E-Commerce School Project Suggestions

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benamaster

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 16, 2005
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I am doing a competition in the State of Michigan where we do various IT competitions at the High School level. My competition was to make a website that sells tours in the New York City area. I made a site www.batechcentral.com/NTS_PM it is in ASP.NET 2.0 using SQL.

I got 2nd place at regionals and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to improve it for State Level Competition? Any ideas would be great!
 
ok i'm no programmer but i do work in internet marketing so i know a thing or two about web design and usability

1. the auto-updateing price thing is nice.. very nice.. but it should be larger and should have access to the shopping cart nearby .. not across the screen. (edit: or simply change "view detials" to "Checkout")

2: This sentence could be better: This week we have a special price for these fantastic products:

Maybe: Reduced Rates On Select Tours - Limited Time Only!

or: New Winter Rate - Save For A Season!

Something catchy like that.


3: If it's at all possible to add more visual content do it. More pics!

4: Bold bullet points (below description)to highlight the main areas of interest when you click on each main (6) image.

5: The login and register items are nearly hidden and invisible.. you want people to register right?

6: How about a newsletter .. special offers, coupons, 2for1s etc...

www.alertbox.com - is a great site for usability

hope you don't mind me making suggestions...

I think it has great potential

Is it simply a programming challange or does actually getting more people to purchase count?

mal out
 
Its a judged competition, people don't actually purchase. It is a design competition mostly, its called Business Professionals of America www.bpa.org. The school I go to is called the Bay Arenac Career Center www.batechcentral.com

malicious Thank You Very Much for the suggestions! They are greatly appreciated

The whole site is just for competitive purposes we competed regionals, then states, and after states the top two teams advance to nationals. We're supposed to try and make it as realistic as possible and run like MOD10 on the Credit Card Info, encrypt all user information which is pretty easy.

I am on a team with 3 other people who are new to this stuff so I do things and then show them how to.

In regards to point 3, we added a table called product details where the adminstrator can add pictures and videos, and they will be displayed under their respective tab. We also are adding user reviews like amazon.com.

The other thing I have been contemplating is a Gift Card system and a Wishlist. The other idea that we have been throwing around would be to like have the ability to take pictures while people would be on the tour and then upload them and place them on products and sell them like shirts to the person after they return from their vacation.

The hardest thing is not living in New York for pictures, being a school we do have Fair Use for educational purposes.

Thanks for the help!
 
things to consider ..

the word "testimonials" is good

consumer driven content is good .. i.e. let them submit pics with testimonials

wish list = bad idea IMO .. lists are short trips are spontaneus

how about map route info / pics

some google "Hybrid" screen caps would be good for that

keep up the good work .. i'll check back often

not kidding about the www.alerbox.com site
 
The alertbox site is great, I was reading an article on there about how it is bad to not make visited links a different color, thats something I'm going to change in my style sheet.

By Hybrid do you mean the ones where it shows the real picture with street names on top? Or take a Google Map and Photoshop it to match the site colors? Now if there would be a way to map out the route dynamically that would be simply amazing, but I don't think there would be.

Letting the users submit their own pics from the tours is great!

The other thing I have to add is a dynamic calendar where you can select a day and it will show all of the tours on that day.

Do you have any ideas on how to "spruce up" the main page besides changing the subheading?

Should we add a slogan? Or change the logo?

The site that won 2 years ago at nationals was https://www.batechcentral.com/whenpigsflypm it recieved 2nd place but the instructor that helped on that site has left our school. So I'm winging it!

Thanks again malicious for the suggestions
 
what about adding a little mouse over sound to the top tabs

what about playing a ny city(ish) song when the page loads

big apple or something

why not call it big apple tours or something catchy

a slogan is good... also

people almost always take city tours spontaneously IMO .. someone that surfs you site may only have 1 hour during a layover. You need to make it clear .. maybe through a slogan the you have tours to fit all needs.. day tours, night tours, long tours, short tours, etc...
 
I gues the hybrid thing doesn't work since you only need a route highlighted..

i would take a google earth screen cap and use paint to map it out then save as a .jpg
 
I know that site is amazing, very well done on their part. Now if i could recreate the flash at the top. Is a liquid layout, like what is currently on there good? One of the judges suggested to knock it down to 90% screen width and then throw a background behind it and go to oswd.org and find a different layout for the menu.

I guess I'm really torn between a fixed width centered in the screen or one that expands but if I maximize my site on 1920x1200 it does look terrible. Its so bare.

They use drop downs on top, that was one thing that is like heavily debates if they are good for accessiliby.

I can change anything my site I want until February 1st when it will be rejudged for States.
 
I wish I could change the name but it has to be "National Tour Services" as per the rules. But I was considering a slogan to fit in with the Apple like "Our tours are slices of New York" The logo can be anything, we just picked the apple.

The roll overs are great! I'll have some links up on Tuesday Afternoon.

as always Thanks!
 
I would definetly change the font of the main title. To me, it just looks like you threw on a bevel/emboss style and a stroke of 3px. The bevel/emboss is used far too often on the web and people just get tired of it. Also, the navagation tabs have the same problem. The whole header just looks unprofessional.

Other than the header, you've got a great site there and I would have no second thoughts about buying something from it.

I'm definetly not the audience that you're going for with this project and your audience may love how the header looks, so its up to you...
 
schism, cool little comment, I'm not a tour guy either, and have never been to New York City, and wish I could change the topic.

What is one of the better way to go rather than bevel and emboss, it was an outerglow which after compressing turned into a stroke look?
 
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