Landing : Athabascau University

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Unit 5 Pt. 1: Analysis and Design

  • Public
By Taylor Polite in the group COMP 266 February 24, 2016 - 2:35pm

Idea 1: Interactive Slide Show

For my first idea, I thought that an interactive slideshow of images relating to my company would be appealing to the majority of personas that I came up with in unit 1. While some of the personas come to the site specifically for contact information and are not too interested in imagery, many of the users are captivated by attractive website layouts, images and interactivity with the website.

For this reason, I believe that creating a slideshow of 5-10 pictures taken from TransTrading's warehouse would be beneficial for the overall appeal of the website. While I currently display a few pictures on the homepage, I think an interactive slideshow would be visually much more appealing to users. 

Idea 2: Autofilling form for requesting pickup

While I already have a form for contacting the company, one of the main reasons people contact TransTrading, as mentioned in the personas, is to do business deals and trading with the company.
One of the most essential parts of trading is scheduling shipping times and pickup times for transactions. 

I believe that creating an auto-filling form somewhere for users to fill out would be convenient for the majority of personas in business who are not-too-familiar with using computers and sending emails. The autofilling form would help the user fill out his email, would also fill out the email address of the company. Moreover, it would validate that the selected time for pickup is within business hours (8am - 5pm) and also not today's date. (It would have to be a date in the future.) Thus, this would require coding for validation of forms as well as autofilling.

Idea 3: Information on Image Mouseover

This idea is probably the most superficial but also the most difficult to achieve that I came up with.
I think it would require the most complex coding, but would also improve the ovearally visual aesthetic of the website and make it look professional. The idea is for the "Our Materials" page where I have provided information on the various metals that TransTrading deals with. It would appeal most to the personas that I described as being easily enticed by imagery, as well as those who want a website that would be professional-looking and interactive. 

The idea is to have images of the various types of metals listed, with titles above each one to describe which metal they are. However, upon mouseover, a somewhat transparent text box would appeal over the image with information about the metal that is already provided in the simple-looking chart on that page. 

This idea would definitely improve the look of the page, as well as create a professional feel for the website that would be able to compete with the profesionallism of competitor companies.