Designing a shopping site

For my fourth project I am designing a shopping site like Ebay or Amazon. I named my fake site Shopping.com because shopping is why they are using my site so i decided the easiest and most comprehensive site name would be what it is. The name is an easy name to remember and it is what it reads. I also have to keep the site layout similar to other shopping sites because so many people are use to the layout of Ebay or Amazon and other similar sites that they want the layout to be similar for function. I also kept the toolbars similar to the other sites, categories would be on the left and the search bar would be at the top for the person to write what they are looking for. The colors I used for the site are gray, black, and orange. Appealing colors that do not make you want to search another page. I enjoy using Ebay but the yellow they use on their site is functional and I know they use it because Ebay is suppose to be fun and exciting but I find the color to be off-putting and would rather see other colors used. So far I have decided a main page with categories on the left, a search bar at the top, and like other sites I have images I borrowed from Ebay to show popular products that mass consumers bought. I am still in the developing pages of this site and I am looking at other shopping sites to get ideas of how I can make mine better and more functional.

Project 4 Shopping Website

For my fourth project we are suppose to come up with concepts this friday about how we can design a site to sell a particular product. I do not have a particular product in mind but I would like to make a site that sells numerous products like Amazon or Ebay. Both sites serve a great function because they sell not just one product but numerous products. I am also torn about the style of layout I want to use for designing my interactive website that sells products. I was looking at Etsy.com and enjoyed the layout of their page. It was very clean and categorized well, I would like to design a site like that. I also am not sure how many pages we are suppose to make for an interactive website. Should we just make a homepage or should we go in depth and make numerous pages to show how the navigation will be used in the sites design and how a person will shop using the site. I will need to think deeply about this website because it involved a lot of elements with site design and using the concepts of web 2.o, more interactive websites. I will have to use images from other websites for all of the product categories that will be involved with a shopping site like Ebay or Amazon. Other then that I will have to come up with concept designs and a layout that will serve my purpose of a functioning website.

Blog about the due Hudson project

For my newest blog I will be discussing what I have been doing to turn in my project for the Hudson Library and Historical Society. At this moment I have made a power point presentation including images and key points about how I went about redesigning the Hudson website. I included pictures of the original website and my redesign of the website to show how I can make the website function better then the one they are currently using. I also took a picture of the Stow Munroe Falls Library website to compare indirect competitors of the Hudson Library and how they are easy accessible and user friendly. I have also been working in Microsoft word to write my proposal to the Hudson Library on how I can design a site that is easier to use and more functional. Another key point I write about is how congested the Hudson Website is and how negative space can serve a purpose to make it more visually appealing and easier to use. At the moment I am revising some of my pages to make them work and look as good as possible. I am going through each page and adding and subtracting things that could or could not be beneficial for my website. This project is very time consuming and I have ran into a lot of questions about how to make the best and easy to use functioning website.

Hudson Library Visit

For my new blog I will talk about how we went to the Hudson Library to get a feel for what goes on at the library and we got to see the interior of the library. The library is a great library with different areas that are for different age brackets. Such as there is a children’s room with computers, multiple books, a reading room, etc. The website in no way gives me any indication that there was a room for small children or teens. We learned that teens could go to the library and study; they have multiple books, and a television where they can watch pg-13 movies. There is a coffee shop, an upstairs with more books and study areas that are for any age bracket. I was surprised that the Hudson Library was as nice as it is did not have a website showing what kind of facilities are offered to the public. So what I want to do is come up with an idea to interpret how great of a museum it is with all of their great amenities. The librarian who gave us a tour around the library said that they bought multiple copies of Dream Weaver to help create a better website but as for now their website is still the same, boring and not beneficial to the user, and using navigation that is not similar to searching for a needle in a haystack.

Web Design Class Hudson Library part 2

Today's Blog is going to be about what I have been working on in Web Design 2 for the Hudson Library project. So far I have designed a couple of pages for the Library with navigation that is easy for any age bracket. I changed the navigation by adding a toolbar at the top and a drop down menu so the viewer can select what they want. I also put a search button on the site of the main page so any time a person needs to search they can, I also changed the color scheme to a blue because that green on their pages was not a great color to look at. I also have been checking out other libraries pages, like the Solon Library, the Stow library, and the Akron Library. All three of these sites have pretty good navigation, better color schemes then the Hudson page, and you can look at the pages without starting to get frustrated because you have no idea where a tab or icon is for what you are searching for. I know Wednesday we are suppose to go to Hudson and go to the library and I wanted to know if we are going to meet the person who designs this webpage because maybe they could hire some interns to help them get their site looking more on par, nothing against the library or the person designing it but it would be better for the viewers viewing it. I have not really found any good webpage design books to be inspired by so if anyone knows of one to read to give me some more ideas about this project I am game. I also am still working on getting my webpage uploaded to the Gozips. server but it is taking forever because of the internet speed letting me drag and drops files into our server. This is a little frustrating but sooner then later it will be on the web. This is all I have to write about so until next week with my next blog.

Web Class Second Post about Hudson Website

For my second post I will be writing about the third project we will have to do in Web Page Design. The project is to redesign the Hudson Historical society and library web page and to make it more accessible for the person viewing the webpage and for navigating throughout the webpage. The Hudson Library Webpage is pretty simple, they use a green color for their background and the website does not have a search bar located at the top or sides of the page for navigating which makes it difficult to find what you are looking for throughout. The page as icons on the side of the page for navigation but it gets frustrating because there are so many icons on the side and it is confusing to know what all of them are. Another thing I noticed is that other libraries like the Stow Munroe Falls Library is part of facebook and myspace which is very appealing to younger generations and the Hudson library could benefit from this if they belonged to these social networking sites to let the young and old know what is going on at the library with their updates on these sites. They could also clean up their site by getting rid of all of the excess space they do not use at the bottom of the page because the viewer can scroll for a while looking at nothing on the page which is irritating for any person looking at the web page. What I wanted to do is clean up the webpage, I want to get rid of any unused space on the page, I also want to add a toolbar at the top of the page with drop down menus that gives the person more options of what they are looking at. The other thing I wanted to do is at a search tool on the side of the page that can search the site, google, or their catalog. If the person knows what they are looking for all they have to do is use the search tool.

Web 2 class, first blog.

For my blog concerning webpage two I wanted to write about everything we have been doing so far in class. So far we have looked over previous websites that needed considerable work and discussed ways on how to make the web site more aesthetically pleasing. We also discussed navigation use in a webpage. My site and others in the class also had to deal with making their website navigation more accessible to who might be viewing the page.

Another problem that a lot of the sites faced other then navigation is that there was so much information on some sites that scrolled on the side of the page would keep going on and on forever and the average person would get annoyed and sick of having to look for information. That is one thing that seems like a key to designing a page is making it easy to navigate and finding a way to capture the viewers’ attention.

Today August 31, 2009 we discussed the basic use of Dreamweaver and we were given a project that consists of designing a project about ourselves and actually putting it online so it can be used throughout the school year. I already am a little confused on what site I want to display my website because I have never done that before and I do not want to pay a site like Godaddy.com.