Plan Site for Gem Project
Site builder: Bobbie Lai
Goal, services and product of the site
The site is designed for two purposes. First is selling rock and gem jewelry with unique character. This is a source for viewer who is rock collector or design jewelers or people looking for unique gift at a reasonable price. Second, it intends to explore the relation of rocks with nature, history and Earth formation. The site also act as an media places for people who want to know about rocks and those who like to share their knowledge about rocks. An article pages “World’s treasure is to discuss rocks. Viewer can submit their articles by filling the forms in the “Contact” page. The article will be published in the “World’s Treasure” page after validated the content is appropriate for intention of the site.
General requirements
1. Target audiences are rock and jewelry collectors. Design jeweler looking for their design materials. The age range is from ranged from teen to senior. The site provides information about sources, forms and history of gem stones. This is an ecommerce website. It would use PayPal for payments and sales order tracking.
2. Require photos of inventory with of thumb nails at (100pixels) and bigger pictures at (200 pixels). The site would have videos to show the inventory.
3. Research about gem and rock legends.
Webpage design
The layout of the page has 3 tiers. First tier has two columns. Logo is on the left, banner on the right.
The second tier has three columns. Left is the navigation links, middle is video and the third column is short narrative about rocks or gem in inventory list.
The third tiers are information of rock and gem photos.
Colors
The site use one background color: #6C4900. The greenish implies natural environment. The greenish dark tone color was used to contrast of the gem and rock pictures. As there are lots of pictures and videos, the color combination tends to be simple to avoid the site’s color being too noise.
Logo: The logo uses fossil and leaves for indicate the rock and gems has relation with the geology ages of world and nature. The blur effect represents mystery which induces exploration.
Fonts
I use font-family "Palatino Linotype", "Book Antiqua", Palatino, serif;. These fonts have scripting look. That helps to deploy elegant of the site. Since these fonts style already gave sense of actions. I would only use one font throughout the site. Hierarchy of the content is demonstrated by font sizes and location of the messages.
Site Structure:
The design of the site structure tends to be simple. The idea is make the viewer easily sees the inventory. So, it is intentionally not to be too fancy interface actions with the mouse which may distract the viewer from the inventory. A short description of what would be found in the page is briefed under the navigation links. As rock and gem are classified into jewelry, collectible and cabochon, the brief description under the links give idea of which page would have the material the viewer looking for. I do not use the tooltip because I wish the viewer can see the link description without doing anything like hover on the links.
The website included following pages:
Home – has brief introduction of the site and general showroom as what would be found in this site.
Jewelry – a page display jewelry inventory. Thumb nails pictures with prices and descriptions.
Collectible – display collectible items like mineral of stone for crafting.
Cabochon – a page for selling polished stone ready to be mounted for jewelry.
World’s treasure – discuss the sources, legends and history of special kind of gem or rock.
Contact us – Has a form for customers or viewer to submit their questions, articles and comments.
Search Optimization:
Banner of each page will have couple of paragraphs about the product selling in the page. Select words that included the name of the gem or rock.
Suggest that the jewelries are one of a kind and collectible items are unique. All alt text for images would be labeled for visual handicaps.
Research on similar site
I have visited sites that sell rocks. I found most of them are crowded. They are more emphasis on selling but not too much about the stone itself. Also, their designs tend to be muscular by using logo like digging tools to represent rock hounding. I like to dispatch an elegant feeling and more educational mode about the treasure would be found on Earth. I tend to use the legend, story, history of rocks as an interesting point to attract viewer to stay in the site. I like to share my rock expedition experience in this site. In order to make the site looks less commercial mode but more of offering unique pieces, the inventory display limited to 18 per page. However, I will continue changing items in the show places.
Short coming of the site:
The site uses videos which may cause longer loading time. The English and grammar is definitely need helps.
The slogan
I would use is “The world’s treasure”.
