Research Project HND - Vlad

Assignment Cover Sheet
Student: Class: Assignment: Semester: Due Date: Vlad Medvedev Research Project 1 1104 16th of December Lecturer : David Gannon Program: HND Business Actual 30th of November Submission Date: Location (Choose one) 1. Uploaded to the Learning Center (Moodle) 2. Submitted to reception Optional: I have also handed a hard copy to the lecturer according to his/her request
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Improvement of Web Design Services

offered by TopWebDesigners.cz
Research Project (HND)

Written by Vlad Medvedev Prepared for David Gannon Due to 16th of December 2011 17,000 words 59 pages
(+420 608484788) pc@vladmedvedev.com

2 Vlad Medvedev | Research Project www.vladmedvedev.com
Abstract
By the end of summer 2011 Vlad Medvedev - who is also known as the author of this project - has opened a web design agency called TopWebDesigners which is located in Prague. The reason why the agency was established in Prague is due to lack of quality and affordable web design studios on the Czech market. However, a theoretical thought and personal opinion is not enough to see whether it was a smart investment to open that business. Therefore, the author has decided to carry out a research focusing on whether his firm is capable of offering competitive prices and quality services. Since there are many businesses with demand for web design services, it is important to focus on a specific area and not the whole market, as the research would be inaccurate due to lack of resources and time. The project was focused on the website JobWellDone.cz which was found to be old-fashioned by many of its clients, and so asked for help from TopWebDesigners by the owner of that website. As a result, the topic of the project was to investigate the quality of web design services offered by TopWebDesigners using JobWellDone.cz as a case study. The research was based on the opinion of the owner of JobWellDone - who is the actual client of TopWebDesigners.cz. In addition with a focus group which was formed independently of people who might potentially be interested in the services offered by JobWellDone. The importance of the focus group was the fact that many people are the actual visitors of JobWellDone.cz and it was vital to know their opinion of what they thought should be improved and whether the new website has actually met their expectations. There were roughly 40 to 50 people in the focus group, and since the website JobWellDone.cz has an average of 200 monthly visitors, the focus group covered 20 to 25% of the monthly volume. Which is more than enough to base a valid research on, as only 10% of population is needed to proceed with a research and get accurate results. During this project, the author explored whether TopWebDesigners were able to satisfy the needs of the clients and owner of JobWellDone.cz. This was an excellent way to identify whether the web design agency is capable to deliver their services as promised and offer solutions for complicated projects. Nevertheless, this research allowed the author to investigate how competitive TopWebDesigners could be, and what space for improvement they have. In addition to that, the author himself has found this project useful financially as being the owner of TopWebDesigners. As well as from educational 3 Vlad be useful | Research Project perspective, by developing his research and writing skills that could Medvedev for his future career.
Acknowledgements
During the summer 2011, Vlad Medvedev worked on several projects involving IT, PR, marketing, and HR skills. As he progressed, he understood that his portfolio held many projects that were more advanced and successful than many other websites on the Czech market. He has finally decided to open a web design firm in Prague when he was browsing through Facebook and clicked on a restaurant ad that leaded him to a website which he thought was underdeveloped. As a result, the author of this project would like to express special thanks to Facebook and the owner of that restaurants for being the motivators of establishing TopWebDesigners.cz The research project would not have been completed without contribution of certain people. First of all, the author would like to express many thanks to Dave Gannon for his guidance and support in the progress of the research. Nevertheless, big thanks go to all the members of the focus group who participated in the improvement of the website JobWellDone allowing the web design company to value their quality of work. Furthermore, the author would like to thank Rhyan De La Isla for contributing in this project by working together with Vlad Medvedev on improving his company website JobWellDone.cz and giving his opinion on what could be improved in the website and how the web design agency can improve their services. Moreover, the author would like to thank all colleagues for reviewing his work and giving their honest opinions about it, inspiring him to develop the project with their ideas. Finally, the author would like to thank all the other people who have participated in the development of the project, and express gratitude towards his family for all the support they have provided.
Vlad Medvedev | Research Project
Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................................... 4 Background ................................................................................................................................................. 6 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................6 How Business Started .......................................................................................................................................6 Justification ................................................................................................................................................ 8 Why This Project Had to be Done? ...................................................................................................................8 Who Benefited From This Project?...................................................................................................................9 How Has the Author Benefited From This Project? .........................................................................................9 What Was The Interest Of The Author in This Project? ...................................................................................9 Aims and Objectives.................................................................................................................................. 10 Aim of the project ...........................................................................................................................................10 Objectives and Justification ............................................................................................................................10 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................................12 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................ 14 The research methods used for this project ..................................................................................................14 Primary Research ............................................................................................................................................19 Secondary Research .......................................................................................................................................23 Justification of the Questionnaire ..................................................................................................................24 Evaluation of the Methodology ................................................................................................................. 29 Findings .................................................................................................................................................... 30 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................30 Primary Analysis .............................................................................................................................................31 Secondary Analysis .........................................................................................................................................40 Evaluation of Findings ............................................................................................................................... 41 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 42 Recommendations .................................................................................................................................... 50 References ................................................................................................................................................ 51 Appendix .................................................................................................................................................. 52
Background
Introduction In this project the author has investigated the quality of web design services offered by TopWebDesigners, among other competitive companies in Prague. The agency was established by the end of summer 2011, making it a brand new rival in the Czech market for web development. TopWebDesigners was established by Vlad Medvedev who is the author of the project himself. TopWebDesigners is a web development firm based in Prague, offering various web related services including design, programming, marketing, consulting, and more. How Business Started The motive of opening the firm in Prague instead of working internationally, was due to high volume of internet users within the country. Based on The World Bank, World Development Publications graph (Google Public Data Explorer, 2011), over 63% of population in Czech Republic use internet to browse, shop, and do business. Evidently, the decision was not only based on this one factor. Albeit there is such high demand for internet in Czech Republic, the level of web development in the country still has a room for improvement. Therefore, the owner of the company decided to establish the agency within those grounds, with a possible expansion to an international level. Many businesses in Prague have a constant flow of income. Although the owners are not aware of anyone who could renovate their website in Czech Republic, for a reasonable price. An exemplar of such case would be a night club in Prague called M1. Their website 'www.m1lounge.com' was designed many years ago, and back then it was deem to be of a high quality. However, nowadays the standards of web development are much higher as technology allows us to develop a different level of websites. Therefore, many people - including regular visitors of this club - find the current website to be lacking in functionality and appearance. The night club itself is almost ten years of age, and throughout the years it became one of the most popular clubs in the city of Prague. Taking these factors into account, the author believes that the owner of club M1 has established a very reliable source of income which can be proved by the reputation and status of the club. Despite the
revenue this business makes, the owner of the club has not considered improving the website. Although, they do make constant updates of the events and many people keep on using it to be in touch. Therefore, it is visible that the website itself still has value and importance for the club. However, as it was previously mentioned, it is most likely that this owner and many others are not aware of anybody who is capable of delivering a much higher quality website. The purpose of this research was to determine whether the viewpoint of the author was correct and if TopWebDesigners were capable of delivering services with competitive prices and quality. Furthermore, this research was also done to help the agency discover anything that they currently do not offer or can possibly improve. In addition to that, this research allowed the company to track their results and see what they can visibly improve for a business online. The author has investigated several primal factors, such as the following; Based on the website JobWellDone.cz what improvements in terms of web design, functionality and marketing can TopWebDesigners offer? Will the prices and quality of services offered by TopWebDesigners stay competitive among the other web design agencies in Prague? What programming methods are the most preferable to create a website - HTML/CSS, Flash, Silverlight, Wordpress, Joomla etc. How can the company improve the effectiveness and quality of their services?
These factors have helped the company to determine whether they are capable of delivering what the client wants, what additional services they may offer, whether their prices and quality of services can be competitive, and how the company can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work. The information above was covered to make it easier for the reader to understand what the research is about, what the company does, how it was formed, why this specific topic was chosen for this project, what aspects were important in determining the final results, and why they were important.
Justification
The research project is an important section of education for a business student. It requires many skills that the student acquires throughout their studies and significantly shows their independence. Therefore it was crucial to carry out the research in the field that interested the author. Yet the final outcome had to be beneficial for the researcher, and others. The research itself had to be completed within 3 months. However, the author of the project has done the job a lot faster and finished the project in only 6 weeks. A detailed timeline was provided in the proposal of the project. This part of the project focuses on justification of the research and covers certain points, such as: Why this project had to be done Who benefited from this research How the author benefited from this project What was the interest of author in this project
Why this project had to be done There were several reasons why this project had to be done. One of those motives was the fact that the company TopWebDesigners was established very recently, and so it was important for them to understand the Czech market for web development. This project has covered certain areas that brought a crucial information for the agency. Which allowed them to allocate their resources, pick a marketing strategy, and deal with their clients more effectively. The Czech market for web development still has a room for improvement. However, the demand on internet in the country shows the importance for businesses to operate online. Therefore, the opportunities for TopWebDesigners were endless. Though, it was very odd and implausible to see those 3 traits of economy meet each other - high demand, low quality and fairly weak competition. As a result, it became essential for the company to investigate whether there are any reasons why there is no one who has yet offered such services. Furthermore, many businesses have their unique requirements. Though very often the owners of these businesses are not aware of limitations online, and so they do not know what can or cannot be on their website. Therefore, a web design agency has to know Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 8
what to offer, and even more importantly to be sure of what they can deliver in case if their clients are already aware of what they want. The way to understand such things and be prepared, was of course by doing a research. Who has benefited from this research From all the information covered above, it is clear that TopWebDesigners had a direct interest in this research and benefited from it in every way. However, the benefit of this project was not only limited on that one company. There are many other web design agencies in Prague, and many of them are not aware of what state the Czech market for web development is at, what small businesses in Prague might specifically need for their website, or what expectations of budget or functionality these clients may have. Therefore, almost any web design agencies in Prague may find this project useful especially if they want to be competitive in the market and understand the needs of their clients more effectively. How did the author benefit from this project The are several ways in which the author has found this project beneficial. First of all, this project required certain skills to proceed with the research. By doing it, the author has practiced those skills, obtained more knowledge, and could use these abilities for his future career. Furthermore, as it was previously mentioned, TopWebDesigners is owned by Vlad Medvedev who is also known as the author of this project. Therefore, he has also benefited from this project financially by implementing the information he has gathered into his business, which made it more powerful and profitable in its industry. What was the interest of author in this project The author of this project had a direct interest in the research because he is the actual owner of TopWebDesigners. Therefore, it was important for him to investigate this matter, analyze the information most accurately and make possible guidelines that he has used to operate the business more effectively. Furthermore, the author has also benefited from this project by learning valuable lessons and practising skills that he has acquired throughout his academic career.
Aims and Objectives

