IT 270 Project Final PDF

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Final Project Summary for IT 270 Website Design...

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IT 270: Web Site Design

IT 270 Web Site Design Harry Watwood Southern New Hampshire University

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Website Link https://harrywatwoodfinalproject.000webhostapp.com/ Documentation of the Development Process Uncle Jeb owns an antique tractor restoration business. His focus is John Deere 2cylinder tractors or “Johnny Poppers” as they are affectionately known. Uncle Jeb provides complete, ground-up restoration services. John Deere 2-cylinder owners are passionate about their hobby and showcase their tractors at many venues such as parades, tractor shows, etc. This website will showcase Uncle Jeb’s work and attention to detail. It will provide tractor owners examples of Uncle Jeb’s excellent work and attention to detail. During the development process, I used a 6-step process consisting of the following phases: Discovery, Planning, Design, Development, Launch, and Maintain. During the discovery phase, I gathered information to understand the business and industry. I learned who the target market and customers would be. And, we established the goal of the website. During the planning phase we worked to clarify the objectives of the project. We used this time also to guide the design which saves time and money in development phase. We created an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy, created the website sitemap, and reviewed the proposed content. During the design phase, we developed the wireframe with the basic website elements such as the header, navigation menu, and other widgets. We used this time to also balance the website form and function, determine the individual page goals, decide the color palette, typography, and imagery used. One important task completed during this phase was to determine clear user actions; what do we want the users to do on each page.

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Lastly, we moved into the development phase and website launch. One ongoing task will be to determine the maintenance strategy for the website. How will we ensure the long-term health of the site, stay current with updates and content, and measure success of the site? Defense of the Final Product The structural theme of my website is the hierarchical structure. I have chosen this theme because it is the simplest and best structure for website design. This hub and spoke design mimics the users’ mental model of the relationships among the topics of the website. The color scheme of the website consists of the official John Deere green and yellow colors. Visitors will instantly know and recognize these colors. When visitors click any of the links provided, the links will appear in a different color to highlight that they have visited these pages. The standard font colors are black for easy visibility. The header font colors were selected to contrast against any background or image colors for easy visibility. The general typeface choice for the website is Arial because it is easy to read, visually appealing, provides a better user experience, and sets the tone for the website that is desired. We have limited the typography to two typefaces to maintain a consistent and uncluttered look of the website. We also utilized typeface contrast to draw attention to page headers and important information. -

Homepage: The home page for Uncle Jeb’s Johnny Poppers consists of vital information that presents visitors with options for contacting us, viewing information about Uncle Jeb’s business, viewing projects completed, and reading customer reviews. There is a page menu on the left side of the page for users to access the other pages. The layout of the home page has a picture of antique John Deere tractors as well as the company logo. The logo is centered at the top of the page to draw the visitor’s eye to it.

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About Us: This page provides an overview of Uncle Jeb’s restoration business, how his business got started, how long he has been performing restorations, and why he is so passionate about his work.

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Contact Us: This page provides the basic contact information. It also includes a form for the visitor to complete if they are interested in having Uncle Jeb quote a restoration project for them. This page also provides a list in table form of the tractor shows that Uncle Jeb will be attending if visitors would like to meet him.

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Projects: This page provides photos of projects Uncle Jeb has completed. This gives the prospective customer examples of Uncle Jeb’s meticulous attention to detail.

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Reviews: This page provides customers’ reviews of Uncle Jeb’s work. It allows prospective customers to hear real-life feedback of the work provided. All pages and designs were decided upon to ensure that the clearly defined goals and

business purpose of the site were met. Although there was discussion and suggested edits to the design, the approach taken was to defend the website goals and not get mired down in the design details. Opportunities for Improvement and Growth There are several areas for improvement and future growth that have been identified. Most of these areas will improve the user experience and help to drive user actions defined as “Call to Action” clicks. The first area of improvement would be to redesign the website navigation. We would enhance this by using more descriptive navigation tags and ensure we eliminate the use of “jargon” terms.

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The second area deals with what is termed “Call to Action” clicks. This improvement will incorporate the use of call-to-action text which consists of action verb terms such as “Get a Quote” instead of “Submit” for the contact form. We can also use call-to-action colors to draw the user’s eye to the actions we want them to perform. The use of accent or contrasting colors would achieve this. Another improvement that we will make is to remove the Reviews page and incorporate these using short blurbs on the other pages. Industry research reveals that users rarely click on a Reviews page. How often do we really read someone “tooting their own horn”? By incorporating these into the other pages either on a sidebar or the footer, the reviews will be seen more. On the About Us page, we would suggest including people pictures, Uncle Jeb, his family, kids, grandkids, etc. Research suggests that website visitors like to see the people that they anticipate doing business with. This creates an emotional connection as opposed to just using words. This creates a “people working with people” connection to prospective customers. Lastly, we would suggest setting up a method for analytics. This allows Uncle Jeb to review total visitors, page clicks, visitor locations, and a world of other data. Analytics are crucial when determining future needs and improvements....