Unit 14 Website Design Assignment

This Unit 14 Website Design Assignment is done to support the website designing process and all activities such as website user interface, navigational system, and effective user-friendly environment.

Task 1

1.1 Principles that need to be considered while designing a website

1. A website must be easily readable and navigable – All the links, menu items, labels over the website must be clearly visible and easily readable. Proper user of font styles and colours must be made
2. Website must be simple and easy to manage – Users on a website are there to find relevant  information and knowledge  rather than website design. A user must be able to recognize the navigation, header, footer, body of website content.
3. Design, layout, labelling must be consistent throughout the website
4. It must be quickly downloadable – Any document, brochures over the website must be easily downloadable.
5. We should not make users think – Users must be able to comprehend the system easily. It must be clear on website how to go from point A to point B. A website must contain a clear structure with proper visual clues and recognizable links for users to understand and find required information.
6. Never test user’s patience – When any user visits our website for very first time, he is likely to play with the service, and check out its various features rather than filling long forms and making an account which they are not likely to use in future. They are there to just explore the site and discover  the services rather than sharing their personal information.
7. Never be afraid of white space – White space makes it easy for the users to perceive the information presented over the screen and also reduces the cognitive load. On a first look, a visitor just scans the webpage and divides the information into digestible pieces of information. It is difficult to read, scan and analyze complex structures. If we are given a choice to separate two chunks of information by a visible line or white space, it is preferable to go with latter.
8. Communicate ideas effectively – The most important elements of the website must be easily perceived. The important ideas must be easily conveyed with proper highlighting.
9. Test website quite often – A website must be tested for its usability, at an early stage to avoid any issues later.
10. Website must be effectively written – Writing style needs to be adjusted according to user’s preferences and browsing habits. People tend to skip long text blocks which are without images, so website content must be a combination of effective content with good pictures, charts, diagrams whichever  are applicable.

Task 2

2.1) A fully functional interactive website consisting of ten linked pages with use of tools (Screenshots)

Figure: Home

Figure: Tours

Figure: Destinations

Figure: Services

Figure: Contact Us

2.2) Usability testing by help of Standard Usability Questionnaire, critical review of findings and scope for improvement

Accessibility, Identity, Navigation, Content are the four main points based on which website usability is to be checked.

• A website must take less time to load
• Proper use of font styles and colours must be used and there must be consistency across the site
• The company logo must explain the objective of website and must be properly placed
• The navigation buttons across the website must be clear, concise and must be appropriately placed
• Company logo must be linked to home page and must be present on every web page across website
• All links and URL’s must be working

Here is a Standard Usability Questionnaire to perform the usability testing of this  system analysis and design.

System Usability Scale

© Digital Equipment Corporation, 1986. Adapted by Robet Dube (May 2014)

Participant Name/ID: ________________________    Date: ___/___/2014____

                                                                                             Strongly                                                  Strongly

                                                                                             disagree                                                  agree

1. I think that I would like to        use this website more frequently	1 2 3 4 5
2. I found the website unnecessarily complex	1 2 3 4 5
3. I thought the website was easy to use	1 2 3 4 5
4. I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this website	1 2 3 4 5
5. I found the various functions and links in this website were well integrated	1 2 3 4 5
6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this website	1 2 3 4 5
7. I would imagine that most people would learn to use this website very quickly	1 2 3 4 5
8. I found the website very cumbersome to use	1 2 3 4 5
9. I felt very confident using the Website	1 2 3 4 5
10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going    with using this website	1 2 3 4 5

Notation : Blue colour is used to indicate the answer (usability finding)

Task 3

3.1) Use Dreamweaver CS5/6 to create a fully functional website (screenshots)

Dreamweaver is a web editing software development program made by Macromedia (now by Adobe), to create highly interactive websites. Dreamweaver supports most of the common procedural programming languages like HTML, CSS, javascript, C#, ASP, XML, VB, PHP, Python etc. I  have made use of Dramweaver alongwith PHP/CSS / MySql  for creation of this website. Screenshots are given alongwith Task 2.1 above.