Aim To investigate the quality of web design services offered by TopWebDesigners - using JobWellDone.cz as a case study. Objectives and Justification i. To conduct an observational analysis and explore potential improvements of the website JobWellDone.cz This objective was a very valuable resource for the agency. Because it has determined the quality aspects of a website that TopWebDesigners had to focus on. For that part of the project, a focus group was formed and that group of people or old clients of JobWellDone were able to share their expectations and thoughts of what a perfect business-website should look like. There were four aspects taken into account for this objective; budget, functionality, programming methods, additional improvements.
These are all very important points that the author had to observe and base on the conclusions and recommendations for the company. The functionality has determined what functional qualities should a website enclose, helping visitors to navigate and learn more about the company. The programming methods showed the most preferable web platforms by the users. For instance, some people prefer flash, whereas others dislike it and prefer standard HTML/CSS/etc. Some people did not have any thoughts on this, and so they just said that they do not have any programming preferences. Therefore the design agency had to make those decisions. Furthermore, the author has made a list of additional improvements that could help the website jobwelldone.cz to increase their revenue and make more leads.
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ii.
To analyze the end result and investigate whether TopWebDesigners were capable of meeting the expectations of the focus group and client. For this objective the author has analyzed the new website which was developed by TopWebDesigners for the owner of the old website JobWellDone.cz. The analysis also involved the same focus group to determine whether the company has met all expectations and requests. Nevertheless, the owner of JobWellDone - Rhyan De La Isla - was also interviewed to verify whether TopWebDesigners were able to deliver what they promised.
iii.
To conclude whether TopWebDesigners fulfilled the expectations of the client and to highlight possible limitations for improvement. This objective has helped the author to conclude whether the client of TopWebDesigners was satisfied with their services, and whether their help was necessary and useful. Furthermore, in this part of the project the author has determined whether the services offered by TopWebDesigners are valuable and worthy, in comparison to other web design companies in Prague, based on the final results. Nevertheless, an analysis of possible service or work improvements of TopWebDeisngers, was also carried out. This helped the company to see its mistakes and understand capabilities of what they can offer.
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Research Questions
1) To conduct an observational analysis and explore potential improvements of the website JobWellDone.cz
1. What
services
could to
be
offered its
for
the
website and
JobWellDone.cz appearance ?
improve
functionality
2. What recommendations for improvement of the website could be offered by a focus group? 3. Does the owner of the website JobWellDone.cz has any special requests? 4. What marketing techniques could improve the visibility and functionality of JobWellDone.cz on the web? 5. After the assessment of all the work that has to be done for the website JobWellDone.cz, what would be the final price estimation? 6. Are the services offered by TopWebDesigners.cz in Prague,
competitive to other web design agencies based on price and quality?
2) To analyze the end result and investigate whether TopWebDesigners were capable of meeting the expectations of the focus group and client.
1. What are the comparisons and contrast of the old and new websites of JobWellDone.cz? 2. How does the owner of JobWellDone react to the new website? 3. Did TopWebDesigners meet the expectations of the focus group and clients of JobWellDone? 4. Did the costs of the client actually stay the same as they were agreed upon before the website was developed? 5. Was the company able meet the deadline?
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3) To conclude whether TopWebDesigners fulfilled the expectations of the client and to highlight possible limitations for improvement.
1. Based on the final costs for the client, quality of the website that was developed, and time management of the company, could TopWebDesigners offer competitive
services among web design agencies in Prague? 2. Did the owner of the website JobWellDone.cz find the new website useful in terms of interacting with customers and getting more sales? 3. After the entire project, how could TopWebDesigners improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their services?
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Methodology
The methodology was a very important part of the project for several reasons. First of all it helped the author to be determined in finding the resources and all the necessary information for the project. The author used methodology to remember how the research should be taken, and how the data should be collected. For this project the author used several different methods to gather the information; Questionnaires Secondary Research - Internet/Books/Magazines Interviews Observations
Each of these methods were unique and useful in their own way. By the end of the research, the results from one method were more useful than from the other, and some of these methods did not even work. However, the author has implemented each and every method of gathering the information in order to execute analysis as accurately as possible and achieving the objectives of the project. Why the chosen methods were appropriate for this project As it was mentioned previously, every method is unique and useful in its own way. The author has implemented these methods when it was necessary and each one of them had their own mission in terms of gathering the information for the project. Further description is exemplified below. Questionnaires - Economic and Social Research Council (ReStore, 2009) there were several reasons why questionnaires were beneficial when a certain type of research had to be done. First of all, the author had to form a focus group to investigate the potential improvements of the website JobWellDone.cz and how users react to it. The most optimal way to gather the data was by using the questionnaires. Because there were over 45 people in the group, and it was important to collect the information quickly without having to spend days on analysing the final results. With questionnaires it is much easier to conduct a quantitative analysis which tends to be more accurate Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 14
than the qualitative analysis because researchers make less subjective assumptions and base their final decisions on actual facts. Furthermore, it was much easier to transfer the data to statistical software such as Excel, and the questionnaires were available to people twenty four hours a day. Nevertheless, building questionnaires online was fast, easy and a lot more efficient. Since the author was able to use a wide range of tools that people could use to answer the questions - the results were more accurate and not as time consuming for the interviewees. Secondary Research - Secondary Data (Management Study Guide, 2008) this project required a lot of extensive research which sometimes was very hard to find. Therefore, it was always a big advantage to use a secondary research to backup some decisions, ideas and information for the project. Secondary research was very useful because it reduced time consumption on some of the research, and the researcher was able to check results on several different sources to make sure that the information is accurate and valid. Secondary Analysis (Colorado State University, 2006) in some occasions the researcher was not able to conduct any type of primary research to gather the information, and so the secondary research was used to find it. There were three main sources of secondary research; internet, books and magazines. In general, the internet was used more often to find information which was good to know and allowed the author to add more value into the project. However, books were very useful to find crucial information for the project which was need to progress yet was hard to investigate. Interviews - For this project, interviews were necessary two times. First when Rhyan De La Isla who is also known as the owner of JobWellDone - was interviewed to learn more about potential improvements of JobWellDone.cz, and understand the expectations of the owner. Second, when Rhyan was interviewed after TopWebDesigners delivered the new website and he as the owner was needed to determine if the company has met all the criteria. In-Depth Interviews (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006) the interviews were found to be very effective for this part of the project. For one specific reason - Rhyan De La Isla was the only owner of JobWellDone. Therefore, it was more appropriate to use an interview to gather the information from him. Because that way he was able to give more ideas and be more specific. Nevertheless, there was no need to Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 15
compare any data and there were no other people. Therefore, there was no need to use questionnaires or any other form of research for faster data gathering. Observation - Observations Pros and Cons (University of Strathclyde Humanities and Social Sciences, 2007) observations revealed a lot of necessary information during the research. Firstly, a specialist from TopWebDesigners was able to analyse the old website to make additional assumptions of what has to be changed on the old website. The following attributes were taken into consideration when the old website JobWellDone.cz was observed; Design and colour scheme of the website According to Rory Sutherland (2011), if a visitor does not understand the purpose of the website in the first 8 seconds, he or she is most likely to leave. Nevertheless, colours play a vital role in the likelihood of the visitor to stay on the website. If the visitor feels uncomfortable with too dark or too bright colours, they are most likely to get irritated and leave. Therefore, it was necessary to look into these aspects and avoid any loss of customers for JobWellDone. Additional tools, such as on-page reservation Many members of the focus group and users of JobWellDone have requested several features, such as reservation form and on-page customer support. Therefore, it was important to look into the functional aspects of the website to understand what tools should be added for users to use the website easier and longer. Content of the new and old websites The content had to be analyzed in order for TopWebDesigners to estimate their costs based on what the owner of JobWellDone wanted to include on the new website and what the old website already had. This way, TopWebDesigners would know what content can already be used, and what had to be developed, affecting the workload of the staff and so the final price of the project. Contact accessibility
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The majority of members in the focus group were not satisfied with the contact availability on the old website. Therefore, TopWebDesigners had to determine the most optimal ways for users to be able to contact Rhyan.
Website traffic, and status of search engine responsiveness JobWellDone.cz is a fairly new website, and so it was necessary to understand how it reacts to the search engines. This way, TopWebDesigners were able to estimate the level of support needed by JobWellDone to rank their website and increase the traffic.
How the research was conducted As it was previously stated, the research was primarily based on investigation of services of the company TopWebDesigners.cz. The research helped the author to improve the services of the web design agency, primarily by using the website JobWellDone.cz to test the skills and potential improvements of the firm. Therefore, in order to conduct such research, the author had to implement several different ways of gathering the data. A focus group was formed involving people that were interested in the services of JobWellDone and so could be potential users of their website. Lindlof and Taylor (2002) suggested that using a focus group could stimulate ideas, produce more data, bring results faster, and be easier for those who have English as a second language, which was very useful since the author was located in Prague and so the people sometimes needed help with English. As a result, investigating the opinions of the focus group based on the current website of JobWellDone was important in renovating the site and testing the skills of TopWebDesigners during that process. Consequently, questionnaires were handed out to each member of the focus group. The whole operation was done online, to speed up the process and increase efficiency of the research. For three main reasons, costs were reduced, research was not as time consuming, and the likelihood of more people answering questionnaires was higher. The reason why a focus group was formed and questionnaires handed out is because it is necessary to find out how the website
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JobWellDone can be improved, and this will allow TopWebDesigners to understand their capabilities and quality of services. Focus group was the most optimal solution because its members could potentially be the actual users of JobWellDone, and so they could provide very valuable feedback of what customers are looking for. The number of people in the focus group was not set, although there were forty five people who answered the questionnaires. This number was appropriate because the website JobWellDone.cz only receives two hundred visitors a month in average. Therefore, it is over 22% of the visitors the website receives, which is more than enough to progress with the research. Since only 10% is required to proceed. Furthermore, observations were also made by the specialists of the company TopWebDesigners, to make additional advancements of the website JobWellDone.cz and improve its effectiveness in marketing and sales. Observation allowed the author to find information that could only be visible to a specialist, but not a regular user. Nevertheless, such improvements were only relevant to the owner and not the users of the website. Because the specialists might look at the factors that could boost traffic and sales of the company, which does not interest the clients. However, the owner himself was not aware of such solutions, and so he requested support on that field. Moreover, speaking about the owner of JobWellDone. The interviews were also carried out to investigate the requests and ideas of the website owner, and understand whether the web design agency has met the criteria. The interviews were necessary in two occasions. First, when Rhyan De La Isla - also known as the owner of JobWellDone - was interviewed to determine potential improvements of the website JobWellDone.cz and understand any expectations or requests that Rhyan has as the owner. The second interview was carried out when the website was completed. Rhyan shared his opinion of the new website and informed the web design agency what he liked, disliked and thought could be improved in the future. Finally, secondary research was also carried out. Since the author of the project was interested in comparing the prices and quality of services offered by TopWebDesigners.cz with other web design agencies in Prague. Secondary sources such as internet, books or magazines were useful in finding the right data. As an example, the top five successful web design studios in Prague were analyzed by gathering reviews of their services from online forums and comparing their prices. This information was available online at all times. Specifically on IT forums, actual websites of the Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 18
companies, and partially on some magazines or newspapers where these web design studios where covered. The reason why secondary research was more useful in gathering such information is because everything was already available and there was no need to speed any time or resources to gather the information through primary research.
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Primary Research
Method 1 - Questionnaires Why most appropriate? As it was previously mentioned, the main purpose of using questionnaires for this project was due to the form of the focus group. The author has gathered people for a focus group to determine what was lacking on the website JobWellDone.cz. Since there were over forty five people in the focus group, it was necessary to analyze the information quickly yet gather enough details for the project. The most optimal solution was to use questionnaires and analyze the information with a use of quantitative analysis methods. Nevertheless, questionnaires had several advantages over other methods of research, which made it easier for the author to collect the information. For example, there was no need to print papers, consume time on speaking with each person individually, or transfer the data to a statistical software such as Excel. Furthermore, the majority of people had similar ideas but different ways of expressing themselves. Therefore, if a questionnaire was not used, each person would of given the same answer but in a different message, making it harder to format and analyze the data. Sample size There were 45 people in the focus group. The reason why, is because 10% of population is the minimum required amount to conduct a research. Consequently, there was no set goal of how many people were supposed to be questioned as long as the number was higher than 10%. As a result, 45 people was equal to 22.5% as the website JobWellDone roughly receives 200 visitors a month. Therefore, the number of people that were questioned was more than enough, making the research even more accurate. How it was conducted The author has established a powerful relationship with many members of the largest forums on the internet. Therefore, it was fairly to find people who are interested in services offered by JobWellDone.cz and make them go to the website and give ideas of what they think about it and Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 20
what they would like to change. The main forum that was used for this research was forums.digitalpoint.com. The questionnaire itself was created online using the website Jotform.com and the link was then sent to people on forums who agreed to participate in the research. Strengths and Weaknesses There were several strengths and weaknesses in giving out questionnaires to the focus group. The strengths were of course from getting more quantitative data from the similar choices that people have picked. Therefore making the analysis more accurate. In addition to that, the research itself was carried out faster as more people were covered in a shorter amount of time. Simply because the modern technology allowed the author to have the questionnaires available 24 hours a day. The weakness was of course the accuracy of information. Because 1 out of 10 people tried to shorten their time of doing the questionnaire by picking random and irrelevant choices. This was evident when the comments these people gave in the 'overall opinion' section, did not make any sense. Whereas interviews could be more beneficial in that matter. Method 2 - Interviews Why most appropriate? Two groups of people had to be questioned for the research, members of the focus group and the owner of the website JobWellDone.cz. Data that was gathered from the focus group was done with a help of questionnaires. However, the owner was interviewed instead. Interviews are a great source of information, because the interviewee usually tends to give more detail in their answers. The reason why members of the focus group were not interviewed is because it would be too time consuming and hard to analyze. It was necessary to interview Rhyan because that way he was able to express himself better and share more ideas and thoughts of how he would improve the website. Sample Size As it was mentioned, Rhyan De La Isla was the only person to be interviewed. This is because he is the only owner of the website JobWellDone.cz and so his opinion was primarily important to the
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company. The focus group was the main research method, and the interview with Rhyan was only necessary to make sure that the company stays on track with the delivery of the website and all other relevant services. However, Rhyan was able to provide a lot of information in regards to website improvement that the focus group did not. This is because the clients and the owner have two different points of view. How it was be conducted A meeting was set up with Rhyan De La Isla on the agreed time and location. He has given the interview both in a verbal and written form. Firstly, he answered the questions himself by typing the answers into a computer. Next the author has asked Rhyan to comment on some of the questions in more detail which was done verbally, and the author has written everything down himself. Strengths and Weaknesses The primal strength of the interviews is the ability to communicate with the person you need to gather the information from, and obtain much deeper answers. Rhyan was able to provide a lot of detailed information of what he expects to be improved and whether the company has successfully delivered the everything. Therefore, the detail was particularly important as the owner of the business is the only person who makes all the decisions and provides finances for the work done by the design agency. The weakness of the interview was probably the fact that the author had to set up a meeting and spend time with the interviewee. This was certainly distracting during the whole process. Nevertheless, a lot of information has to be analyzed and narrowed down, which consumes more time comparing to the data analysis from such gathering methods as questionnaires.
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Method 3 - Observations Why most appropriate? The observation was only done in one point where a specialist from TopWebDesigners has analyzed the website JobWellDone.cz and searched for other potential improvements that the owner was not aware of, or users were not interested in to discuss. A professional in IT, online marketing, and public relations was able to tell the owner what improvements the website needed that could possibly increase the number of visitors, sales, or leads. As a result, observation was the only way to gather such information. Sample Size The observation was only necessary once when an expert in IT and online marketing from TopWebDesigners has analyzed the website JobWellDone.cz to find other possible improvements for the website. How it was conducted The observation was conducted before any work on the website has started. A representative of TopWebDesigners has analyzed the website of JobWellDone and discovered its weaknesses and potential ways of improving the general factors, such as visitors, sales, and/or leads. Strengths and Weaknesses The strength of doing this kind of observation was due to the fact that an online expert was able to see things that the owner of the website did not know, or a user was not interested in. That was for example, potential ways of increasing traffic of the website. The weakness was of course the fact that in some cases the analyst was making subjective verdicts about the website that he thought were necessary. Therefore, the information given by the person who analysed the website had to be reviewed again and filtered.
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Secondary Research
What sources? The secondary research sources that were used for this project, were as following; Internet Books Occasionally Magazines/Newspapers
What kind of data was needed? The secondary research was needed to acquire certain types of data for the project. Firstly, it was necessary to find the top five web design agencies in Prague using the internet, to understand whether TopWebDesigners do offer competitive prices and quality services. For that part, online blogs and forums were used to gather the information. Nevertheless, several books and sources on the internet were used to gain more knowledge and offer better quality services for the website JobWellDone.cz. In general the secondary research was primarily used to understand the Czech market for web development and endorse many technical ideas that were used for the website JobWellDone. How did this data help fulfill the objectives? The data gathered through the secondary research was directly helpful in achieving some of the objectives. For instance, the author had to understand how competitive TopWebDesigners were in comparison to other web design agencies in Prague. To find the right data, the author has used internet and magazines to carry out a statistical analysis on prices and quality of services offered by those companies. The quality of services were analyzed through forums and blogs where people posted their reviews of these web design agencies. Nevertheless, the goal of the project was to find out whether TopWebDesigners were capable of delivering high quality services, and the secondary research allowed the agency to improve the level of their services and offer more tailored support for the website JobWellDone. Which affected the end result in a positive way and so added more value into the project.
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Justification of the Questionnaire

