Digital Design

1. In two paragraphs explain why a customer centric Web site design is so important, yet so difficult to accomplish?

A customer centric website is so important because making the website easier to navigate and purchase products increases your sales immensly as so many people are now purchasing products online. This is considered to be difficult to accomplish because companies are always refining their website and always trying to make it more user friendly.

According to Jodie Dalgleish, she talks about a few things that people should consider when their developing a website. One is to evaluate a competitors wesbite. Secondly, she believes that the creaters of the website should do a transaction and see if it worked and made sense to them. Thirdly, they should add a help section to the website because often after customers purchase a product they have questions about it. And the fourth item is feedback to ensure the creaters of the website know what the customers think of their design or what they could improve on. Also customers should be kept informed of product updates or services to enhance their customer experience. All these things need to be considered which makes it hard to accomplish a customer centric website because customers will often want things upgraded and may want things set out differently compared to other customers. (http://digitalenterprise.org/transcripts/design_tr.html)

2. Define the term 'presence'. Write an additional paragraph that describes why firms that do business on the Web should be more concerned about presence than firms that operate in the physical world.

Presence can be defined as being present with others or occupying a place.

Firms should be more worried about having a presence on the Internet than firms that operate in the physical world because in the physcial world you can actually find the business that your after. You can ask someone where it is, ring them up or just stroll through a shopping centre looking for them. Often there is signs around that points you in the right direction as well. You will often see these on your day to day travels. However people won't know your online unless you advertise yourself or get yourself put at the top of google searches. The Internet is a massive world and your website is just a tiny fraction of this. However it can create enormous revenue for your company but people need to be able to locate it. If you have a strong presence then you may pick up new customers who prefer online shopping as well as retain older customers who might want to save time by purchasing online. If you make your website easily accessible, people will use it and will help your business

3. Write three paragraphs to briefly describe the things that Real Estate Agents can best accomplish through (1) their web sites (2) Mass media advertising (3) Personal contact?

1. Through their websites, real estate agents can advertise houses their trying to sell to people all over the world. However, newspaper ads will only be able to advertise to the small amount of people that read them but the Internet will allow prospective buyers to search for houses if they are moving from over seas or interstate.

2. Through mass media advertising, real estate agents can reach very large organisations such as a state or country. This allows them to not only reach their target markets but potential new customers who customers who may usually associate with a different real estate agent.

3. Through personal contact real estate agents will be able to out their tarde into practice by showing off a house and making a potential buyer realise how good a certain house may be. The real estate agent will also be able to explain certaint things to customers that internet sites or mass medid advertising can't explain such as the neighbourhood their in.