Documentation of the Development Process
Explain to your audience the intent and purpose behind this website. What steps did you take in creating the website that ensured you met your objectives?
My uncle owns a reptile supply store, he currently sales food, decorations, and other supplies targeted towards reptiles. The focus of the site will be to showcase products in the store, and to explain care for the animals.
While reptiles can make great pets, they are not for everyone. The main purpose of this site will be to bring new customers by expanding beyond a physical store. It is also to guide new and potential reptile owners in what all is involved in keeping reptiles safe and healthy.
The most compelling action should be to sign up for a newsletter and rewards program, this will encourage patronage and highlight products. Next is to drive foot traffic to the store, while drawing new customers is desired, the main focus should be to existing patrons and retaining those clients. Another goal is to answer any questions customers may have and direct them to the appropriate products, or to resources that can answer/provide what they need.
Most important is current customers, those that visit his store for food on a regular basis. Next, but also important is new and potential reptile owners that may become customers. Reptile owners are everywhere and hopefully online orders will expand boundaries, but for now the physical store is located in Chattanooga TN. Typically customers come from less than 50 miles. Currently the store has about 500 patrons that visit at least once a month. I am hoping that the website will draw several times that amount, targeting approximately 3500 per month.
Defense of the Final Product
Why did you make the specific design choices that you did? For each of your website’s pages, explain your rationale for the overall design, as well as the individual components (colors, typography, etc.). Support your choices with evidence of your consideration of the end user. What did you do to make your website engaging, professional, and easy to use?
I plan to use a hierarchical structure because there may be different reasons for visiting the site, by placing options on the Home Page customers can navigate to the section they are trying to reach easier and faster. If the customer is looking for information, then it makes since to create a path that focuses on care sheets and other miscellaneous information. On the other hand if a customer is looking to buy the same feed they always do, they do not want to scroll through pages of information to find it.
The overall design I tried to keep simple and easy to read or browse content. At the same time I wanted to keep it fun and entertaining. For ease of reading I tried to use stark contrast from background color and text color, and a basic font. The color theme is how I chose to keep it engaging, I used Adobe's color wheel to find colors that balance the main more vibrant color.
Opportunities for Improvement and Growth
Finally, explain what else you might like to do with this website in the future. What could you have done differently if you had more time or resources? What sorts of content, capabilities, pages, etc. might you want to include in future updates?
(1) In the future I would like to see a shopping cart and be able to actually purchase products online. This would also create a few more pages focused on the category of the product (e.g. food, decorations, info pages, etc.).
(2) A search feature to look for specific products or content.
(3) I think an important aspect is keeping content updated, I think an RSS feed would be a nice feature too.