In the justification section of the questionnaire the author has justified all the questions used in the questionnaire and provided reasons why these questions were necessary. In addition to that, the author explained how these questions have helped the project and let the author achieve the research objectives. In the following research it is important to give justification to all the questions used in the questionnaire because it clearly shows the purpose of the questions to the reader. Nevertheless, the author has better understanding of how the questions were useful and how they could be helpful to reach the objectives. Questionnaire 1 A focus group was formed to review the website JobWellDone.cz and the questionnaires were only given out to the members of that group. The questionnaires were used in two phases, when the focus group was needed to review the old website and tell what could be improved, and after the web design agency created the new website and so the group was needed again to see whether the company has met all the expectations and delivered a much higher level of website. In both scenarios people were asked to view the old or new website and so they were ready to give their opinion about it. 1) How would you rate the website? a) Worst b) Not Good c) Acceptable d) Good e) Excellent
The very first question on the questionnaire was asking for how people would rate the website from 1 to 5. The reason why this question was included and placed first because usually people tend to forget things after a while. Therefore, the author wanted to include a quick rating question so that people could give their general opinion of the website immediately after viewing it. Nevertheless, both questionnaires for the old and the new websites will be compared and this will be the main factor that would determine whether the web design agency has delivered a good quality website. The rating contained five different words that people could choose from the determine the quality of the websites. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 25
The chosen words were found to be most optimal for determining a website rating. Moreover, in general it is better to have words on a rating scale than number. Because the words are more descriptive and make it easier to the person to make a choice. 2) What do you not like about the website? a) Nothing - It's fine b) Simplicity c) Poor design d) Lack of information e) Lack of images f) Other This question was needed to determine what aspects of the website people do not like. Therefore, such things could be avoided in the development of the website. People could choose an option of 'nothing - it's fine', if they believed that the website had no repelling factors. In addition to that, other than the choice that were already available, people could select 'other' and give their personal answer. 3) What would you like to be improved? a) Easier Navigation b) More Description of Services c) Gallery/Portfolio Added d) Contact Form e) Other This question was very important in determining the improvements of the website. This question allowed the agency to focus on things that were the most important for the website JobWellDone.cz, and so made the project more helpful for the owner of the website and the web design company. People who answered the questionnaire were also able to give their personal answer by selecting the 'other' option. 4) Do you think on-page reservation form should be added? a) Yes Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 26
b) No While the old website JobWellDone.cz was operating, it received a lot of requests from people to have the ability to place a reservation directly on the website. Therefore, it was necessary to ask people during the research, whether they would really want to have a reservation form directly on the website. The options were yes or no, and these were probably the only necessary choices that people could of given. 5) Does the level of website design and functionality affect your purchasing decision? a) Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website b) No, it does not matter c) Other Even though there might be a slight similarity in between the previous and the following questions. However, the reason why this question was used for the research is because very occasionally people would trust the company, but because of the website they would not make a purchase. Therefore, it was important to determine whether the old website has affected such decision and if yes then the new website would need to have more functional and appearance preferences. Moreover, people were also able to choose the 'other' option if they wanted to leave an answer with a comment on this question. 6) Your overall opinion of the website? a) Text Area The final question was used for people to give a descriptive opinion of what they thought of the old website. This was a very important question, because it is very likely that the author could forget to include some of the important questions. Therefore, it was beneficial to hear additional comments from people in regards to the website. This helped the author to understand the matter more closely and progress with the project more effectively.
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Questionnaire 2 The second questionnaire was given to same group of people and have a very similar purpose. However, it was given out after the new website was developed, and so it was important to understand whether TopWebDesigners were able to meet all the expectations of the focus group. 1) How would you rate the NEW website? a) Worst b) Not Good c) Acceptable d) Good e) Excellent
The purpose of this question is the same as the question number 1 in the first questionnaire. It is to let people give a snap decision and thought of the new website immediately after they viewed it. Both questionnaires were compared and statistics have an overall opinion of people between the new and old website. Which gives a general idea of how the two websites differ.
2) Has the new website met all your expectations? a) Yes b) No With the help of this question the author was able to get a direct answer to whether the web design agency has met all the expectations of people. People could pick either yes or no as their answer. 3) Is there anything else that could be improved on the new website? a) Yes b) No If there was nothing else that people thought could be improved in the new website they just said no. However, if not all of their expectations were met and they still thought that something could be improved, then they picked 'yes' and a new box appeared asking 'what is it?'. Therefore, people could explain how the new website could be improved and the design agency could understand their mistakes and work on further improvement. 4) As the website changed, are you more likely to order from the company now? Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 28
a) Yes b) No With the new website it was very important to understand how it would affect sales and overall performance of the business JobWellDone. This influenced the final decision of whether TopWebDesigners were able to provide high quality services. The answers were direct, yes or no. People were able to give further comments in the next question. 5) Your overall opinion of the NEW website? a) Yes b) No In the final question of the second questionnaire, the interviewees were able to put more detail into their opinion of the website. This area helped the author to fulfil any missing information and allow the people to comment on some of their reasons as to why the new website did not meet their expectations or they still do not trust the company.
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Evaluation of Methodology
The entire project was based on the primary research and the secondary research. For the primary research the author has formed a focus group which consisted of 45 people who were interested in the services offered by JobWellDone. The focus group helped the author the find potential improvements for the website JobWellDone.cz to allow the web design agency TopWebDesigners to test their quality of services. Nevertheless, an interview was also done for the primary research. The interviewed person was Rhyan De La Isla who is also known as the owner of the website JobWellDone.cz. He participated by helping the design agency to determine what aspects of the website have to be improved and whether the company has met all the expectations. For the secondary research the author has primarily used the internet to find necessary data which helped the project to progress in a certain ways. The author has also experienced certain challenges during the project. First of all, the owner of the website was not always available and several days were lost before an appointment was scheduled for the interview. Nevertheless, many people on forums and blogs were not interested in participating in the research, and so it took more time than expected to form the focus group. Another challenge with the secondary research was when the data was not available on the internet and so it was necessary to find other sources of information. In addition to that, very often some of the websites did not provide trustworthy information, and so the author had to double check everything and it consumed more time. Nevertheless, the author believes that the results cannot be accurate due to the fact that the research was only based on one business 'JobWellDone' and there are thousands of firms in Prague that could be interested in web design services. Therefore, the level of services and prices that TopWebDesigners could offer, may vary between the different clients. As the research has been completed, the author believes that there were several advantages in the methodology of the project. Certain methods that were used to gather the information were found effective due to several reasons. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 30
The questionnaires were found to be very useful in determining the improvements of the website JobWellDone.cz with the help of the focus group. The author has save a lot of time by gathering the data which was collected with questionnaires as most of the information was already sorted out. In addition to that, the questionnaires were done online and so it was even easier to transfer everything onto a statistical software. In overall, the questionnaires were effective in collecting the data fast and finding the right information as well as analyzing it. The author of the project had to understand what the owner of the website JobWellDone.cz would be interested in changing. The only way to find that information was by directly communicating with Rhyan De La Isla. Interviews were most optimal in gathering the right information and using it to make appropriate decisions and estimate the quality of work provided by TopWebDesigners.cz The third method of gathering data was observation. The author has implemented this method into the research in order to analyze the old website JobWellDone.cz and determine potential improvements from a professional point of view. This research method was the most appropriate when the author had to understand how TopWebDesigners could improve the website in a way that a focus group or the owner would not know. The major setback of the research was the fact that TopWebDesigners had to construct the website. Therefore, it took a lot of time before the author was able to finish the actual research since it was necessary to understand how the focus group was satisfied with the new website. The author believes that in the future more time should be spent on the preparation of the questionnaires. It is necessary to make sure that the interviewees understand all the questions in order to give more precise answers. In general, the author was satisfied with the feedback from the focus group. However, in the future the oldest and most valuable clients of JobWellDone can be interviewed to find out if they like the new advancements and if there is anything specific about it that they would want to be changed. Since their feedback is crucial for the business, it would be beneficial to discuss everything with them in detail. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 31
Findings
One of the most important aspects of the project is the investigation. However, it is even more important when it comes to presenting the data you acquired during the research. The findings section is where the author will demonstrate the results of primary and second research. There are several ways to display your data, and the most common way is to illustrate the information with a use of graphs, pie charts, etc. Visualisation of the data is very important, because it gives a clear understand of the results to the reader. The author has divided the findings onto two sections, the primary research and the secondary research. All information will be displayed in order, starting with primary research and then moving onto the secondary research. The main source of information for primary research were questionnaires, and for the secondary research it was internet and occasionally books. There are going to be 10 graphs or pie charts displayed below, showing the data collected from questionnaires. Other sources of data such as interviews, were qualitative and so they will be used for qualitative analysis in the conclusions section. Nevertheless, the secondary research will also be covered and all data will be presented. Below the author has ullustrated the structure of the entire research and the order in which all data will be presented in the findings section: Primary Research Questionnaire 1 - Focus Gorup Old Website Interview 1 - Rhyan De La Isla Old Website Questionnaire 2 - Focus Group New Website Interview 2 - Rhyan De La Isla New Website
Secondary Research Internet Books
The majority of people fail to deliver a high quality project due to the fact that their findings section is not comprehensive enough and sometimes not understandable for the reader. Therefore, it is highly important to illustrate the data properly. The author has used graphs to present nearly all data for the findings section. This is because graphs show a clear contrast between the different pieces of information. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 32
Primary Research Analysis Questionnaire 1 The author has started the questionnaire with a very general question of how people would rate the old website. The main purpose of this question was to compare a general opinion of people over the old and new websites. Usually people tend to forget details over time, and so the author has placed this question as first on both questionnaires so that people could make a snap decision and give their opinion immediately after reviewing the website.
Rating of the Old & New Websites

