This document is a detailed proposal for a web site for Anderson Bicycle Company to be designed and produced by HoganDos Corp. (a fictional Texas corporation).
Anderson Bicycle Company - Bicycles for every Cycle of your life!
URL: http://dhogan.frehostia.com/bicycle
Dan Hogan, Project Manager and Chief Technology Officer, HoganDos Inc (a fictional Texas corporation).
There are a variety of purposes and technologies as options for an Internet presence. At the simple end an organization can simply place one or more static HTML pages on a hosting site. On the complex end an enterprize may set up a complete datacenter with a major database and multi-tier application with a web portal system and full oneline sales and inventory management tools. Obviously this second approach is extremely costly in time and dollars. In the middle there are many technologies that can be implemented, potentially in a phased approach to reduce time-to-market with each incremental tool.
We will create an appealing html/Javascript site that focuses on providing ample information about the company, products and services before attempting to develop an online store. The advantages of this approach is this allows a quick entry to the world wide web, builds employee knowledge and confidence in web-related techniques and establishes a presence on the web in a timely manner. As the company grows and builds experience and confidence in Internet-related activities, more functionality can be managed by reapplying the project management process of assessment, planning, implementation and maintenance disciplines.
A minor note that helps maintain schedules is that technology and its attendant "gee-whiz" factor can consume the entire time available to project deliverables. While aesthetics are important, content needs to be developed as the first priority with time allotted to produce the desired aesthetics. A small example of this is the tendency to fiddle with niggling html features such as flash animations, fonts and graphics at the expense of completing the page on time. A recommended solution is to choose a style and to develop the content text, graphics and photos to fit that style. This helps to keep the focus on the content and as an added benefit, allows mass changes to style to be applied at a later time. After setting the overall website's style and outline, each page should begin as an outline, followed by full development of the content and final appearance touch-ups can be applied as time permits.
Of key importance to a successful project is the test plan. All pages, links and features of the site must be evaluated in all of the major PC browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, and Opera. The test plan checklist will be comprised of a copy of the final information structure diagram for each browser with successful tests of each page and link marked. Whenever changes are made a decision will be needed whether to execute a complete regression test or to test only the page or pages that were changed.
The following are a list of sites, including some that are competitors and some that illustrate interesting web design, appeal or navigation features.
A simple site with a few pages to introduce this small custom shop. This site is apparently a simple HTML page with a little Javascript for links and simple animation.
The colors and graphics are appealing.
This site is probably fine for a small shop whose main purpose is to show hours of operations, an address and a map the the shop. If the number of pages increases, the addition of a menu, site map and search function would be welcome additions. Also the size of the page is small for current users. It was probably designed for standard VGA (640x480) but should be updated to present more information per page.
A few links to the few pages available are sprinkled around the main site. There is no menu, but given the few pages available, this is probably adequate.
A beautiful, simple site with a few pages to introduce this small custom shop. This site is apparently either hand-coded HTML or using a simple GUI editor. This site is more informative than the Palm Beach Bicycle Shop, with more links and pages. The pages are left-aligned.
The colors and graphics are very appealing and show evidence of a talented graphics designer's touch.
The menu is extremely simple, but will become crowded if more categories of information are added.
The main menu is placed just below the company logo at the top of the page. There is a right-side menu on the Bicycles and Wheels pages to display details about products. Also a somewhat crowded-looking links page has links to many informative, related sites, such as race clubs and equipment manufacturers. This page looks like it was designed to jam all the links onto a single 800x600 page. The links to external sites pop up a new browser window, which I do recommend as it leaves a your site open in a browser window when the user closes the link page.
Appears to be a simple HTML and Javascript site. Pages are centered in the browser canvas. The menu is simple and easy to find.
This is a very clean and readable site. The colors are simple and appealing and the tasteful graphics speak of good taste.
The menu items are very small and difficult for those with poor eyesight to see. Also they are graphic buttons and, as such, are not affected when the user changes the text size in their browser. Some of the photos are quite large and may cause problems for slow connection speeds. Also the large bicycle photo on the "Bicycles" page changes the page width and shoves the menu to the left when it presents on the page. This can be very distracting when the user is clicking through the links on the menu. I recommend posting smaller photos and graphics, with links to larger pictures if the user wants to see the larger picture.
