Contents

Project Mission
Project Scope/Description
Website Functions and Features
Example Users
Business Model and income generating ideas
Finishing Comments and Summary

Mission Statement

To create, maintain and support a community resource for those who are adopting and moving to a more conscious consumer society that lives in harmony with the rhythm of our planet.

Project Scope/Description

Ourveg is a community/social networking site to support people interested in making the switch to a vegetarian diet. The site will serve as resource for vegetarians and people wishing to become vegetarian. The collective creative ability of a community is amazing. The idea of Ourveg.com is to bring together the experiences and ideas of a conscious consumer community. The community will share practical advice, experiences and information on eating (recipes), lifestyle, diet, nutrition, green living, relationship, health etc. The main focus will be on food and relationships.

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Website Features and Functions Summary

• Article submission from registered users - review and vote
• Profile Fields for Social Networking
• Directory for listing of vegetarian resources with user reviews
• Product Directory (reviews) with user reviews
• Taxonomy and free tagging for Article and News categorisation
• Recipe submission of recipes for all registered users and user reviews/photo submissions
• Image upload and insert into posts for recipes, reviews etc.
• Recipe image gallery
• wysiwyg editor or solution for content creators to have simple styles like lists, headings, bold and underline etc
• Book Reviews
• Restaurant reviews
• Shopping Resources
• Community Forum
• Simple user/social netoworking features:
  1. Show last logged in time
  2. Whose new
  3. Number of users online
  4. Number of articles/posts/reviews/recipes/photos with links
  5. Search profiles (age, sex, photo, diet, relationship status)
  6. In depth user profiles (optional to complete)
  7. Different types of social interests
• Un-obtrusive advertising platform/model to be added/investigated
• Newsletter

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Example Users

Jane 16 years old (teaneger)
Wants to cook a meal for her family, came to the website via a search engine while searching for a tofu hamburger recipe. She landed on the recipe page which contained a photograph and ingredient listing as well as preparation method and user reviews/comments.
Considerations: simplicity, colors, fesh, interesting, youthful, fun, community.

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Mauro/ Santhan

Traveling to London. Is a profesional who is looking for veg friendly restaurants and acomodation. He arrived to the site via search engine. He is accustomed to the internet and computer usage and appreciates good design and originality as well as great functionality and content
Considerations: Good clean design, well structured navigation, easy search features, unclutttered interface

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Gloria
Gloria, 55 years old (uses reading glasses), is preparing a lesson for her class on diet and spirituality. She is resarching and uses the internet to research for her class presentation. She know's basic internet use. Gloria lands on ourveg.com after searching on Google for under the topic called Diet and spirituality. She landed on the site articles section. She was impressed with the easily accessible high quality content.
considerations: userability, Easily readible fonts, print friendly, find more link with related content, clear navigation.

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Sarah
Is a 39 years old woman, recently divorced and is interested in a lifestyle change. She know`s how to use internet quite well. She is a media professional and is interested in finding a new partner. She is also interested in adopting a vegetarian diet.
considerations: Quality content, social interaction, diet info, events, sharing her info/ experience, user profiles, searching of user profiles, completing own user profile and uploading a photo.

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Paula
Housewife/ mother 45 years old, looking for recipes for her daughter who has recently turned veg. She arrived via search engine wile looking for advice, and is concerned about her daughters sudden descision to adopt a vegetarian diet. Lands on a forum page, but does not know what she's looking at.
She wants to interact in the forum, ask questions, looking for more info.
considerations: easy search, simple navigation, clear, subtle colors, simple forum posting, simple registration.

Hudason Wot
Hudason is a business man. He runs a soya hamburger production company and has his own brand name. His hamburgers are great and he is also a vegetarian. He is interested in getting his product out into the world and has heard about how the internet is redifining advertising and providing a new mean of affordable and high reach advertising. He came to the website via a link given to him from a friend.
considerations: advertising information, community activity and size indication, unobtrusive advertising/sponsored links, offer to submit a review, value added services.

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Business Model and income generating ideas

Although the projects main purpose is not financial gain, sustainability is an important issue and the project should eventually be generating enough income to run itself, sponsor projects, pay staff, have a marketing budget, reward active community members, sponsor prizes etc.
There are several income generating possibilities, almost all based on advertising and using the network reach of the website to offer vegetarian/conscious consumer products a platform on which to market their product. Advertising will be very subtle and non-obtrusive to the site user. Some suggestions are

• Small banner ads
• Sponsored links
• Featured reviews
• Featured Directory listing
• High traffic topic specific ad placement
• Advertorials in newsletter send outs
• Affilliate links
• Google adwords
• Member donations
• Paid competitions

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Finishing Comments and Summary

There is a global movement towards embracing a more harmonious way of living on and with our planet. More and more people are becoming aware of the benefits of vegetarian diet both for the consumer and the planet. The internet is a the ideal medium for sharing of information that can nuture and stimulate this move towards vegetarian conscious consumer lifestyle. Ourveg.com has the potential to one of the most popular vegetarian conscious consumer community resource on the internet.

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