Task 4

4.1 Check the functionality of the website across various browsers

This website is fully functional across various browsers. It was checked over Internet explorer, Chrome, firefox etc. The design layout of the website across multiple browsers remains same. There are a number of tools available these days that let us comprehensively test our website across multiple browsers. Gostlab, BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, Cross Browser Testing, BrowserShots  are some of the examples of cross browser compatibility testing tools etc.

4.2) A report to verify that the system meets its requirements

Description of how the website fulfils the system objective. This website aims at letting users know about  London Tourism and places to visit in London.  Home, Our Tours, Destinations, Services, Contact us are various modules which fulfils the purpose of this website. The Home page shows all the modules available on the website. The tours module describes all the available tour packages. Destinations module shows us all the holiday destinations and places worth visiting. Services module describes the online booking system, reservations and ticket bookings.  Contact Us module describes the address details of London Travel and Tourism.

4.3) Recommendations for improving the website

Like a mainstreet business where customer preferences can be seen, what interests him and what not, online business is no different. Customers are more likely to visit those websites that are simple and attractive. It needs to be constantly monitored how the website is performing. A website must have responsive design, it must get displayed with equal quality and clarity on a mobile device as on computers. Via simple tool like google analytics business owners get to know how their customers behave over their website, this information is very important in further enhancement of website. People are attracted towards latest and fresh information, so the content across our website must be latest and updated.

It is essential for drilling down customers to inner pages of your website by providing variety in one category vertically and horizontally. This provides an insight on how to improve the website in future. This website can be improved by – Adding upon more relevant content, more images, pictures. Right now it has these many features, which can be enhanced at later stage to make it better.

4.4) Onscreen help to assist unfamiliar users

There are five modules in the London Travel and Tourism website.

1. Home page is linked to all the modules, clicking on home page link we can get back to front page of website. We have Our  Tourist destinations, services, contact us modules.
2. By clicking on ‘Our Tours’, we are redirected to a page containing all the tour packages that are available for tourism across London.
3. By clicking on ‘Destinations’, we are redirected to a page containing list of worth visiting places across London.
4. By clicking on ‘Services’, we get details about online reservation and tour booking packages.
5. By clicking on ‘Contact Us’, all the contact details of London tourism will get displayed. 

4.5) Documentation for support and maintenance of website

Maintenance is the last and the most important phase of Systems Development Life Cycle. Maintenance of our website means to restore the good content, remove the bad content, to correct the vulnerability and security of website. It starts after project deployment and includes activities that are required to keep the system operational. In case of large systems, it is not easy to find each and every fault before implementation. It often happens that users tend to discover defects long after the system is installed. As the errors occur, they are to be corrected immediately. Although before deployment, the system passes through system development lifecycle stages, but still errors like unidentified requirements, the need to define them more precisely, some changes in input data  may get uncovered. Maintenance task requires to understand the code as well as the related documents. To check whether the aspects of the system that were not supposed to be modified are operating as such, regression testing is done. It checks that no new errors have been introduced in the system. Here we can list out few points for website maintenance :

• Keep reviewing the content quality guidelines or webmaster guidelines periodically to know the latest changes that affect the search engine result page.
• The title and description of our website must be relevant and the keywords therein must explain the content clearly.
• The content of the website must be constantly updated to maintain the quality like correct spellings, correct grammar etc.
• Any payment through the website must be via secured gateway.
• Website must be protected via proper antivirus
• Broken links, loading speed must be regularly  updated.
• Try to get new content published frequently, as search engines will index  that content and will return to your site.
• Back links must be established while link building. These will divert required traffic to our own website.
• If our website caters to international audience then we can put in the option to select language. This feature is valued by search engines and helps in indexing.

Thus maintenance phase involves understanding of project code with all the documents, modification of parts of the system with defects, checking new parts of system and resetting old unchanged parts of system. It is the most cost effective activity in life of a project to be developed as maintenance concerns are often neglected during developmental phases.

References

• http://www.adobe.com/in/products/dreamweaver/features.html
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/
• http://www.search-usability.com/5rules.cfm
• http://www.optimus01.co.za/5-basic-rules-of-website-design/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/3029787/5-ways-to-optimize-your-businesss-online-presence
• http://www.usereffect.com/topic/25-point-website-usability-checklist
• http://mashable.com/2014/02/26/browser-testing-tools/
• http://www.freetutes.com/systemanalysis/sa2-implementation-maintenance.html

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