Team assignment - Essay Example

Berrys Bug Blaster Web Evaluation Berrys Bug Blaster Web Evaluation Information technology is one of the most advancing fields in our society of which nowadays you cannot do anything without its application. For better understanding of this allegation, this paper will analyze Berry’s Bug Blaster website that is available on URL: http://PLEASE TYPE THE EXACT URL HERE.com/. This paper has been developed with the website development purpose, and supposed audience have been identified alongside the website strengths and weaknesses.

The Berry’s website designer has modelled an easy website interface with crucial operation to some scope in a modelled manner. Nevertheless, the paper illustrates the proposals on how Berry may develop and improve a number of website factors to reach the focused audience, build visitors’ trust, as well as clients alongside seeking guidance to raise the web traffic. The deliberated rationale of the website is to give the visitors with details concerning pest control services provided by the Berry’s Bug Blaster.

From the homepage website information, there are three (3) approaches stated of the services offered by the Berry in bullets. In addition, the website gives direction to the visitors on which pests the Berry deals with by stating the pest names at the website homepage. The website gives straight and precise message with the intention of getting the visitors attention for seeking a Berry’s service. The message is a special offer to attract the visitors to commence services by contacting through the contact number provided on the website.

Moreover, the website is also available on the intranet of the organization and acts as some sort of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for internal users or employees of the organization. The salient features of the website on the intranet include: Finance and Accounting, Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Operations Legal and Information Technology. Within the paper, there are two types of expected audience of the website. The first type of audience who can access the website through the Internet include the companies or people who have problems with the pests or had pest control problems in the past.

The second type of audience is the internal users or employees of the Berry’s organization who have to use the website on the intranet to perform day-to-day activities.Website strengthsThis website has a number of strength that has help the organization significantly. Some of these strengths include: the website is simple, straightforward and easy-to-use; therefore, it can easily be remembered.Website WeaknessesOn the other hand, apart from the fundamental strengths the website has enormous weaknesses that have been identified after a thorough analysis.

These weaknesses include: the website does not encourage the customers or visitors to return to the website after getting the contact number, the contact information is restricted to the only contact number and the website contain too little information regarding the organization, pests, methods, services etc. Based on these website weaknesses, there are some recommendations to improve the interface design to attract customers. For instance, the website should add an e-mail address in the contact information where clients may contact back the firm from the website.

The website must have extra details by extracting the bullet names of pests and the service approaches as well as adding their separate pages with description of each bullet. The language used in the contents of the website should be understandable to the user (Cornell University Library, 2012). Design Evaluation and LayoutBerry’s Bug Blasters Web page is very basic in design, though there needs to be some pizazz added to it. The site has a bland look that no one would really like to see for a very long time.

The site lacks lustre and excitement to the page; one would need to do an overhaul to get the attention of its viewers. Nonetheless, the overall layout is not bad; it just needs some change of colour to make it more appealing. The tonalities’ of colours and hues need adjusting throughout the whole design. Furthermore, the coupon could also use a type of colour or design in the background. This will draw the attention more to the savings offer on the web page. The phrase, “we’ll blast’em good and dead,” is not the proper grammar for the web page; it would read better by phrasing it in professional way, like “We’ll Blast your pest problem and put your worries to rest.

” All that white space is annoying; there must be a background colour to break up the space. A two tone would make for a better break up of space and lead the eye around more in an intended manner. The viewer needs visual variety experience to become interested on what they are looking at. The term first impression says a lot, when drawing clients to your business. There are two things that come to mind when looking at this website. One, the web designer has no artistic talent and two the designer has little creativity skills to develop this page.

The rest of the site is basically about the financials and history of its growth, though it seems to have grown nicely the attraction is not there. There is no back button on the other financial pages; you must use the arrow back button at the top of the page to find your way back to home sales page. The intranet for the employees could have been arranged in a more user friendly manner for navigation purposes. Some of their links do not work at all it goes back to the financial page. To find out more about this web page, the sales and marketing, Human Resources, and operations would have to work jointly, while taking into account how many employees they have or how information technologies work, as well.

The best way to sum it all up is reformate the intranet for functionality and user friendliness.RecommendationsThis paper presents recommendations for the website of the Berry’s Bug Blaster based on the weaknesses identified earlier on the same website. The initial paragraph of the paper speaks the generic aspects of the improvements of the website; however, the later paragraph describes the specific recommendations according to the weaknesses of the Berry’s website.In order to increase the customers and business there is a desperate need to re-design the website for survival of the Berry’s Company as well as to enable it competes with their opponents.

In order to achieve the objectives, the company needs to improve the website in three diverse aspects, which include: the overall design, the user interface and the web marketing to increase the traffic. The improvements in the overall design of the website may include but not limited to the inclusion of a site map, the standardized coding or quality of code, search engine optimization and page layout. The user interface should be improved to get effective and efficient user interaction with the website.

The user interface should be simple, easy-to-use and attractive by applying the web user interface standards and guidelines. The website’s visitors are not always the customers, but the objective is to compel the visitors to stop and buy the services, it can be accomplished by the service quality, selection (and the way of presenting services or contents) and the attractive price or offer.The already identified weaknesses of the website can be categorized into the three above mentioned categories, as the contents of the website do not precisely depict the objective of the website.

Therefore, it is highly recommended to add a clear objective statement of the Berry’s Company. The services that are provided in the bullets need to be elaborated so that these services can be described to the visitors/customer to gain their attention that may lead to a successful sale. Moreover, the contact information needs to be modified in a way that customers can interact with the company’s officer through the website. The contents’ language should represent the real world information so that the customer can easily understand.

These recommendations related or categorized into the sale related issues or to stop the visitor from reading out contents for a while. The website does not contain a site map and search option; it is recommended that the website should have a site map as well as search options so that the customer can find the related information from the website. The page layout should be attractive and well structured to get visitors’ attention that can be converted into prospective sale. The application of CSS facilitates web content consistency; browser compatibility as well as facilitates the search engine optimization (SEO) to easily access the contents.

The above mentioned recommendations can be categorized as the overall design improvements. However, the user interface design of the website can be improved by following the guidelines given as ten (10) Heuristics described by the Jakob Nielsen.Reference: Cornell University Library. (2012). Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools. Retrieved from: http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/webeval.htmlVirtual Organizations Portal © 2009, 2011 Apollo Group, Inc. All rights reserved