30 Number of People 25 20 15 10 5 0 Worst Not Good Acceptable Rating of the Website Good Excellent
As you can see, the statistics from old and new websites were both illustrated on the graph. Old website presented as red and the new website presented as blue. This because the author wanted to make a comparison between the two websites, since both questionnaires started with the same question about rating. There were 47 people who visited both websites and the majority of people thought that the new website was much better than the old one. This is clearly visible as 16 people gave a rate of worst - not good for the old website, and another 17 thought that it was acceptable. Only 14 people thought that the website was good, but no one have a rate of 'excellent'. Whereas the new website did not receive any rates of 'worst - not good', only 3 'acceptable' rates, and 44 people gave a positive rating to the website, with majority of choices as 'excellent'. The graph clearly shows that the JobWellDone.cz website was noticeably improved by TopWebDesigners and the majority of people agreed with it.
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After the author asked people to give a generic rate of the old website. It was necessary to determine specific factors that could influence their decision. Therefore, the second question was asking people of what aspects people disliked about the website. Since the old JobWellDone website was built many years ago, it was evident that the website was lacking in many ways and so obviously the first thing people wanted to share was their negative points about it. This helped the web design company to avoid many mistakes in developing the new site and knowing what factors annoy many visitors.
What People Disliked About the Old Website

