Client Requirements - Section B

The Proposal
Liz Buckingham, who is a friend of my dad’s, approached me to build her a website. She had already drawn up a rough specification of what she wanted such as the fact that she wanted 7 pages.

Background
My client is Mrs. Liz Buckingham who is a partner is in the company Elderfield Developments. Elderfield Limited is a developer and builder of new houses. The company has two directors, Liz and her husband and uses sub-contract labour to build the houses. Incorporated in 1996, Elderfield had built 43 houses to date. It is currently building six detached three and four bedroom houses at Worle, Weston-Super-Mare and has a site in Chepstow for 14.

Strategy
To build houses profitably and safely while remaining flexible to respond to changes in the new homes market.

Marketing
To date all new houses have been marketed through a local estate agent so a website was not considered priority. However, with the housing market under some pressure the directors believe that a simple website will present a marketing opportunity whilst giving reassurance to prospective purchases that Elderfield is a solid company.

Objectives
The brief is to produce a site with a simple approach and uncluttered look and feel. Crucial to the site is the successful combination of speed and ease of use and the ability for it to feature highly on search engines particularly Google. The Persimmon website is an example of a clean and fresh looking website www.persimmonhomes.com

Image

• Clean and simple look and feel
• Simple and quick navigation
• Consistent look and feel throughout the site
• Avoid flash
• Sans serif font through, Tahoma or Arial
• Elderfield name should feature on every page

Facilities/Content

• Drop down menus
• Able to update content quickly and easily
• Home Page
• Who We Are
• What We Build
• Latest News
• Current Portfolio
• Contact Us
• Links

Target Market
The visitors to the website are expected to be local families looking to upgrade to a bigger house, families/couples relocating to the West Country and holiday makers who wish to retire to the area. Local families want reassurance that Elderfield is a reputable company with a quality product; in addition, relocators will expect information about facilities in the locality while people retiring to the area will want information on leisure facilities.

Ongoing maintenance and upgrading
The company uses Hostway for email and Orange for broadband. Elderfield fortunately owns the elderfield.co.uk domain but will have to take out advanced hosting to enable web space as well as the e-mail facilities.

Design Perspective

Image

• Clean and simple look and feel – A white background with black writing will stand out. With the navigation system the use of subtle colours (as with persimmon homes website) will look very effective. Website should represent a “lifestyle” feel to it.
• Simple and quick navigation –Navigation buttons with “hover-over” buttons will be very easy to use.
• Consistent look and feel throughout the site – The use of templates and styles.
• Avoid flash
• Logo – Elderfield currently use a logo on all of their documentation. However this logo is not consistent with the websites requirements (clean and simple). New simple logo will be designed by myself especially for the site.
• Sans serif font through, Tahoma or Arial – The use of styles will enable a consistent font, size and colour.
• Elderfield name should feature on every page – Using a logo in the template will enable this.
  

Facilities/Content

• Drop down menus – As flash is not required then simple image navigation system can be set up. Menu’s could either be presented along the top or side of the pages. The use of templating will mean that the menu system will only have to be designed once and can be applied to many pages.
• Able to update content quickly and easily.
• Resolution – Website should be presented in standard 1024 x 768.
• Google – Website can be entered into the Google database and can increase “up the page” by the amount of website views.
• Home Page
• Who We Are
• What We Build
• Latest News
• Current Portfolio – The use of a javascript gallery will enable the gallery to be presented well without having to use flash modules. Photographs of buildings (inside and out) will be taken by Liz’s husband. Further photographs by myself of the local areas may also be added to other sections.
• Contact Us – Either links to phone numbers and email addresses or a contact form could be setup to allow users to send direct messages through the site as apposed to having to use a 3rd partly mail client.
• Links – Such links as to Somerset monuments is requested

I obtained all of my client requirements and specification through various telelphone calls, face-to-face meetings and e-mails.