Requirements for RacketClub
Author: M Chippendale
Version: 1.0 (Draft)
Date: 27/11/1998
Background
RacketClub.com is being built by TSL with some sponsorship from Slazenger/Dunlop.
By providing services to players, coaches and facilities, TSL aim to raise
the profile of racket sports in the UK and to develop a large community
of RacketClub.com members. Paneris will be responsible for providing interactive
services to users of RacketClub.
Business Need
By building a substantial audience, TSL aim to secure further sponsorship
and advertising revenues, with the possibility of charging registration
fees in the future. There is also a possibility of selling sports merchandise
to members via RacketClub based e-commerce, and to provide a service to
host a facility's (single-page?) website. TSL intend to record the actions
of RacketClub members on the site to use as marketing information for their
(potential) sponsors and to provide extra services to some of their members
(particularly coaches and facilities).
Users and Services
This section only mentions the areas of the website for which Paneris would
be responsible for implementation. There are a number of other services
provided by the club which will be undertaken by TSL (for instance, news).
There are three main classes of users of RacketClub:
-
players of racket sports
-
coaches of racket sports
-
facilities for playing racket sports
Initially the site will concentrate on tennis players, coaches and facilities,
but the scope will be increased in the first year to encompass squash and
badminton players also.
Note that there is actually another class of user - RacketClub staff.
These are mentioned in point 10 below.
-
Each type of user will be allowed to register to become a member of RacketClub.
In the case of coaches and facilities, RacketClub staff will process the
registration to confirm the coach or facility's details and perhaps to
charge registration fees. (Players will not be charged and will be made
immediately available to the system, at least initially.) Note that a coach
will also register as a player, and so all services mentioned below which
are available to players are also available to coaches.
-
Users will be allowed to update their membership details
-
Facilities might be able to pay RacketClub a higher fee so that they can
have more prominent positions in searches or to expand the details stored
in the system (in effect, to have RacketClub host their websites).
-
Players can search for - a partner to play a match with - a coach for training
- a facility to play a match on/at by a number of criteria, primarily by
proximity.
-
There will be a number of 'ladders' in which players can compete at their
chosen sport.
-
There will be a number of Bulletin Boards available for use by members
of RacketClub and non-members alike.
-
There will be chat rooms for use by members
-
There will be a newsletter sent periodically to members of RacketClub
-
There will be some facility for monitoring member activity on the site
to provide coaches and facilities with information about how many times
their details have been consulted.
Note that not all of these services will be provided initially. In particular,
Paneris will initially provide software to provide services 1,2,4,6 and
9 - the registration and updating of user details, searches on these details
and a bulletin board system.
-
Besides the above, there is a need for RacketClub staff to administer each
of the services mentioned above.
Paneris will be responsible for providing an administration interface.
Constraints
TSL have previously employed the services of Mazware, a London based ISP
who use Windows NT, but they are happy to move to a different ISP.
It is expected that there will be around 250-500 coaches and 200-2000
facilities on the system. The number of users is unknown, but the audience
is racket sport players in the UK and so would probably be under 50 million
:-)
Slazenger/Dunlop will be providing data for a number of coaches. We
can, however, specify the format and data design of the data required.
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Document Dated: Mon Nov 30 13:23:42 1998
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