Design and Development of Tribute Ltd Website: A Critical Review

This report presents a critical review of the design and development of the proposed Tribute Ltd website. It discusses the technologies and languages used, usability and accessibility, further enhancements, and core design principles. Recommendations for enhancements are also proposed.

Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Research......................................................................................................................................................3
Usability and accessibility............................................................................................................................4
Further enhancements................................................................................................................................4
References...................................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
This report presents a critical report that is aimed at reviewing the design and development of the
proposed Tribute Ltd website. The report presents a discussion on the technologies and languages that
were used and discusses other technologies that have could have been used to make the website even
better. Based on the technologies and languages used a review is done to show how the website was
able to achieve the required usability and accessibility. Finally a recommendation of the enhancements
that can be done on the website is proposed.
Research
There exists many different technologies at the moment for designing and developing websites at the
moment. For Tribute Ltd website the language and technologies used to design and develop the website
are;
 HTML
 CSS
 JavaScript
By using a combination of these three technologies, the final design of the website was achieved. HTML
was used to design the structure of the website and CSS made it easy to apply custom styles to the
pages making it the website. This is because CSS supports definition of classes which can be used
repeatedly throughout the website instead of having to define the styling properties every time you
need to use them. This was possible through the creation of an external stylesheet which was attached
on all the pages thus for example a class for the navigation defined in the external stylesheet applies to
all the navigation sections in each page. This made the design and development of the website easy.
JavaScript is a client side language that is used to improve interaction of the website with the user on
the client side. For the proposed website, JavaScript was used to add more interactivity on the website
for example form validation on the contact page, embedding a Google map to enable the user to view
and the location of the business while still taking advantage of navigational features of Google Maps all
within the contact page.
The three technologies when used together interchangeably to design a website can produce very good
website with a high a degree of usability and accessibility as is evident in the final design achieved for
the Tribute Limited website. However, these technologies have existed for a long time and many
advancements have taken place that make it even more easier to design and develop a website while at
the same time achieving even more better websites with more features and more advanced
functionalities. For the Tribute Ltd website, there are a few technologies that could have been used to
achieve an even better design. These technologies are;
 Bootstrap- Bootstrap is a HTML, CSS and JavaScript Framework that is very popular for design
and development of responsive websites Bootstrap is considered a mobile first website meaning
that it factors mobile devices in the design of the website thus the final design achieved for the
website is a fully responsive website (Rascia, 2015). This framework would have been
appropriate for the proposed website because it would have resulted to a better responsive
mobile first website and at the same time would have significantly reduced the effort and time
used to design the website.

 JQuery- JQuery is a framework built on JavaScript. JQuery makes it easy to use and implement
different features and functionality that would require a lot of code while using plain JavaScript.
This is possible because JQuery has thousands of plugins which are already implemented thus
developing the application takes less time and coding as compared to using plain JavaScript.
 Font Awesome- Font awesome is one of the most robust framework containing scalable vector
icons (FitzGerald, 2015). Icons that can take a lot of time and resources to design are offered
free by this framework. The reason this framework is necessary for the proposed website is
because icons are very important for any website as they provide a visual way of adding
meaning to elements.
Usability and accessibility
To achieve a high degree of usability and accessibility in any website, there are core design and
development principles that must be followed. For the proposed website, the core design principles
considered were;
 Navigation- Navigation of the website is a crucial part of the design and should be carefully
designed since a website without navigation is basically not usable. The navigation should be
easy to access from any page to make it easy for the users to navigate through all the pages of
the website. T
 Communication- the content of the website should be quality and credible for it to
communicate to the user (laja, 2012). The design of the website has to consider factors like most
website visitors do not read the whole content but rather scan through the page thus the
content should be structured strategically to make it easier for the users to digest the content of
the website.
 Purpose- The design of the website should be able to achieve its purpose. Here the concept of
usability and credibility over sophisticated design comes into place. The design should aim to
eliminate all questions thus making everything obvious (Woods, 2014). There is no need of
making users think or research about using your website and you can make everything self-
explanatory.
 Responsiveness- A good website design considers accessibility of the website on all devices. This
involves making sure that the website is responsive.
By following these principles, the end design was able to achieve a high degree of usability and
accessibility. However, the final design is not perfect and I believe there a few things that can be
changed to achieve a more usable and accessible website. These include;
 Use of more colors- The final design did not use a lot of colors and looking back at the design, I
think the design could use more colors to achieve a better design.
 Using custom fonts- There are a lot of free fonts available which improve the look and
accessibility of the website. Although the font used in the website is good, I believe more
custom fonts can be used in the website.
Further enhancements
This project was very informative as I got a chance to test my skills on designing websites thus in the end
I added more skills. The final design of the website is very practical and can be adapted by the business

to help create an online presence. However, I believe there are a few things that can be done to
improve the website. I believe adding a server side part of the website to include a database can be a
very important enhancement for the website. This is because using a database will enable the business
to add more features like customer registration and dynamic additions of the albums available for sale.
Adding a database will open a lot of features which are necessary for the business in the long run.
References
FitzGerald, A. (2015). Why you should start using Font Awesome. [online] Flywheel: Best
Managed WordPress Hosting. Available at: https://getflywheel.com/layout/why-you-should-
start-using-font-awesome/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2018].
Laja, P., 2012. 8 Effective Web Design Principles You Should Know. CXL. Available at:
https://conversionxl.com/8-universal-web-design-principles-you-should-to-know/ [Accessed December
10, 2017].
Rascia, T. (2015). What is Bootstrap and How Do I Use It?. [online] Tania Rascia. Available at:
https://www.taniarascia.com/what-is-bootstrap-and-how-do-i-use-it/ [Accessed 10 Dec.
2018].
Woods, S., 2014. 10 TOP PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE WEB DESIGN. SHORTIEDESIGNS. Available at:
https://shortiedesigns.com/2014/03/10-top-principles-effective-web-design/ [Accessed December 5,
2018].