Documentation of Development Process
The purpose of this website is to post the products that my "uncle" sells and give customers a way to order these items online. To do this, because I don't have the resources to create a formal database backing, and have real products/payment processing capabilities, I've created a products page which simply has an order form, and a "submit" button for users to send in orders in a form. Then manually when orders are received they would be sent out to the customer with a paypal request for payment. The colors and fonts chosen are very simple and provide a site that is very easy on the eyes, and very easy to read for our customers. I also created a Contact Us and FAQ page which detail how orders work, and give customers a way to contact with further questions.
Defense of the Final Product
I wanted this site to be easy to read and navigate through for users of all tech experiences and backgrounds. The audience for these t-shirts can be anyone from the ages of 13 to 70, so it is necessary to keep the site super easy to use and easy for all ages to read. The color selections were just to give the site a very smooth background which did not interefere with anything on the page, and hopefully made the text and photos pop, which I believe this light blue color does. For the pages, I preferred to use tables, because that breaks the information up nicely, and formats it in a very clear and organized manner. I felt that especially for products, a table kept it very clean and easy. To keep things consistent, I used the same fonts everywhere. One of the main things that you want to ensure for HCI is that the website is very consistent, and does not confuse the user with inconsistencies like having the navigation bar in different areas on each page, or having the page layout vary a lot.
Opportunities for Improvement and Growth
With a website like this and products like these it might be beneficial if this were to expand to include a blog. The blog could be written by my "uncle" or an up and coming equestrian who loves the products and will help promote them within a personal blog. Many online sale sites with blogs appear to be much more successful than those without (for smaller things like these). Another obvious improvement would be to back this with a database so that you can track purchases and orders, take payments, track shipments, and various other pieces of the business. If you could allow customers to create accounts as well, to save wishlists and such, that would also help to improve the site and the reach of this business. Resources such as that do cost a good bit of money and take much longer to create which is why this is mostly a shell of a site, but if those resources were available the site would be much more successful and smoother for a user to place orders!
Once you've submitted the order form, we will respond with tracking details, and send a paypal request to receive payment for the merchandise.
