Jewelry Case Study
Solution:
Following the need for an inexpensive site to run and to host, we decided to take the UNIX/Apache/CGI approach. The site is hosted for a very low cost and is portable to almost every hosting company in the world.
The site holds over 100 jewelry pieces at this time, but consists of less than 10 web pages. The detail view allows for an unlimited amount of pictures and is only one page. This allows for easy updates by the artist or her staff. All text and pictures are external and organized into separate file folders. This allows a clean website and quick addition and removal of individual jewelry pieces or complete product lines. Text can be written in any word processor, saved as text file and added to the website immediately. Pictures are resized to the correct preset format and quickly added to the website.
The contact page lets users get in touch with the artist without using an e-mail program on the user machine. If a customer wishes to subscribe to the e-mail list, the data is saved to a file on the server and can easily imported into the artist's computer (with a provided tool) and used for e-mail campaigns for upcoming exhibitions.
The decision was made early on that the site need to be straight forward, easy to navigate for the artist and customer and simply focus on the beautiful jewelry. We decided against any animation and fancy graphics. Instead, we used arranged high quality digital images of the jewelry.