25 Number of People 20 15 10 Old Website 5 0 Nothing It's fine Simplicity Poor design Lack of information Lack of images Other
Chosen Option
As you can see on the graph many choices received quite similar number of votes. Which means that the website itself was lacking in almost every criteria and had to be completely renovated. Majority of people voted for 'poor design' as the most negative aspect of the old website. Therefore, TopWebDesigners had to focus on better design and appearance of the website. Of course since there is such a limited amount of time and resources, it was impossible to carry out a further investigation in regards to what kind of design people are looking for. Because there are many factors that must be covered to know exactly what people would want the new website to look like. However, this question in general showed the web design agency that they should work on a better level of design and then focus on content or functionality. Nevertheless, this question demonstrate what TopWebDesigners should avoid while developing the new website. For instance, if many people disliked the lack of information on the website. Then that means the design agency should add more information or images on the website, comparing to the previous site. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 34
The next stage - after people explained what they did not liked about the website - was to find out what people think should be improved. While both of these questions seem to be similar, the purpose of the second question which asked for negative points was to find out what the web design agency should 'avoid' while working on the new website. Whereas, the third question asking about improvements, helped the company to focus on things that should be improved the most.
What Should Be Improved

25 Number of People 20 15 10 5 0 More Description Gallery/Portfolio Easier Navigation Contact Form of Services Added Chosen Option Other
As you can see on the graph, the majority of people thought that the website was lacking in the description of services. Therefore, making it hard for people to understand what JobWellDone actually offer. As a result, TopWebDesigners had to work on a more detailed description of services that the company offers. At the end, people were a lot more pleased with the new website due to the fact that all services were clearly described and the website made more sense. Many people also requested a gallery or portfolio with pictures to be available, so that people could see examples of work provided by Rhyan. Nevertheless people also asked for a better navigation system that would allow the visitors to browse through different pages of the website, and a contact form which they can use to communicate with the owner. Four people or of 45 have chosen 'other' and given their personal opinion of what should be improved. That data was qualitative and so it will only be used to backup the conclusions. Latterly this question became one of the most important aspects of the research because it allowed the web design company to come up with a perfect solution for JobWellDone which the majority of clients liked. Therefore, helping the author to successfully achieve the aim of the project. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 35
After the major points have been covered, as to what improvements have to be carried out or what aspects of the website people did not like. It was important to focus on more specific things that were yet highly valuable. The fourth question was asking people whether they would prefer an onpage reservation form which they can use to make a reservation or schedule a meeting with Rhyan directly on the website. This question was found to be very important because previously, a lot of clients that Rhyan has dealt with asked for a reservation form to be available on the site. Therefore, the author wanted to focus on that aspect and find out whether that was true or false.
Should Reservation Form be Added?

40 Number of People 30 20 10 0 Yes Chosen Option No
As you can see the research showed the many clients did in fact want a reservation form to be available on the website. Therefore, TopWebDesigners had to come up with a special form that allowed people to schedule a meeting with Rhyan or make a reservation of his services. This question impacted the final results and satisfaction of the users. Since the aim of the project was to find out whether TopWebDesigners could offer effective and quality services, they key attribute of this goal was to make sure that JobWellDone website gave positive results to Rhyan De La Isla in terms of customers and more revenue. By researching and placing reservation form on the website, a lot of customers were happy with the fact that they could work with Rhyan more easily and many new visitors were more persuaded to make an appointment without having to contact Rhyan. Future research may show how positively the reservation form has impacted the business JobWellDone.
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The next aspect of the website that the author wanted to research was whether the level design of the website could affect the purchasing decision of the visitors. This was a very important question because it revealed the importance of website design and how people could be repelled by the company only by visiting their website. Very often people tend to visit random websites from where they want to order something and sometimes it seems like the website offers great services but then when they look at the appearance of the website they tend to think that the level of design of the website could also represent the level of services. This was not only important for JobWellDone, but also for the author as an IT consultant, and TopWebDesigners in general. When they will be working on other projects, they would know how the design could affect trust and so help their clients more effectively.
Does the website design affect visitor's trust?

30 25 Number of People 20 15 10 5 0 Yes No Chosen Option Other
If you look at the graph you will see that over 58% of people agreed that because of the poor website design they did not feel like trusting the company. However, 40 of people thought that the design of the website did not affect their level of trust in anyway. Therefore, the design in overall is not so crucial when it comes to trusting a company, yet it still has in impact.
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The next aspect of the website that the author wanted to research was whether the level of website design and functionality could affect the purchasing decision of the visitors. This was a very important question because it revealed the importance of website design and how people could be repelled by the company only by visiting their website. On the internet people sometimes tend to avoid buying from certain websites even though they trust the companies. Usually, this happens when a website does not have a higher-level of appearance or functionality. Therefore people tend to think that the design level of the website would represent the quality level of their services. As a result, people tend not to order their services because they believe the quality may lacking just as the website.
Does the poor level website design affect customer's purchasing decision?
30 Number of People 25 20 15 10 5 0 Yes No Chosen Option Other
As you can see the results on the graph show that this opinion of the author was true and many people did in fact think that they were less likely to use the services of JobWellDone due to their website. Even though many people said that the level of web design would not affect their purchasing decision, the majority of people thought differently. Therefore, it was important to consider working on the functionality and web design that could naturally attract and persuade visitors to make a call and inquire about the services that JobWellDone offers.
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Questionnaire 2 The second questionnaire was given out to the same people, after the website was completed. This was done to ensure that TopWebDesigners have really met the expectations of the JobWellDone customers and users. The current findings section of the second survey will start with the second question. This is because the second questionnaire started with the same question as the first survey. Moreover, a graph (on page 30) represented results from the questionnaires of the new and the old websites, with a full description of what was happening. Therefore, the author believes that it is unnecessary to include the same graph once again. The second question on the survey asked people whether TopWebDesigners have met their expectations by renovating the website. This question was crucial to understand whether the web design company was able to understand the users and provide quality web design services that could satisfy the visitors of the website.
Did the New Website Meet Expectations of the Focus Group?

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Yes Chosen Option No Number of People
As you can see on the graph, all people agreed that their expectations were met. Which means that the web design agency was able to meet all the expectations of the visitors and users of the website JobWellDone.cz. This clearly proves that the company TopWebDesigners is able to deliver high quality services and satisfy its clients. This was a highly valuable question which directly affected the achievement of the project objectives.
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Even though the expectations of all the members in the focus group were met, it was still likely that some little errors still persisted. This clearly shown as not all members rated the new website as 'excellent' though everybody said that their expectations have been met. This can only mean that all the members of the focus group were satisfied with the new website, but some of them still wanted certain improvements to be applied. Therefore, the author wanted to analyze how people would still want to improve the website. Nevertheless, that could also help TopWebDesigners to see their mistakes if many of these improvements were requested earlier but not delivered.
Does the new website needs any more improvement?

40 Number of People 30 20 10 0 Yes Chosen Option No
If you look at the graph, you will see that only 25% of people said that the website still has a room for improvement. However, the other 75% of people said that there is nothing else that can be done to improve the new website. This is a very positive factors, which shows that TopWebDesigners were able to listen to and satisfy the majority of the focus group. Only a certain amount of people still thought that the website was a little underdeveloped. On the questionnaire itself which was available online, if people selected 'yes' meaning that they still think that the website still needed more improvement. Then a new box popped up asking what could be improved on the new website, so that people could share their opinion. This information was qualitative and so can only be used to make assumptions in the conclusions section.
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The final question in the second questionnaire was asking people whether they were now more likely to engage and purchase on the website, or set up an appointment with Rhyan. This point was crucial to understand because it was important for TopWebDesigners to make sure that the owner of the website JobWellDone.cz also benefits from the website in financial and customer relationship point of view. This was one of the major aspects of the quality of services that TopWebDesigners provide. Therefore, the author wanted to ask the focus group whether they are more likely to trust and so purchase from JobWellDone, after the website was renovated.
Are People More Likely to Order Now?

50 Number of People 40 30 20 10 0 Yes Chosen Option No
As you can see on the graph, only 6.25% of people still did not want to order from JobWellDone. However, there are many other factors that could influence their decision and so it is almost impossible to have 100% people wanting to order from your website. However, 93.75% people said that they would order from JobWellDone, just by visiting the new website. As it brings more trust than the previous site. Comparing to the last website, over 41% of people did not feel like working with the company JobWellDone due to the level of their website. Whereas now, only 6.25% still follow that opinion. This shows a great difference in how people react to a better level of web design, as it builds trust by making people believe that the level of services provided by that company is going to be as good as the level of their website.
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Price Competiveness of TopWebDesigners Since the website JobWellDone.cz was lacking in many aspects including design, functionality and marketing, there were quite a few things that had to be changed. TopWebDesigners have agreed upon the payment of 19,000 K based on the following improvements that were carried out; hosting & domain management was free, consultation and evaluation of the labor was 2,000 K, the redesign of the template and management of the content was 8,000 K, the set up fee for a fully functioning website was 1,500 K, and the marketing of the website involving PPC, social media advertising and search engine optimization was another 7,500 K fee. Therefore, the total price of the website JobWellDone.cz was 19,000 K. This was agreed upon with the owner of the website Rhyan De La Isla.
Pricing Rates of Leading Web Design Agencies in Prague

