Web Development Staff Information - First Promotions Website

First Promotions Website

Purpose of website

The purpose of the website was for a company to commit to the world of e-commerce. When I say the word 'commit', I mean the company selling their products to consumers and possibly other businesses. The clients would visit this website to buy products from the company, which would provide the client with his/her product and the business with money. For this typical website, a consumer would want to buy stationary tools e.g. pens, pencils.

By creating this website, the company have a chance to:

Make a reasonable profit
Provide good customer satisfaction by selling their products for a good price and quality.

Requirements to make such a site

To create such a website, a set of web pages would have to be created to provide a visual experience to customers (Clients). These pages would need to be written in the mark-up language HTML to create an effective layout and produce the content on the web pages. Style sheets would be used to handle the look e.g. colours, size, by using style sheets, by doing this, the website would be able to look more appealing to users. Scripts (JavaScript) would be useful because they can be used to make web pages more interactive. Besides being interactive, JavaScript would be used to check for certain features from clients e.g. browser, JavaScript enabled. This would allow everyone to interact with the website (in their way) and allow the company to gain a better profit. A server side scripting language, for instance 'PHP' could be used to interact with databases (MYSQL).

Other requirements

Easy navigation (Menus, Links).
Appealing colours and reasonable layout using style sheet.
Images of every product (Give customer confidence of what they are buying).
Compatible with most browsers (W3C).
Forms to submit information.
Detailed description of each product and page.
Less use of tables (Use CSS).
Good use of HTML and CSS.

What the site needs to meet the requirements

I have been looking through the source of the website (HTML) and decided that the website needs to improve of the following things:

Use cascade style sheets to improve look/style of the website.
Less use of tables (Complicated Code).
Improve the use of HTML because there are many common mistakes (W3C).
Use ALT tags (Images) for disabled people so a image can be described to the person.
Use PHP and MYSQL because it will allow the use of databases in web pages (Selling and buying) and make web pages more interactive.
Forms used to send information from the customer to the administrator of the website because it will save time rather than phoning up.

My review

I have looked through the source and the web pages in Internet Explorer and Firefox and have decided that the website needs work done to it. I will now list the good points of the website and where it lacks. The technologies used in this website are: HTML, JavaScript however, there is no use of server-side scripting languages (PHP, MYSQL).

I believe the layout is rather effective because all items within the web page are combined into one table, which makes the website tidy and easy to read. Another good thing about they layout, is that it divides the web page into different sections e.g. Products on left, Instructions on right and Main content in the middle. The content is very descriptive and provides every customer with useful information about their products and how to order and other information. Graphics used in the website include the company logo, website (in design), products and information for consumers. The website could be improved if their were more images of each product from different angles, because it would give the consumer more confidence in what he/she is buying. I think the colours used are appropriate for this kind of website but could be improved by making the website more colourful. I found navigating through the website was rather easy because each page kept a series of Hyperlinks (Top of page) to different parts of the website which made it very accessible.

Good points

I can easily navigate through the website using the menus.
Detailed descriptions of each product.
Picture of every product and detailed content on most pages.
Appropriate layout and use of colours.

Both websites work well in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 and both layouts look relatively the same.

Bad points

Too many tables used to design website (Complicated code).
Bad use of HTML e.g. There's no DOCTYPE, META, ALT tags (Disabled) which makes the website practically useless for disabled people (Eye problems).
No server side scripting (PHP).

The main problem I have spotted with the website is that it doesn't use cascade style sheets (CSS). Using style sheets could save time in changing the look of the website because the same style can be applied to multiple web pages at once. Another problem, I spotted is that the web pages use tables too frequently, which can make the code very complicated to understand and waste time for businesses.

Scripts (JavaScript)

On many of the web pages include a script which is embedded with the HTML code. This script allows different products to be sorted into different arrangements on certain pages. The script also embeds Hyperlinks into the web page and can easily be changed by changing the script but this could be improved by putting the whole script into a .js file and there for, allowing the script to be used in many web pages.