Distinguishable Website Feature

Soldato
Joined
19 Jul 2006
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2,947
Location
Leicester
I'm going to be making a Online Second Hand Book Store for Students at my University (Not real, it's my final year project) but as a couple of Students could be doing this project (With different supervisors to mine) what feature could I implement to make my Website distinguishable from theirs?

So far I've thought of a news feature page which has general information for Students at my University (Not book related at all)

Do you have any ideas? I'm using HTML with PHP/MySQL.
Thanks
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Aug 2004
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London
You could allow for a lot of UGC (user generated content). Allow users to rate the books, add reviews and create lists of books they like. Perhaps not only list books by topic, but actually list them by course as well - so you can immediately see if any of the main course books are available. It would be cool if you could make it automatically e-mail whoever signs up for the e-mail when a book comes in to stock that they need.
 

AJK

AJK

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8 Sep 2009
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UK
I'm going to be making a Online Second Hand Book Store for Students ... what feature could I implement ... I've thought of a news feature page ... (Not book related at all)

Definitely don't recommend this. If your project is to build an online bookshop, you don't want to be spending (wasting?) time on website features which aren't directly related to that goal.

One of the best ways to get ideas for projects like this is to ask fellow students; why not prepare a short survey which you can give to half a dozen or so friends (the more the better, but don't take it too far), asking what features they use on current bookshops, which of those features are useful for course-related texts, and anything in particular they'd like to see. This will give you a good idea of what to implement and why you are doing so - useful information to have for any project documentation you have to hand in!

I agree with fini re: user-generated content. Ratings and reviews are always useful, especially since your shop has a limited and (mostly) like-minded audience so are likely to be even more relevant :)
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
19 Jul 2006
Posts
2,947
Location
Leicester
Thanks for the ideas fini and AJK.
I'm liking the sound of lots of user generated content, which I think is a good and useful idea and I'll more than likely create a questionnaire to hand out in one of my lessons to a few people right at the start of term.
Thanks
 
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