and password for the investors in the administrative area of the website. The login you generate will be universal for all investors — generating a new username and password will require redistributing the login to all potential investors. The idea is to only have to deal with one login username and password to give to any potential investor. Doing it this way you will not have to manually generate an account for each potential investor or have to look up individual account logins when someone forgets their login. ii. Investor Document Library — Once a user has successfully passed the login page they will be taken to a document library where they will be able to access documents that you have posted for them to see. You will be able to upload documents to be displayed on this page along with a short description of the document. Documents to upload can be PDF, Word, Excel of PowerPoint formatted. m. Newsletters — You will be able to post newsletters on the site in a PDF format via the content management system. The Newsletters page will naturally contain all of the PDF formatted newsletters that you have uploaded. The PDF newsletters will be arranged in a list fashion, with the most recent first. In the content management system you will be able to name each PDF and give it a short description — these will show on the Newsletters page next to the related newsletter link. Clicking on the link for the newsletter will download the PDF document for a user to review. Optionally, we can setup eNewsletters so you can create an email based newsletter that users can signup for on the Newsletters page by entering their name and email address. See the options section below for more information. Content Management System 2. Content Management System — By logging into a password protected content management system on the website, you can update various content on the website easily, in- house and without paying a third party web design company an update fee. Once you make a change in the administrative console, it will be reflected immediately on the website. The administrative console actually interfaces with a database that contains all the content for the website. The database feeds this content to the appropriate pages on the site. By using a database to manage website content, a greater amount of flexibility and control is introduced to the website. a. Add, Edit, Delete Content — After logging into the administrative console, the user is presented with a menu of available pages to edit. Once a page to edit has been selected the content that is associated with that page is displayed in a text box and any related files (photos, PDF's, etc.) are listed. To change the text in the text box, simply highlight what needs changing and type in the new content. Formatting of text is also available via a basic MS-Word style interface. Cut and pasting text from a word document or other source is also available. Any related files can be updated by clicking a button that browses your hard drive for the file (scanned image, PDF, etc.). Once you have made necessary changes to text and/or files, simply hit the "Update" button at the bottom of the screen and the changes are instantly and automatically made on the website - including the uploading of files selected. b. Different Administrative User Roles (4 in all) — There will be 4 different login user roles involved in the administrative area. i. Users (Fans) — General users that sign up for a Fan account will have the ability to log into the website to view artists and to have additional basic functionality such as contacting a artist or rating an artist. Users will not have the ability to edit any content on the website. ii. Artists/Producers — Artists will have a login account to handle updates to their own site content. While this management area can grow down the road to handle more management, for now only an artists calendar of events and fan inquiries will be managed by artists. Each time an artist logs in their login time will be time stamped in a field in the database associated with their account. ii . Admin Managers — Admin managers will have the ability to edit any of the site content that is under content management control as well as update any artist's information. Admin managers will also have the ability to check registrations and generate reports as indicated below. iv. Investors — Investors will simply share one login account to access documents in the Investor Document Library. Investor will not have the ability to make any changes to any content on the website. Content Management System c. Reporting — The following reports will be setup: listing of all fans by various criteria that they entered in their account (location, for example), listing of all fans for a particular artist/producer by various criteria they entered in their account, daily or weekly emailed report of new fans signed up, daily or weekly emailed report of the number of fans each artist has that have labeled them as their "favorite" artist, daily or weekly emailed report of new GMAC signups, daily or weekly emailed report of new potential sponsors that have inquired and listing of all artist logins to their account. MP3 files that are accessed on the website can have their views tracked via website statistics software. Website Hosting 3. Website Hosting — HostMySite.com- See Matthew Capre for details.