The most important step I took to ensure I would suceed in the objectives were, first and foremost, to consult the rubric. This helped me realize that we had already done all of what was being asked of us, and that I could apply what I had learned in those objectives to the project. It wasn't as simple as copy/paste, but it became a solid foundation for a lot of the site.
Unfortunately, a lot of my design choice simply came from my limited understanding of HTML and CSS. While I of course tried to soak in as much knowledge as I could during the lessons, I must admit I did have a little trouble retaining all the information like specific tags and CSS formats.
That being said, my rationale was that it was going to be a simple business page, and so I went with a fairly simple layout with minimal distractions for the user. I utilized the soft blue background because it isn't stressful on the users eyes if they ended up on the page for a longer period of time. The Helvetica font has always been one of my favorites and is one reason I used it throughout, it has such a clean look that I felt end users would also enjoy it, as well as making it white so that it stands out, but not blindingly so. I was initially going to use Sans Serif but I formatted the page in Helvetica and just liked it that much more that I had to use it. It has also been said that blues evoke feelings of trustworthiness and safety, which is absolutely something a business would want to exemplify and present to their customers.
Given more time to create the website, I would probably rework the entire layout, not that I don't think the current layout supports what I needed, but I would like it to be cleaner. I had trouble with spacing items out and getting the content to line up properly where I wanted it. With more resources, I would add more links to actual product pages. I would also, if it were a real business, have added actual videos of the owner/employees working on equipment to show the customers exactly what they could expect if they visited the shop themselves. Again if it were a real business, I would also add in the future all of the relavent social media links; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. so that the customers could easily connect with the business.