400000 350000 300000 Price Range 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0 Maximum Price (CZK) Minimum Price (CZK) TopWebDesigners 25000 8000 Go-Globe 220000 73000 Web2Go 12000 8000 Kinetik 300000 40000
As it is visible on the graph, the only competitor to TopWebDesigners in terms of pricing, is the company Web2Go. Which has a price range of 8 to 12 thousand crowns. The other two companies clearly have higher prices and their minimum fees are higher than the maximum prices of TopWebDesigners. Therefore, the target group of TopWebDesigners which consists of small businesses and individuals will be less likely to work with competing companies. Further information from the verbal communication with Rhyan De La Isla in regards to pricing and other features of the website, was placed below. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 42
First interview with Rhyan De La Isla
1) What hosting do you currently have? Provided by a friend 2) Do you need the ability to update the website on your own (CMS like Joomla or Wordpress) Yes I do, other than iweb 3) What is your timeframe? No more one month. 4) Who is your target audience and sphere of business? Expats, non-czech speaking people. I want to send a message of quality service at ease of communicating in english. The category of business is home services, home improvement, or repair services. 5) What pages are you interested in (homepage, about, contact, etc.) Homepage, about, contact, services, gallery, customer feedback 6) Do you want TopWebDesigners to find and modify an existing template (much cheaper) or build everything from scratch? Build from existing template 7) What color scheme are your interested in? White background, and then go with a color scheme blue orange 8) Do you want the website to be simple yet professional, or have more style elements? Simple yet professional is good 10) Do you need any password protected areas? Possibly in the future, it would be nice to have a page for every individual client with information of their flat, and the job Ive done for them. Of course it would have to be password protected and I would personally create accounts for them to access that page. 11) How do you currently handle your business emails, are you interested in private email addresses like info@jobwelldone.cz) Before I was using private email like gmail, and I did not like it because I it always mixed up with personal and business emails. So yes, I would really like to have a personal email like info@jobwelldone.cz 12) Would you like to have a contact form and a reservation for on the website? I would like a to have a contact form for client to send requests on their projects. And that they will be able to up load photos if needed. 13) Are there any special preferences or requests that you have? Have the site connected to google adcent, ad word, and analytics. 14) Would you like TopWebDesigners to make an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign to increase your rankings on search engines like Google and Yahoo Yes.
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The interview above was designed for Rhyan De La Isla to be used before the website JobWellDone.cz was reconstructed, to investigate any requests from the owner of the website and discover more improvements that can be applied. The interview started with a question that asked about the current hosting used by JobWellDone.cz. This was important to determine as the web design company needed to know whether to use a new hosting provider or remain with the existing one. The next question asked whether Rhyan would need to be able to manage the content of the website by himself, meaning that the web design company had to construct a website with a control panel. The following questions in the interview asked about the timeframe, audience and navigation of the website. All of these questions were crucial for TopWebDesigners because they showed how fast the website needs to be done, what sphere of businesses the website should be targeted for, and what kind of pages should be included in the website. The next questions were more focused on the design of the website and its functionality. The questions asked whether Rhyan would like to use an existing template to reduce costs, or start the website from scratch. Moreover, he was asked of what color scheme he was interested in, whether he wants the website to look professional or casual, and if he wanted any password protected pages. Those four questions revealed how the website had to look like and whether there were any protected pages that the web designers had to secure. Nevertheless, Rhyan was also asked if he already had a private email such as info@jobwelldone.cz and if not, TopWebDesigners were able to offer this free of charge as a bonus. This was a small opportunity to add value into the services of their company among their competitors, as others charge money for such service. Furthermore, the author has asked Rhyan whether he was interested in adding a contact form on the website and how he wanted it to function, this was important as such factors directly impact the relationship between clients and businesses. In addition to that, Rhyan was also asked whether he has any special requests that the web designers should of focused at more, and if he was interested in any marketing or search engine help. This was important to investigate since marketing of the website JobWellDone.cz would help Rhyan to achieve more sales, and for TopWebDesigners success of their clients is just as important as it is for the owner of the website.
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Second interview with Rhyan De La Isla
1) Are you able to update the website on your own? Not at this time 2) Did TopWebDesigners meet their deadline? Yes, better than expected! 3) Did TopWebDesigners meet your expectations in regards to the functionality and design of the website? Yes, the website works great. 4) Do you think the new website is appropriate for your target audience? Yes. 5) Was all the necessary information including text and images placed on the website? Yes. 6) Did TopWebDesigners meet all the arranged fees with no requirement for any additional payments? Yes, I didn't have to pay any extra fees. 7) Did TopWebDesigners offer professional consultation and support? Yes. 8) Have you experienced or think that the SEO and marketing solutions offered by TopWebDesigners will increase the traffic and sales of your website? Yes. 9) Did TopWebDesigners set up private emails for you (info@jobwelldone.cz) Yes. 10) In overall, how would you rate the services offered by TopWebDesigners.cz TopWebDesigners.cz has shown us new and updated styles on helping to improve the jobwelldone.cz site. We rate them 10 out of 10.
The second questionnaire was fully focused on the satisfactory level of Rhyan. The author tried to investigate whether the company has met its deadline and did not take any extra time, whether the appearance and functionality was done on a high level, and if the company has met the budget of the client. Nonetheless, the author also investigated if TopWebDesigners offered a high level of support and if the website of the client has benefitted from the reconstruction in overall. This information was crucial to understand in order to evaluate to competiveness of TopWebDesigners.cz. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 45
Secondary Research Analysis Secondary research is a very important step of the research, as it brings more value into your project by backing up the primary research. The main purpose of the secondary research is to show the accuracy of your research and find information which is hard to get through the primary research. With the use of secondary research the author has found out several things, such as; whether TopWebDesigners could offer competitive pricing and quality of services, in comparison with top web design studios in Prague. In addition to that, the author was able to use secondary research to see whether Rhyan De La Isla could have an opportunity cost by finding a better deal in terms of quality and design. By searching for top web design agencies in Prague, one of the website that seemed to be appearing in top positions was go-globe.com which is a web design studio based in Prague. Prices of services (Go-Globe.com, 2011) offered by that company range from 73,000 to 220,000 CZK and additionally to that 24,500 CZK for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. Another top web design agency (Prague TV Guide, 2011) in Prague is a web design studio called Web2go. The prices of their services range from 8,000 - 12,000 CZK which is found to be very cheap comparing to other web development services in Prague. However, the author has also found that they build website in CMS platforms such as Wordpress or Joomla, which tends to be very unprofessional and too easy to make. Therefore, the output the clients get cannot be compared with a regular website. Finally, another website with positive reviews and high rankings (Expats.cz, 2011) is Kinetik. This is a web design agency based in Czech Republic. They offer quality web design services, and according to reviews do their job on a very high level. However, their prices range from 40,000 to 300,000 CZK according to some of their clients and price inquiry that they have provided. This information was very valuable for the author as it helped to make valid comparisons and detect whether TopWebDesigners are able to offer competitive prices and services. The final comparisons and analysis will be done in the conclusions section where services and prices of TopWebDesigners will be analyzed and judged against the top competitors.
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Evaluation of Findings
In the following section of the project, the author has evaluated all steps of the findings and described its positive aspects. Furthermore, the author has explained what have gone wrong and could be avoided next time. For the findings section the author has presented the information that was gathered during the research and illustrated it with the use of graphs and objective clarification. The data was collected with a use of primary and secondary research, which was then evaluated. The data analyzed for primary research was mainly gathered through questionnaires that were given out to 45 people on forums, such as forums.digitalpoint.com. After the data was gathered it was then transferred onto a statistical software such as Excel which allowed the author to illustrate the information in graphs. The secondary research was primarily conducted through internet and occasionally books that were found in a local library. The information was mainly qualitative. However, the major points were analyzed in the findings section and were used in conclusions to backup the primary research and allow the author to achieve the objectives. There were certain difficulties during the research. First of all the author had to form a focus group and it was uneasy to find many people would be interested in reviewing a website. However, due to the reputation of the author on certain forums, it was possible to gather people who could go as potential clients of JobWellDone and review the website. Although more time was spent on the formulation of the group than it was expected. Nevertheless, in some occasions people gave unclear answers that was difficult to analyze during the findings. Since many people who answered the questionnaires had English as their second language, many misunderstandings occurred. On the whole, the author was able to conduct a fairly accurate analysis even with the use of imprecise information given by some of the interviewees. However, this has also taken more time and so became a small issue during the making of the findings. In the future, the author will try to improve the research by having easier questions and giving more available options on the questionnaire. Therefore, people would be able to understand it easier and select the answers that were already prepared for them, instead of writing a related but imprecise answer. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 47
Conclusion
The final and most important phase of the research is conclusion. In this section of the project the author will determine the outcomes and find out whether the objectives have been met. The author will analyze all the data and come up with appropriate evaluation of the findings. The author will investigate whether TopWebDesigners do offer quality and competitive services, or not. In addition to that, the author will detect any potential enhancements of the web agency in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of work. Nevertheless, a summary of positive and negative sides of the project will also be covered. This will reveal the strength of the project and things that went right while conducting a research or working on the findings, as well as negative aspects that affected the research in unexpected ways that could be avoided next time. Consequently, the author will explain potential improvements of the project that could be implemented for any further research. The aim of the project was to investigate the quality of web design services offered by TopWebDesigners.cz- using JobWellDone.cz as a case study. The primary objective of the research was to find out how TopWebDesigners could improve their efficiency and effectiveness of work as well as understanding whether they are capable of offering quality and competitive services on the Czech market. Since there are many business that could be interested in web design services, it was impossible to base a research on the general target market as it would lead to inaccurate results due to lack of time and resources. Therefore, the author has based the project on a website JobWellDone.cz as a case study. This helped TopWebDesigners.cz to improve their services by renovating the website of JobWellDone and understanding whether they were capable of delivering everything as it was requested by users and the owner of the website. To follow the project accurately and achieve appropriate results, it was necessary to determine the findings of the project after the aim was set. The following 3 objectives were used for this project; i. To conduct an observational analysis and explore potential improvements of the website JobWellDone.cz ii. To analyze the end result and investigate whether TopWebDesigners were capable of meeting the expectations of the focus group and client. Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 48
