Week 3

1. Write a detailed brief for your website
2. Create a wireframe according to the brief
3. Draw some sketches to plan your design
4. Build a working website according to these specs

It’s important for me to see that you can follow through on the entire process – from the brief to the completed website.

Please explain why you make certain decisions. How do these decisions fit in with the business strategy?Upload your brief, wireframe, sketches and link to your website to your WordPress blog. There’s quite a lot to do for this assignment, so it’s advisable to keep your website simple.

I decided to continue with the same client as last week.

BRIEF

Flores Marta is a small local florist’s located in Valladolid, Spain. We offer flower arrangements for events, interior decoration, funeral flowers and gifts. We receive part of our flowers and plants directly from Holland, one of the world’s biggest producers. Besides, we have our own nursery in the town’s outskirts, where we grow the rest of our products. This way, we guarantee the freshness of our plants and flowers, so they last longer.

Business Strategy

Mission Statement
Normalise flowers and plants’ use in day-to-day life by offering fresh, durable and affordable arrangements and solutions.

Objectives
1 – Sell flowers and plants
2 – Offer a wide variety of floral arrangements
3 – Grow a trust relationship with the community

Value Proposition
1 – Fresh and long-lasting products
2 – Personalised arrangements
3 – Support local commerce and community

Elevator Pitch
Flores Marta guarantees fresher, longer-lasting cut flowers in your home or event.

How the website would fit into your business strategy
I want my website to showcase the work we do, showing photos of the bouquets and arrangements we prepare. Initially, we will not sell online because we prefer to create a relationship with the clients first and offer them personalised assistance. We want to use the web as a catalogue for our customers, where they can also find the contact details and address for them to contact or visit us. In the future, when the community has grown, we would like to introduce online shopping. The web should clearly state the origin of our products and our involvement in the local community. I want the website to reflect our brand with a fresh, clean design. It must be easy to navigate.

Web Architecture

The website is a one-page with anchor points to the different sections.

WIREFRAME

I chose to use a low-tech wireframe because it is a small website, the client has a limited budget and it allows me to make changes easily.

WEB STRATEGY

Domain and hosting
The domain name suggested to my client is the business’ name, which is relevant, memorable and usable. For the suffix, we chose .com since it is available. We also decided to purchase .es, the specific suffix in Spain, and redirect it to http://www.floresmarta.com. For hosting, I recommended BlueHost, as it is currently ranked as one of the best services for small businesses, ideal for WooCommerce and very popular for WordPress sites.

Since this is a fictitious client, I didn’t purchase the domain mentioned above or host with BlueHost. Instead, I created a subdomain in the domain I have for this course with one.com.

Design
The website design will be clean and fresh, intuitive and user-friendly with a focus on visual content. It will display correctly in all browsers and be responsive on mobile. A picture carousel in the website header will show the florists’ most relevant work. The web will only be updated occasionally on special dates. The business’ Instagram feed will be displayed on the site to show pictures of the latest orders and work.

The design is clean and balanced; I chose to have a white background and use cover pictures to separate the different sections. I was planning to have a carousel in the header but could not figure out how to do it in the limited time I had for this Lesson Task, so I decided to use a single picture instead and continue with the design. The gallery section is missing from the web; my idea was to link the client’s Instagram feed to display on the web. Because it’s not a real client, I have no Instagram account to display, but if I had, I would have installed the plugin Instagram Feed to show the feed. I used placeholder text except for the headings, menu and details. The web is in Spanish as the fictitious flower shop is located in Spain.

Target Audience
My client wants to target local women between 25 and 55 who enjoy shopping in their town and support local businesses.

I used soft, feminine colours to appeal to the target audience. The pictures in the about section (Quienes somos) show women taking care of the plants and flowers sold at the florist. In a real situation, the text would have reinforced the client’s values of support to the community and local businesses/flower producers.

Programming
The web will be built in WordPress, as it is easier for my client to manage the occasional updates they might need. Some features can be customised with additional CSS and modifying the PHP files. Once they are ready to add online orders, it will be easy to add WooCommerce to the web to create the shop.

I used the WordPress theme Flash to build the website and customise it mainly using its options and adding plugins. All the pictures are optimised for the web, improving web performance. 

Much more could be done to make a better web, but I decided to keep it simple since this is a Lesson Task and I had limited time. I have learned a lot while building the web, and I realise how much more I still have to know if I want to become better at developing webs with WordPress.