During the requirements analysis phase, all documents relevant to the proposed system should be identified. The documents used within the organisation can provide some of the raw materials required for the proposed website. To help identify which documents contain useful information for inclusion in the website the documents should be analysed and categorised. In this section we look at two categorisation schemes - object categorisation and process categorisation.
Object Categorisation
Documents within the organisation can be categorised according to the objects they are concerned with. An object in this context is an entity within the organisation such as a product or company. For example documents could be grouped into related areas such as:
- Product information
- Title of product
- Description of product
- Price
- Promotional material
- Catalogues
- Company details
- Staff details
- Customer details
Process Categorisation
Another method of categorising documents is according to business processes. Examples of business processes include:
- Billing and payment processing
- Inventory processing
- Taxation processing
Documents relating to these processes are likely to consist of forms, reports, procedure manuals etc. For example:
- Sales forms and invoice reports
- Inventory forms
- Taxation forms
The Australian Taxation website http://www.ato.gov.au shown below, provides us with an example of a website structured according to business processes. For example:
- Doing tax online
- Completing activity statements
- Calculating rates
The Australian Taxation Office site also provides an alternative navigation structure based on the target audience. The navigational elements based on the target audience include:
- Individuals
- Businesses
- Non-profit organisations
Looking at how to cluster and structure organisational data into a form accessible on a website is the topic of the resource Plan Content Structure.