Documentation of the Development Process
The first steps I took in creating the website was to decide what my 5 different web pages were going to be. Once I had that laid out, I could then go on to deciding the overall layout of each page. I knew that the home page would be the most unique as it is the first page that anyone will see so it would need to be an attention grabber as well as offer some basic information that users may be looking for. Once I planned that out, I then went on to plan the rest of the pages' layouts as they would all be similar. This was done to present uniformity when navigating the site and cause for less of a distraction from users going from page to page. Once all of that was decided it was then time to make the pages. Some of my initial ideas had to be swapped out as they didn't look as good in practice as they did in my head. As I was going through and generating the pages, I would notice something different that seemed off and would fix it on the current page, then go back and edit the rest of the pages to maintain uniformity. By the end, all my pages had a similar feel to them while each serving their own purpose in the overall website.
Defense of the Final Project
For the home page I went with the large title across the top to instantly identify to the user what the company us, below that I put the contact information as that could likely be the only reason they are navigating to this site. Just below that I put all the links to the other pages in relatively big font so that they can be easily read and are easy to click on. If the user is interested, there is a quick blurb about the company and the different services that they offer so any potential customers can see if it's something they are interested in. Behind all of that there is a picture of one of the beautiful yards that the company takes care of to demonstrate what fine work they do. The rest of the pages all had similar style choices. I put the company name and links to the other pages in the upper left-hand corner as it kept the rest of the page clean while still allowing the user to navigate to the other pages. Each page has a fading green background with yellow font. These are both natural colors and are representative of lawns and yard work. I chose the green gradient background as it gave each page a nice even backdrop while not just being a solid color. I went with the yellow font/text boxes because it is a good contrast to the background and proved easy to read on the green background. I chose to put the title of each page in large font at the top to keep it simple and obvious where the user was currently at. The website itself is not the focus of the company but is merely a tool offered to help the customers, so I decided that a simple and straightforward font and design would be the most appropriate. I didn't want to add too much fluff or obstacles to new or returning customers that could cause confusion.
Opportunities for Improvement and Growth
If I was to keep working and growing this website, I would certainly begin with making the appointment calendar functional and interactive. I would want to make it so that customers could add/change/delete appointments in the calendar. There would have to be a form the pops up when someone clicks on a day with several input fields and drop downs so that they could create a new appointment and to ensure that it doesn't conflict with any other scheduled appointments. I would also like to add in a functional account creation form so that a user could create an account. The final thing I can think of that I would want to add would either be a separate log in page or something that pops up on each page that would allow a user to log in at any time while they were browsing the website.