English 3120 Final Project: Client Website

Overview
This option allows you to design a website for a client: whether it’s a small business, a non-profit organization, or a student club on campus. 

Purposes
This site is designed to accomplish specific purposes: to promote an organization, to sell a product, to inform people about an organization, to persuade people about something, etc. All your content and format design must be revolved around such  purposes. How effective your website is will be judged against the intended purposes.

Audiences
The site obviously will have its intended audiences. Your design should fully incorporate the audiences’ needs and concerns. 

Steps
1. Identify a client
Look around you. Talk to people you know. It might be a business you work for, a church you frequent on Sundays, an organization that you’re a part of, or a friend who’s starting a small business. They might have no website at all, or they could have an existing website that severely needs some effective redesigning.

2. Identify your client’s needs
You need to conduct some research to find out what your client is looking for: what are their needs? what do they want to promote? what audiences/users are they targeting? Your research may involve online searches, interviews with your key client personnel, surveys of the target users, benchmarking of similar businesses or organizations, etc.

3. Design your site
Determine your content needs first. Let your content dictate your format. For example, a product sales website will be very different from an informational website. Determine your technology needs based on the intended purposes of the site.

4. Conduct some usability testing
After completing your website, test it on some sample target users. Also, seek feedback from your client to see what they think.

5. Edit your site
Based on the results of your usability test, modify your website accordingly.

Keep in mind that I’ll ask you to identify the intended purposes and audiences of the site at the beginning of the project. Your website design will be graded on how effectively your design accomplishes the intended purposes.