Documentation of the Development Process
The intent and purpose of this website was to provide my uncle, Chris, a website for his business. The initial step in creating this site was determining what type of business my uncle had. Then, drawing out a layout of the website on paper and determining what information he was looking to show his potential customers. Once the layout was confirmed, colors and fonts were picked out based on the company type. This website needed to be as user friendly as possible so that the potential customers did not have to search for basic items during a time of need or crisis. I was able to test and tweak each portion of the code and how it would look on the site by using JSFiddle prior to writing it to the actual site for validation.
Defense of the Final Product
The design choices that I made for this site were geared towards subtleness and calming colors. This website is a crematorium website and does not need any loud or bright colors in your face. People viewing this site are typically searching this site because of a loss in their life, not a party. Each page on this site was built with a user-friendly mindset and simplicity for the end user.
The Home page was designed to show the customer an image of our facility, who we are, and the company motto.
The About Us page was designed for the user to read about the company, what our vision, mission, and purpose was without having to change pages each time. I chose to use tabs to navigate through these options for user convenience. The video provided on the About Us page is to show users what actually happens during a cremation so that it could possibly answer any questions on the actual process. The images selected for each tab were meant to fit each tabbed section's topic.
The About IT-270 page is to answer the questions in Section IV of the grading rubric.
The Services page provides links to the three main cremation packages available along with a clickable general prices link that opens a pdf to show more options for families and any additional addons with cost that they may like to purchase. Each of the three Package pages show what each package includes with the final price of that package.
The Additional Items page provides links to the Urns and Engraved Plaques pages in the event the user does not want to use the dropdown menu from the navigation bar at the top. The Urns page uses two columns with multiple urns available for purchase with brief descriptions about each. Most people are visual and if they can see what the urn will look like, they will be more inclined to purchase what they can see. The Engraved Plaques page is the same concept as the Urns page. If people can see what we offer, they can have ideas for when they come in to make decisions for their loved one.
The Contact Us page gives a person or their family the option to inquire more about what we have to offer and the ability to answer any questions they might have.
My uncle elected to have a Careers page on this site. This page gives a brief statement of how the company operates and also has a clickable link to the company's employment application that a person can fill out.
Opportunities for Improvement and Growth
I believe that if I had a few more weeks to work on this website, I would have incorporated more options on the Urns page, and possibly inserted more multimedia. Considering this was my first-time using html to code a website, it has definitely been a learning experience. In future updates, I would add clickable job listings under the Careers page with details about the job and links to submit an online application with the ability to load up your resume. I would also make the Packages more inviting with adding a little color to the tables they were created on.