Introduction
The growth of the smartphone market is extraordinary. The landscape of such market is changing every year, with the introduction of new premium models, and price decrease of old ones. According to research firm IDC, “the smartphone market grew 57% over the past year as folks ditch their old flip-phones for more powerful handheld computers” (Lendino, 2010).
Smartphones can be defined as mobile phones, which are run on an operational system (OS), for which exists a software market that expands the capability of the device. Additionally, smartphones are characterized by expansive communication capabilities, in addition to making voice calls, such as global positioning, wireless communications, mobile internet, and others. In essence, smartphones are miniature computers with relatively small displays, and which can make calls. Considering the characteristics of such products, it can be stated that the main aspects of smartphones revolve around their functionality. Considering the growth of the demand of the smartphone market, the present report provides a description plan for an online smartphone store, in which users will be able to purchase different brands of smartphones. The report outlines the objective of the website, its target audience, structure, and preliminary design layout.
Purpose
The purpose of a commercial website, namely an online store, revolves around the same aspect which is selling products. In that regard, the present online store is no different. The main difference can be seen through the niche that the website will attempt to occupy. From observation it was found out that the majority of online stores merely provide a list of the products specifications, usually taken from the website of the manufacturing. Users who search for a review of such product refer to professional websites who compile a score. The present website will attempt to provide a combination of both, an online store and a detailed description of the product and a professional review of its functionality. Thus, the goal of the website is to provide a showcase of smartphones devices with rich description, reviews, and users feedbacks, which can be searched through different parameters, and subsequently purchased and ordered for delivery online (Shelly et al., 2006). The objectives of is developing an easy to navigate search system for selection of smartphone. Integrating reviews of devices will provide a rich description of the product, which shall surpass simply listing their technical specifications. Web 2.0 capabilities will be integrated into the website providing the opportunity to publish own feedback of the smartphone, according to predetermined criteria, including pros, cons, and overall experience, and a five star rating. The description of the product will contain a buy/add to cart option enabling the purchase of the smartphone.
The Target Audience
The purpose and the objective of the website indicate that the main characteristics of customer revolve around their acquaintance with smartphones, technically savvy, rational, who likes to gather as much information as possible about a product prior to the purchase. A typical visitor is a male aged, over 20 of age, who carefully plans his purchase, and knows what he will be using the smartphone for (Rudl, 2008). Such customer knows the difference between a mobile phone and smartphone, and he likely already owns or owned a smartphone in the past. Females are also constitute a part of the target market (Be, 2010).
Storyboard
The main flow of the website can be seen through the following site map, which sections can be distinguished through their categories, which are global sub navigation and utility links. The organizational structure selected for the online store is a combination of a database and hypertext model. The database model will be represented through an entry for each product on the website, for which the fields of the database record will be used in the search and the categorization of the results. The following figure is a representation of the website’s storyboard (Web Design & Development, n.d.). It should be mentioned that the color scheme in the figure is not a representation of the website’s color scheme, rather than a rough draft approximation of the relationships between various elements.
Site map
- Home –Most Recent
- Record
- Top Rated
- Results
- Record
- Results
- Top Sold
- Results
- Record
- Results
- Smartphones –Most Recent
- Record
- Results
- Record
- Accessories -Most Recent
- Record
- Results
- Record
- Glossary –Alphabetically ordered
- Record
- Results
- Record
- Shopping Cart –Cart content
- Ordering
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Send a message
- Site Map
- Disclaimer
The links on the site map can be categorized according to their nature and task within the document. The first category includes global navigation, which are links that can be viewed on every page of the website (Excellent Works, n.d.). Such links in this case are comprised of home, smartphones, accessories, about us, glossary, and shopping cart. Utility navigation are also link which can be viewed on every pages, however, they are not as important as global navigation, and are comprised of links such as contact us, site map, and disclaimer. Finally, sub-navigation, are links which are related to a content within a primary pages of the website, and can be seen on such particular page only (Excellent Works, n.d.). Sub-navigation links include in this top rated and top sold, ordering, and send a message.
The Homepage
The purpose of this webpage is to attract the attention of the visitor providing a glimpse of the best sellers of the website along with the most popular and most recent additions to the inventory. The pictures of the smartphones are large and serve as an introduction to the website and aims at making visitors strive to explore the website further. The link presents the sub-navigation link represented with other sorting categories, the rating of the product, i.e. and accumulated rank provided by users, and the most sold, provided by the company’s reports. Clicking on the sub-navigation links, either top rated or top sold, will change the corresponding content of the page into showing the top rated results for smartphones and accessories.