iii.
To conclude whether TopWebDesigners fulfilled the expectations of the client and to highlight possible limitations for improvement.
In order to fulfil the objectives, the author had to come up with a methodology plan which could guide the author in finding the right information. The methodology covered a detailed description and plan of each objective, as well as the general method of research, timeline, and ways of processing the data. In general, the methodology helped the author in shortening time of finding the right information, as well as allocating the resources and time. To reach the objectives there were two types of research involved, primary research and secondary research. For the primary research, the author has formed a focus group that consisted of 45 people. This was certainly enough as more than 10% of the monthly website visitors were used to determine what the website lacked in design and functionality. The focus group helped the author to understand what the website needed to be improved and after the web design agency did their work, the focus group also helped to determine whether their expectations were met. Questionnaires were used to gather this information since there were over 45 people it was necessary to use research methods that would provide a lot of information quickly and easy to analyze. The secondary research was also used in finding information that was hard to gather with a use of primary research. Nevertheless, the secondary research helped the author to backup many decisions and make objective choices, which then pointed the project in the right direction. After all the necessary information was gathered - based on the methodology. Everything was transferred onto a statistical software called Excel which then helped the author to analyze the information. After the results of the research were all formatted and easy to understand, the author started working on the findings section where he has explained everything in detail with a use of graphs and other relevant charts to illustrate the information accurately. Graphs were very useful in analyzing the information visually which made it easier to determine the results and understand what exactly the author has accomplished. Nevertheless, graphs allowed the author to compare important information and make it clear for the readers whether the focus group was satisfied with the results of TopWebDesigners.cz.
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After the focus group was formed, the author has given out questionnaires that were asking people whether they liked or disliked the old website of JobWellDone and whether there was anything that they wanted to be changed. After everyone filled out the questionnaires and gave their opinion, the author has worked together with the website design agency to determine whether they could incorporate all the given ideas of the users and come up with a new website that would satisfy all the users of JobWellDone. After the website was renovated, a new questionnaire was given out to the same people and they were asked to share their opinion of the new website. As it was clearly shown in the findings section, 16 people gave the old website a rate of worst/not good, and another 17 people thought that it was acceptable. Only 14 people said that it was good and nobody found the old website to be 'excellent'. However, the new website of JobWellDone.cz has not received any rates of 'worst/not good' at all, and only 3 people rated it as acceptable. 44 people gave a positive rating to the website, with the majority of choices being 'excellent'. This obviously shows that the TopWebDesigners agency have successfully renovated the website and met the expectations of the majority of people. When people were questioned of how the old website could be improved, they answered to the questions giving various ideas that ranged through several different aspects. This shows that the old website was lacking in my ways, and not just one aspect. However, over 20 people said that the old website was majorly lacking in appearance and so the web design agency had to primarily focus on the design of the website. TopWebDesigners took all the opinions of the focus group in consideration while they were working on the new website. As a result 100% of people in the focus group said that the new website has met their expectations. Therefore, TopWebDesigners are in a strong position to claim that their quality of services is of a high standard. As they have clearly proved that they can satisfy all the needs of their clients. Based on the interview with the actual owner of the website - Rhyan De La Isla - he is in fact happy with the new website and all of his expectations were also met. He believes that many of his clients will enjoy the new website and find it useful in scheduling meetings and receiving updates on the services of Rhyan.
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Even though all the members of the focus group said that their expectations were met, there were still a few who believed that the new website could still be slightly improved. Therefore, 12 out of 47 members of the group said that the new website could be improved in a variety of ways. Mainly people believed that they website could be improved the implementation of green and blue as well as adding a shopping cart. Some people gave vague answers just by saying "design" and others thoughts that the font should be larger. However, these were all slight enhancements that people requested and many of them were not appropriate. For example, JobWellDone does not offer any type of products on their website and so a shopping cart would be irrelevant. Therefore, some opinions of people were not taken seriously. Nonetheless the majority of the focus group still believed that nothing could be improved about the new website. Therefore, TopWebDesigners remained with the new website. Finally, the focus group was also asked whether they were likely to order from the old website or at least contact for inquiry. As a result, the majority of people answered positively to this question and said that they were less likely to order from the website due to its poor level of design and functionality. However, after the website was renovated and people were asked the same question. Over 93.75% of people said that they were likely to order from the website. The other 6.25% people said no. Though it is impossible to predict their thoughts, it is more likely that they were just not interested in the services offered by JobWellDone.cz. It is now a well known fact that TopWebDesigners have successfully delivered the website on time and met all the expectations of the owner of JobWellDone.cz and the focus group. Nonetheless, the final price of the website stayed the same and there were no other costs involved for the owner. TopWebDesigners have accurately calculated all the costs and did not need any additional funding. This was especially evident from the interview with the owner of the website, De La Isla (2011) stated "Yes the company met all the fees as we agreed, and I didn't have to pay anything extra for
the work"
As it was previously mentioned the only real competitor that TopWebDesigners have in terms of pricing, is the company Web2Go. However, they only do websites in the basic CMS web editors Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 51
such as Wordpress or Joomla. The quality of websites that are done through these platforms are much lower than the regular websites. Therefore, their prices are in fact high if it comes to making a CMS (Content Management System) websites. However, the quality of their websites are certainly lower. Since TopWebDesigners offer professional web design services that are done with the use of IT knowledge. Therefore, Web2Go cannot be taken as a serious competitor. As a result, TopWebDesigners certainly offer one of the most competitive prices on the Czech market for web development. Nevertheless, the web design agency has meet its deadlines, as it was agreed with the owner. Thus, there was no exact date, the owner of the website wanted the website to be done within one month and not more - as it was mentioned in the interview with Rhyan De La Isla. In addition to the fact that TopWebDesigners offer high quality and competitive services, due to the objectives of the project the author still wanted to carry out an analysis that could reveal potential improvements of the company or any threats that should be avoided. Therefore, a SWOT analysis was used to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company. Strengths: Brand name "TopWebDesigners" Experienced in the field of web development Offer affordable prices and high quality services Free hosting and domains for clients
Weaknesses: It is an English speaking company located in Czech Republic Small portfolio No physical office
Opportunities: Offer more web designs and range of programming services Offer services on an international level Create a custom admin panel on all websites, for clients to manage their websites easier
Threats: Threat of another company with similar prices and services to enter the market Threat of people choosing price of quality and going for cheaper designers Threat of people making the websites themselves by learning about CMS/web editors Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 52
Converting Weaknesses to Strengths: Hire Czech speaking personnel Enlarge the portfolio of the company with more clients Open an office in Prague
Converting Threats to Opportunities: Offer the lowest prices and improve the quality of services Become one of the most affordable web design companies in Prague Provide highest level of websites that are not possible to make with CMS or web editors
The author has detected certain strengths and weakness that the company has. Nevertheless, presented how TopWebDesigners could turn their weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities. All of the improvements that were covered above can be used to improve the effectiveness of web design services offered by TopWebDesigners.cz. Nonetheless, the company could also take into consideration the feedback of the owner of JobWellDone and the focus group, to detect any strategies that the agency can implement for improving its services or efficiency. Thus, there is no direct answer as to what users or the owner would wish to be improved about the company, as the was no strong argument on that matter. The owner was satisfied with the services, and the majority of the focus group was satisfied with the new website. There were only a few requests for improvement and many of them were irrelevant as they asked for a different colour of the website which is their personal preference, or a shopping cart which is completely unnecessary as the website does not sell any products. Therefore, TopWebDesigners can mainly focus on improving their services and website based on the information covered above in the SWOT analysis. Taking all things into account, the author believes that the company TopWebDesigners.cz is capable of offering high quality web design services and competitive prices as well as delivering the work on time. There are certain internal improvements that were detected and covered above, which the company can also implement to improve its effectiveness of work. The research itself was quite interesting for the author as the field of web development is exactly what Vlad Medvedev currently works with. However, there were still some errors and mistakes
53
during the project and the author believes that based on the human nature we all make mistakes and cannot predict any obstacles. The major mistake of the author was starting the proposal without having a strong agreement with the guidance counsellor in regards to the aim of the project. Therefore, the author has spent a lot of valuable time working on the project and then redoing all the work. Other obstacles have also occurred. For instance, some people gave irrelevant information and did not intent to provide quality answers for the questionnaires. Nevertheless, the author has also experienced problems with managing the lengths of the project and fitting all the information. Next time doing the research, the author will make sure that the questionnaires are even easier to understand and have straight-forward answers to help the interviewees make easier decisions and give precise answers. Nevertheless, the author will make sure that the aims, objectives and all the important aspects of the research are always agreed upon with the guidance counsellor before starting proposal or project. Finally, the author will also try better in estimating the layout and size of the content for any future projects. In addition to that, the author will also write more precisely and make sure not to use any irrelevant information. In general, the author believes that the project was successful as all the objectives were met and the author has found out that TopWebDesigners only have a few internal improvements that could affect the effectives of the company. Nevertheless, the project was done according to the timeline even though there was a set of events that interfered with the project. The research itself was only based on JobWellDone as a case study and not the whole Prague. In addition to that, only 45 people were used to gather the information which is slightly over 10% of the monthly traffic that the website JobWellDone.cz receives. Therefore, the results were not as accurate because there are many other businesses that TopWebDesigners would not be able to offer similar services to, as they did to JobWellDone.cz. In addition to that, not all people visiting JobWellDone.cz were questioned. Therefore, not all the users might be satisfied with new website. However, based on the results, the author has achieved a positive outcome. Though, there is still a room for improvement.
