Week Three: Digital Design

Questions

1.      In two paragraphs explain why a customer centric Web site design is so important, yet so difficult to accomplish

A customer centric Web design is so important because the customers are the users of the Web site. If your site is too hard to find, too hard to navigate or just plain scary, then customer will not hesitate to search somewhere else. If you master the design of your Web site and make it easy for customers to find, use and navigate then the customer will not only return to your Website but will also share with others.
Designing a customer centric Web site is difficult because you need to know what your customers want. Organisations need to get to know their customers. Then they need to design a website that works. They need to be easy to find, easy to navigate, have a comfortable purchasing process, be trustworthy, be able to help the customer if needed and offer ways for the customer to give feedback. The website content should be accurate, up to date and in the customer’s language. http://www.customercarewords.com/customer-centric-index.html . Continual changes in technology are also difficult to keep up with.

2.      Define the term 'presence'. Write an additional paragraph that describes why firms that do business on the Web should be more concerned about presence than firms that operate in the physical world.

Presence is define as ‘the state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence’ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/presence  but ‘presence for business’ is defined as 1) The ability to detect the electronic presence of other users who are connected to the Internet, through a PC or mobile device, and whether they are available in real time. Presence services are commonly provided through applications like Finger, SMS, instant messaging clients, and discussion forums, although a number of companies are developing products in other areas that leverage presence, such as VoIP.
(2) The term Web presence refers to an individual or business having an established existence on the World Wide Web, through a Web site, e-mail, Internet advertising, blog, or a collection of Web files. Web presence. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/presence.html

Businesses on the Web should be more concerned about presence than firms that operate in the physical world because they have no physical address for advertising or interaction with customers. Online businesses need to have a strong and effective web presence to attract visitors and improve chances of being found. Online visibility is critical and always check out what your competition is doing with their websites. Stay up to date with your customers needs and new technology.

3.      Usable Doesn’t Have To Mean Ugly 'for a web design to be truly beautiful, it has to be functional, have purpose and contribute in some way to the website’s intuitiveness, usefulness and branding. All of these things contribute to the overall effect of a design'. This is a quote from one of the articles on web design linked on Web pages that suck. Find a web page that 'does not suck' and discuss the features that make it work

After looking on http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com my eyes hurt from blurry unreadable text and moving butterflies.
The Walmart Website was good, easy to find and navigate http://www.walmart.com/
Harvey Norman Website was OK. Did not like how you have to contact them for a price of the lounge suites.
Amazon Web site is good http://www.amazon.com/ very easy to navigate and the search process is very quick.

While researching this week, I read that universities have the most engaging and biggest presence on the internet so I looked up Deacon University, http://www.deakin.edu.au/ . It was very easy to understand and navigate. When regarding Websites i would have to agree that less is more, basic language, easy to read text, fast and accurate search processes make excellent Web sites.