The images include the logo of the Smartphone Store (the name is subject to changes and modification), which will be placed at every page of the website. The global and the utility navigation on the page will be standard for all pages on the website. When rolled over the utility links on the website, the text will turn red indicating along when the page is opened on the corresponding link. Clicking on the logo will always lead to the home page of the website. The logo will not change color, where the only indication that the logo is clickable is the change of the shape of the cursor when rolled over, being change into “link select cursor to facilitate navigation (Reynolds, 2004). The content will be written with black font on a white background. The standard text font for all the texts on the page is Arial, black, for both header and content. The links for the records of the items and the utility navigation are underlined and dark blue. Any glossary item in the text of the content will link to the corresponding entry in the glossary page.
Smartphones and Accessories
The purpose of the smartphones page is to allow the customer to customize parameters and select smartphones according to the chosen preferences. Prior to any customization the page will open on the list of smartphones sorted according to their addition to the database. Searching based on the selected parameter will reveal a list of results, clicking on which will lead to a full entry. The list of parameters to add can be modified and added, according to the entries in the database. The manipulation of the parameters and the search button can be seen as the sub-navigation for this page. The style of the page remains the same. Clicking on any item in the list will open the corresponding entry for the smartphone.
When selecting a record they will be redirected to a page of this entry which contains all the information on the smartphone, along with the buy button that will automatically add the item to shopping cart. The accessories page will be designed in the same way and the same layout. The differences might be seen in the same of the categories that will be used to filter the results of the search. Similarly, the same fonts and colors will be used in the page. The page of an entry of an item will consist of an image of the4 product, smartphone or accessory, a text listing the specifications of the product, a list of links of products reviews, which contains a verdict of the device and a score, and users’ feedback on the device. If a video review is available for the device it will be embedded in the page, linked to a video hosting service or the website of the original.
Glossary
The purpose of the glossary page is to provide an explanation for any technical term that the inexperienced user might encounter reading the specifications of a smartphone. The sub-navigation on the page is represented trough the alphabet which leads to the page that contains corresponding terms and their explanation. Hyperlinks from the description might be used to lead to the explanation from other pages as well. The page uses the same style for global and utility navigation throughout, as well as the color scheme and fonts. The layout for the glossary page can be seen in the following graph.
About Us
The about us page contains a single screen that contains information about the company – the owner of the website. The amount of information contained depends on whether the company is private or public. For a private company, the information contained might be limited to the main goal, the vision, and the purpose of the organizations, a brief historical background, and an overview of the company’s accomplishments to date. Additionally, the website might contain information about the organizational chart of the company and founders and/or executive officers. The page does not contain sub-navigation, while global and utility navigation keep the standard style of the website.
Shopping Cart
Finally, the last global navigation link is devoted to the main aspect of an online store, the purchase process. The page provides a list of the items added by the customer to the shopping cart, allowing modifying the numbers of items added, as well as deleting items. The order button is the only sub-navigation used on the page, pressing which will lead to completing the transaction, according to the engine used for the online store.
Utility Navigation
The purpose of utility navigation can be seen through providing complementary information which does not affect the functionality of the website. All of the navigation links are informational and contain a single screen. The exception can be seen through the Contact Us link, which main purpose is functional rather than informational. The link contains information on the way the company can be contacted, as well as a form that enables the user to send a message to the webmaster or any other department in the company.
Conclusion
The present report laid out the plan for an online smartphone store. The growth of smartphone users, specifically in Australia indicates that there is an opportunity to utilize in the smartphone market. The differences between traditional mobile phones and smartphones outline the main characteristics of typical smartphone users as well as a typical website customer. The report outlined the way the information will be presented on the website as well as the main design and color scheme used.
References
BE. 2010. RESEARCH CONFIRMS: Smartphone syndrome hits Australia. Web.
EXCELLENT WORKS. n.d. Web Site Story Board and Script Document. Web.
LENDINO, J. 2010. How to Buy a Smartphone. Web.
REYNOLDS, J. 2004. The complete e-commerce book : design, build & maintain a successful Web-based business, San Francisco, CMP Books
RUDL, C. 2008. Profile of the average internet buyer. Web.
SHELLY, G. B., CASHMAN, T. J. & KOSTEBA, L. 2006. Web design : introductory concepts and techniques, Cambridge, MA, Course Technology.
WEB DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT. n.d. Website Storyboarding | Examples, How To and Sitemap . Web.