All pages include a menu, and the menu is consistent on the pages. The home page (index.html) has the menu in a different spot on the page, but it is layed out in a consistent fashion with the other pages.
This site appears to be developed in a PHP-based portal, though I cannot be certain if it is widely available tool such as PHP Nuke or if it is a custom system. In the longer term, I would recommend the use of a portal package, as it simplifies the addition of advanced elements such as online orders, discussion boards, blogs etc.
This is a pretty and functional site. The menu is easy to see and use and the graphics are attractive and well coordinated.
The graphics are a little large for slow Internet connections and low resolution monitors. Also the menus are non-functional for browsers that are really old or where security settings disallow Javascript. It is probable that the online order functions are similarly Javascript based. I would recommend adding a simple link to a simpler text-only site-map to allow these users to access the key informational pages in the site.
The menu allows the user to easily access the various pages available. The
The Drudge Report is an interesting example of an extremely simple website that accomplishes its purpose with startling effectiveness. It is apparently a simple HTML-only site with just a few pages. The main page links to stories selected by Matt Drudge as headlines of the day, and provides a more static list of links to major news sites and commentators around the world. Some few links will be to breaking stories or comments by Matt Drudge himself and hosted on his own site, but these are rare.
Aesthetically The Drudge Report appears as a monospace-typed news page, much in the fashion of an older-school faxed news sheet. The effect is almost ugly, but its sparseness and static layout allows the users to familiarize themselves with the available links quickly, much the way that a newspaper's standard sections allow the reader to quickly find topics that interest them.
For what it does, this site is near-perfect. While critics do debate Drudge's impartiality and argue against his choices of headline stories to highlight, few can argue against his success. The simple navigation is immediately apparent to beginning web users.
Nearly all entries on the page are static links to other sites. A few are photographs or other graphics that serve as links to news or commentary. A few are advertisements. There is no menu and no apparent hierarchy among the pages available on Drudge's own site.
An extremely sparse search page that opens into many services including image search, maps, translation tools and more. One service Google provides is an advertising tool that makes it simple for smaller web sites to enter the world of web advertising. This is something that Anderson Bicycle should consider taking advantage of.
The pages are easy to navigate and very readable. The search tools are incredibly powerful and help to open the doors to the web for many users.
For what it does, this site is near-perfect. While critics do debate Drudge's impartiality and argue against his choices of headline stories to highlight, few can argue against his success. The simple navigation is immediately apparent to beginning web-users.
Google has simple links to original sites and to cached-copies of sites in case the original content is changed or deleted. Their maps and Google Earth tool were poineers in the user of AJAX for quick client-side functionality.
This is a major sales portal using custom-developed software running a multi-tier system on many servers. The basic look is reasonably simple with a white canvas and mostly text links, but many graphics and photos of products make the user buying experience informative and easy.
An attractive site with ample navigational tools.
There is not much to be said here. Amazon is a giant among the innovators in web commerce. Some of the product pages are almost overloaded with information, but this can be comforting to the buyer that they are getting a fairly full description of the products offered.
Navigation is very flexible with many dynamic links and search tools.
The elements comprising the site will be several pages (see Contents below) with main and secondary menus providing navigation between the pages. Pages will use attractive design elements such as fonts, colors, graphics and pictures; while maintaining a professional and exciting design.
Customers
Prospects
Employees
The site must work on a majority of recent web browsers and workstations. A future design may include explicit support for mobile browsers such as those in PDAs and digital cellular phones. Consideration to those with slow connection speeds and lower resolution displays will also be given.
This is the standard triad of project constraints which must remain in-balance for a successful project. Whenever one of the three expands beyond the baseline plan, one or both of the other two must adjust to compensate
On this project, to keep the time and cost reasonable, I propose a relatively simple HTML and Javascript site, hosted on a free hosting vendor such as FreeHostia. This will limit functionality such that a complex online order tool will be impractical. Once Anderson Bicycles is an established web presence and you wish to add online order and inventory management, I would recommend switching to a more full functioned portal tool, such as PHP Nuke or DotNetNuke.