Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Final Project Website!

The business I am choosing to create a website for is for selling goose calls and decoys. My husband sells goose and duck calls and products for Bill Saunders Calls and he sells Hardcore decoys. He currently does not have a website, but would like one set up to provide people with somewhere they can look at products and order products. The products on the site will include goose and duck calls, Bill Saunders gear (hats, tees, stickers, etc.) and Hardcore decoys.

The type of business is selling waterfowl hunting products and providing information. My husband is on the Field Staff for both Bill Saunders and Hardcore Decoys, so he sells their products. By having a website, he can give potential clients and interested people a link to check out products. He currently has order sheets and price lists and then people tell him what to order. With a website, people will not necessarily need to contact him and they can go look at the products whenever is convenient.

The reason I am choosing to create this site is because I will be able to contact my husband with easy convenience if I have a question about the business. I also think it will be very helpful to him and he has been asking me to create one for him for awhile now. The reason I have not created one yet is because I only know basic XHTML and Frontpage (or Sharepoint, or whatever it is called now) is not really conducive to what he is looking for, so I hoping I will learn to do the things he is looking for!

The goals of the website are as follows:
Pages:
The ideas I have for pages are: Home, Goose Calls, Duck Calls, Saunders Gear, Decoys, Questions and Comments, Contact, and Forum. Now I am not sure if I will have an order form type page or if it will be more high tech, like say Amazon, where the user can click the product and “Add to Shopping Cart” or “Order” or something like that, because I am not sure if we will learn how to do that! But I know I will be able to make an order form, so that might end up being a page too.
On the product pages, each individual product with have information and images. The page will show all the products and then a user can click on one and it will have more specific information, such as a summary, images, and price.
Forum:
He also expressed that he wishes to have a forum on the site, for users to share information and ideas. The topics under on the forum would be: Tips and Techniques, Migration Reports, Upcoming Events, and Waterfowl Hunting Pictures. For example, a user would be able to put up information on a calling contest coming up (under Upcoming Events), or put up a picture of a recent hunt (under Waterfowl Hunting Pictures). He says he wants users to have to register, have a screen name and password, so I hope that I am able to do that.
Design:
Obviously I want the site to have a cool, friendly design. I know I will have to tailor it more towards…the male gender, although there are some female waterfowlers. I want the design to be stylish and impressive. I have seen a lot of the sites my husband goes to for hunting information and products and they are pretty lame and boring, so I hope this site has more of a “wow” factor.
Functionality:
This is definitely the most important aspect. It doesn’t matter if my site is "cool looking" if it doesn’t work. I want all the aspects to work properly. Furthermore, I do not want the design to be confusing, so that the user does not know where to locate something. I do not want the design to hinder functionality.

Challenges I foresee are definitely the forum. I hope that I will be able to create that, since I know it will be hard to make it user friendly and functional so that registered users can post up information. Another challenge is making it so the user can click on an item and order it, instead of having to go to a separate order form or something.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Scrapblog and Career Goals

Scrapblog
I chose to learn more about Scrapblog. It looked interesting and creative. I like how it says it is a good tool to share images with families and friends. For people who like to scrapbook it is a good way to share their creative abilities and family pictures with relatives who live far away. It has a lot of design elements and really lets the user create whatever they want. It is a good tool for practicing layout design. So in all, it is useful to me to share and edit scrapbooks, but also to use my artistic and creative abilities and see how different layouts look and colors and other design elements, which will help me in web design and layout design.

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up
When I graduate I am not exactly sure what I want to do. I hope to get a job in a field that I enjoy. I am going to apply for various jobs, even if they are not related to my major. In today’s economy and job industry, I don’t really think I will be too picky. I would love to work with people, because if I had to sit behind a computer all day I would go crazy. Ideally, I would love to work in a job where I can help people.

My strengths are that I can be a good leader as well as good follower. I can manage various roles in a group setting. I can take initiative if something needs to be done that is not getting done. I am also very good at speaking with people and making them feel comfortable in different settings. I am prompt and courteous. As far as programs, I have used many text analysis programs, Adobe InDesign, Framemaker, and Photoshop, Quark, Robohelp, and the Microsoft Office Suite.

My weaknesses are that I tend to take on a lot. If someone asks me to do something, it is often hard for me to say that I am too busy. I like to help out, and perhaps too much. My concerns about my skills are that I am not extremely passionate about one thing. I do not know what I want to do; there is not one career that I can say I really want to pursue, so that is my biggest concern.