Site Review

 

This is Sony. She is the sister of Tiny, the model for my web site. I promised Sony that she could be on the internet also. She also agreed to be the model for the 'Nails' and 'Teeth' pages. What a good sport!

I planned to create a site on at-home dog grooming. I worked on this project alone.Using the search engine, Google, I searched for "dog grooming at home". Next, I read the brief summaries of 240 results. About 30 of these seemed worth looking at, but only 16 actually contained some useful information for the novice.After printing out the 16, I ranked them in order of usefulness, readability, and ease of navigation. My plan was to use the top 5 as links on my page.

This site was the best I found for my purpose. It covers the basics of bathing; nail care, and teeth cleaning. It also has a list of basic supplies as well as optional supplies. It prints out as 3 pages. It has links to other areas of interest to dog owners. I would add pictures of each step described and explain the process of hair clipping on a poodle.

This is also a very basic site for the home dog groomer. It lists the steps in the process - brushing, bathing, skin problems, ears, and nail trimming. It is also 3 pages long. It includes many links to specific concerns when grooming dogs. Only one picture is included with no explanation of the process being shown. I would include pictures of each step with an explanation.

This site covers combing, brushing, puppies, frequency (of grooming), and nail trimming. Several links are imbedded in the text for further information about several tools used for grooming. One picture. Pictures of each step are needed.

This site prints out to 13 pages. A lot more text than most people want to read through. No pictures and the only links are to dog training sites. Again, I would include pictures of each step and links to other grooming sites.

A very "cutesy" site supposedly written by a dog! It does have nice graphics showing tools and equipment used in grooming. It seems to be more for the professional groomer, however. It is 10 pages long with no links to any related sites. This site has too much text. It should be divided into sections and links provided.

My conclusion was that there was a need for a clear, concise, at-home dog-grooming site that would provide basic information. Each step should be illustrated by at least one picture to demonstrate proper procedure.

 

The site includes:

• Introduction
• Equipment list
• Step by step instruction
• Pictures of each step
• Links to sites on dog grooming and grooming supplies
• Summary
• Each page has the same banner and links column in order to maintain consistency

• · Provide clear information on how to groom your poodle at home
• Provide links to other sites for further information
• Audience will be poodle owners who would like to know the proper way to care for their poodle's grooming needs at home
  

  Design

The site has a linear design - each page explaining a step in the grooming process. Users can move through the site in the order of the process, or jump back and forth from any page to another page.

The colors for the banner and page links bar were chosen to coordinate with the apricot color of my subject.

Usability studies show that the pages load quickly on a home computer using a 56k modem. Total size of the site is 244 KB. When viewed in a browser, text can be enlarged without losing any design characteristics of the site.

One of the main problems I encountered was learning how to use the Dreamweaver program properly. I was not successful in creating a workable template, so this meant fixing broken links on each and every page of the site.

Several times I forgot to check where I was saving a page, or I named a page incorrectly. This meant a lot more time was involved in getting things right.

Another frustrating problem was uploading my site to the BSU server from home. I had not used the proper case sensitive login. Once this was taken care of, success was very sweet!