CIS5101 Management of Business Online For the Website Designing

Answer:

Website structure

Structure of a website is a very important factor to consider when designing a website because it helps determine the usability of the website. A well-structured website is easy to use if users are able to access different parts of the website. For the design of the website some key website design principles that are applicable to Wordpress were considered. These principles include;

• Usability- Usability of the website is a key design principle for any website. To achieve usability, the requirements of the website have to be fully understood so as to select the best type of theme. There are many Wordpress themes but choosing the right theme for the website determines the final design of the website. For the proposed website, I had to select a website with e-commerce features integrated into the theme. Choosing the right Wordpress theme significantly reduces the amount of time used to design the website.
• Designing for mobile first- Designing for mobile first is a concept where the developer designs the website while highly considering mobile devices. This concept ensures that the design achieves a high degree of responsiveness to make it possible to use with different screen resolutions. Wordpress themes can be further customized to add more tweaks and features that optimize the theme further when it’s opened in mobile devices. Apart from the website being responsive, there are other aspects of mobile devices to consider like the usability of the website for a mobile device with touch since the mobile industry is growing fast and almost all mobile devices are touch enabled. This means that the design should consider all these factors and optimize the design for use in mobile devices.
• Designing for accessibility- designing for accessibility means eliminating any barriers that prevent access to the website by a person with a disability. This is a crucial factor as it ensures that any visitor who visits the website has an equal opportunity to consume the content of the website and use its features. Designing for accessibility involves analyzing the theme’s visual contract, to make sure each section of the website is visible and accessible. The font is also considered and should be not be too small especially for paragraphs of text.

The structure used for the website includes the following sections;

• Header- This is the first section of each page. It comprises of the logo and the name of the website and the navigation menu. The navigation menu has a link to every page making up the website.
• Navigation trail- This section is used to show the user which page they are currently in from the home page. For example if the user is on the contacts page then the navigation trail will be Home>Contacts. This section is very important as it helps the user to trace which page he or she is in from the home page.
• Content section- This section has the content for every page.
• Footer section- The footer section has the copyright information for the website.

This structure is used on all the pages except the home page which includes a few other sections. The website is made up of the following pages;

• Home page- The home page is the first page that a visitor sees when they visit the website. Since it’s the landing page, the design has to be impressive so as to create a good first impression to the user. The page has been designed to achieve simplicity while delivering content about the organization using images and text. The home page has the following subsections;
  • Banner- This subsection has an image with a welcome message as the caption of the image. The caption is inserted as an overlay on top of the image.
  • Portfolio- This subsection has information about what the organization does.
  • Testimonials- This subsection has testimonials and uses a background image with the testimonials appearing as an overlay.
• About us page- About us page has information about the organization in paragraph format to make it easy for the user to read. The information is brief and to the point to reduce the amount of time the visitor spends reading the information.
• Company policies page- This page has the company policies information. This page uses the normal structure of the website where by the header section consists of the logo and the navigation menu. The content section the company policies page consists of three types of policies
• Products page- The products page has the products. Each product has link to add the product to the cart
• Contact us page- The contact us page has the contact information of the organization. It also includes a google maps to show the location of the organization. The map has been embedded thus visitors are able to use it like Google maps.

Sitemap

Wordpress components and features used

For the implementation of the website, a number of Wordpress components and features were used. These features include;

• Custom Wordpress theme- A custom Wordpress theme was installed. The theme was selected on the basis of a design that will be able to include e-commerce functionality by having a products page to display products that are available for sale.
• Widgets- Some widgets were used for the design of the website.

Website features and functionality

The website includes the following features;

• The products page has items that are available for sale and the user has the option of adding every item to the cart.

Changes

The contacts page includes a google map embedded into the page. The map is fully embedded in the page thus it takes advantage of Google maps features including viewing a larger map. This is better than just using a typical address as the user can use the map to navigate and find the location of the business.

Links and resources

To develop the website some resources were used. These resources include images which were obtained from www.google.com. Another resource that was used is embedded Google maps which was obtained from https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/start.