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Recommendations
In overall, the author has found this research very interesting and in fact it was successfully carried out. The reason why the author was motivated to do this project is because the researcher owns the TopWebDesigners company and the project itself was based on improving it. Therefore, it was in direct interest of the author to achieve positive results and find out whether there were any potential improvements for the company. In the proposal of the project, the author has set several goals and prepared a list of methods and techniques of gathering and analyzing the data. The end result was satisfactory as the author has successfully achieved all objectives of the project, and followed the timeline which was set at the start. Furthermore, the costs of the project did not exceed the budget that was previously set. Moreover, the researcher did not break any code of ethics during the research and analysis of the project. All research methods were used appropriately and enough number of people were questioned and interviewed for the findings. The contingency plan was not used and so it shows that the project was successful. However, as it was mentioned there was still a room for improvement that could be used for future projects. Most of the problems occurred for mainly concerning the primary and secondary research, especially when it came to the questionnaires. In the future, the author can spend more time on development of the questionnaires and make sure that all the questions are to the point and that the interviewees understand everything before giving any answers. Nevertheless, more people could of been questioned to get more accurate results, as only focusing on JobWellDone.cz was not enough. However, this was not currently possible as this project did not have such amount of time or resources to carry out a large volume of research and analysis. For the TopWebDesigners the author can recommend to hire an Czech speaking person as the company is located in the Czech Republic and limiting the speaking languages of the company to only English could crucially affect the sales in a negative way. Furthermore, the company can open an office in Prague to have a physical address where clients can schedule a meeting. Therefore, people will have more trust and be willing to work as they will know that there are real people
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working and that the company is not only based online. Nevertheless, after TopWebDesigners complete a project they can add the websites they create into their portfolio and make it visible for the clients. Therefore people will see the quality of work they make. For the JobWellDone.cz website, the author would recommend spreading more words about the company and sharing its website url as widely as possible. Therefore this would eventually impact the rankings of their website in a positive way and drive more traffic to the website. Which will gradually affect the sales and bring more leads.
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References
Web pages: Top Web Designers (2011) About us - Top Web Designers. [ONLINE] Available at: http://topwebdesigners.cz/about-us. (Accessed 05 October 2011). Google Public Data Explorer (2011) World Bank, World Development Indicators. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=it_net_user_p2&idim =country:CZE&dl=en&hl=en&q=internet+usage+in+czech+republic. (Accessed 03 October 2011). Job Well Done (2011) Job Well Done | English Speaking Handyman in Prague. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.jobwelldone.cz. (Accessed 05 October 2011). ReStore (2009) Online questionnaires. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.restore.ac.uk/orm/questionnaires/quesads.htm (Accessed: 8 October 2011). ReStore (2009) Online interviews. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.restore.ac.uk/orm/interviews/intads.htm (Accessed: 8 October 2011). Project Huddle Limited (2011) Advantages of time management. [ONLINE] Available at: http://time-management-huddle.com/advantages.html (Accessed: 11 October 2011). Lindlof, T.R. and Taylor, B.C. (2002) Qualitative Communication Research Methods. 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. JotForm (2011) JotForm - Easiest Form Builder. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.jotform.com/. (Accessed 15 October 2011). Citations/Quotes: De La Isla, R. (2011) 'Improvement of the website JobWellDone.cz'. Interview with Rhyan De La Isla. Interviewed by Vlad Medvedev for The Research Project, 17 October, p.46.
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Books/Magazines/Newspapers:
Cleland, D. & Gareis, L. (2006) Global Project Management Handbook : Planning, Organizing and Controlling International Projects (2nd Edition). Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing
Bushway, R. (2003) Managing Research. Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing Adams, P., Brace, K. & Hague, I. (2006) Introduction to Market and Social Research. Publisher: Kogan Page, Limited
Powell, T. (2002) Web Design : The Complete Reference (2nd Edition). Publisher: McGrawHill Professional Publishing
Eccher, C. (2010) Professional Web Design : Techniques and Templates (4th Edition). Publisher: Course Technolgy
Lecture Notes: Gannon, D. (2011) Week 1: Project and Objectives. [Online]. Available at: http://courses.praguecollege.cz/course/view.php?id=1285 (Accessed: 3 October 2011) Gannon, D. (2011) Week 2: Background and Justification. [Online]. Available at: http://courses.praguecollege.cz/course/view.php?id=1285 (Accessed: 10 October 2011) Gannon, D. (2011) Week 3: Methodology. [Online]. Available at: http://courses.praguecollege.cz/course/view.php?id=1285 (Accessed: 17 October 2011) Gannon, D. (2011) Week 4: Research Strategy. [Online]. Available at: http://courses.praguecollege.cz/course/view.php?id=1285 (Accessed: 24 October 2011)
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Appendix
Old JobWellDone Website - Focus Group Review Submission Date 2011-10-22 16:20:33 2011-10-22 15:41:17 2011-10-22 15:29:12 2011-10-22 15:23:43 2011-10-22 15:20:29 2011-10-22 15:05:56 2011-10-22 14:41:10 2011-10-22 14:38:26 2011-10-22 14:35:54 2011-10-22 14:32:55 2011-10-22 14:10:52 2011-10-22 14:00:07 2011-10-22 13:55:11 2011-10-22 13:52:11 2011-10-22 13:49:32 2011-10-22 13:39:04 2011-10-22 13:36:17 2011-10-22 13:23:34 2011-10-22 13:21:30 2011-10-22 13:07:23 2011-10-22 12:49:06 2011-10-22 12:41:12 2011-10-22 12:31:15 2011-10-22 12:24:15 2011-10-22 12:20:49 2011-10-22 12:19:23 2011-10-22 12:14:26 2011-10-22 11:55:50 2011-10-22 11:38:39 2011-10-22 11:27:36 2011-10-22 11:22:52 2011-10-22 11:15:24 2011-10-22 11:08:43 2011-10-22 11:07:37 2011-10-22 10:49:52 2011-10-22 10:46:09 2011-10-22 10:43:14 2011-10-22 10:38:06 2011-10-22 10:33:16 2011-10-22 10:33:12 How would you rate the website? >> Rate Not Good Acceptable Good Not Good Acceptable Acceptable Good Not Good Good Not Good Good Good Acceptable Good Acceptable Acceptable Good Not Good Not Good Good Acceptable Good Acceptable Good Acceptable Not Good Worst Acceptable Acceptable Not Good Good Good Worst Acceptable Good Not Good Not Good Acceptable Acceptable Good Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 59
2011-10-22 10:30:03 2011-10-22 10:21:11 2011-10-22 10:11:50 2011-10-22 10:06:12 2011-10-22 10:06:01 2011-10-22 09:58:21 2011-10-22 09:47:51 2011-10-21 12:15:37
Not Good Not Good Not Good Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Not Good Not Good
What do you not like about the website? Lack of information Poor design Lack of images Nothing - It's fine Simplicity Lack of images Poor design Lack of images Nothing - It's fine
....
Lack of information Lack of images Poor design Nothing - It's fine Nothing - It's fine Nothing - It's fine Simplicity Lack of images Lack of information Poor design Poor design Lack of images Poor design Simplicity Nothing - It's fine Poor design Simplicity Nothing - It's fine Lack of images Poor design Lack of information
What would you like to be improved? More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added More Description of Services Contact Form More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Contact Form Easier Navigation More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Contact Form More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Other Easier Navigation Easier Navigation Gallery/Portfolio Added More Description of Services More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Other Gallery/Portfolio Added Gallery/Portfolio Added Easier Navigation Easier Navigation Gallery/Portfolio Added Gallery/Portfolio Added Gallery/Portfolio Added Easier Navigation Gallery/Portfolio Added Easier Navigation More Description of Services 60
Lack of images
Poor design Nothing - It's fine Poor design Poor design Simplicity Nothing - It's fine Lack of information Poor design Poor design Simplicity Poor design Nothing - It's fine Poor design Lack of information Lack of images Nothing - It's fine Lack of images Poor design Lack of information Lack of images Poor design Lack of information Simplicity Poor design Poor design Nothing - It's fine Poor design Simplicity Poor design Lack of images
Gallery/Portfolio Added Contact Form Gallery/Portfolio Added Contact Form More Description of Services Easier Navigation More Description of Services More Description of Services More Description of Services Other More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Contact Form More Description of Services Easier Navigation More Description of Services Easier Navigation
Gallery/Portfolio Added Easier Navigation More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added More Description of Services Contact Form Other Gallery/Portfolio Added More Description of Services More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Easier NavigationMore Description of Services More Description of Services Gallery/Portfolio Added Contact Form
Do you think on-page reservation form should be added? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Does the poor appearance/design of the website affect your trust to the company? No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 61
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Yes, I trust them less Other No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less No, it does not matter Yes, I trust them less
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Does the level of website design and functionality affect your purchasing decision? Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter No, it does not matter No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Other No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 63
No, it does not matter No, it does not matter Yes, I do not feel like buying from them because of the website
Your overall opinion of the website -Information is not adequate. -Website is not attractive and the description are not trust worthy. - lack of images This website should provide the online customer services where we can contact with the staff for the further assistant! i like the service of your website. all in one services. The site needs quite an improvement. Content looks good. But Images are missing. t will work out. The images aren't loading for me - is it supposed to look like this? (That it why I rated it poor design, because images are not loading) Content is ok, short and simple. But a few more pages for your company's website would be better (ABOUT US, CONTACT, SERVICES, PORTFOLIO / PHOTOS). Good luck! great site Not up to the standard by any means. this webpage is very nice.. Not good. It looks like some frame/features don't work out. I cannot see everything in my browsers. it is a good site Website is good and I like it. its ok but might be nice to have some improvements The website is just fine. It is recommended to make it some more descriptive. Design should be modified to look the appearance of the website more effective The site is good, but it lack images. Maybe there are images, but the site isn't loading them. Try to settle that, it will be better. Everything else is good... nice website. its good site but not best one so need little change on design The pictures didn't appear in my browser, so I don't think the website is designed well. The website doesn't look good mainly because i cant see the images It could be better. transparent page and menu The website is excellent and would do better if we add more in gallery and portfolio both, rest is fine.. I simply loved the designs! best site it is an acceptable site, keep the good job needs improvement Overall it seems like the site is only half way through to being done. This is probably the worst website design I've seen. site is a good average, there are plenty of real can be improved, I sincerely hope that you will do it nice keep going ;) Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 64
Definitely needs some improving very good design More Services and Options can be added for better understanding by the people all around the world. It has poor compatibility or maybe design because the photos aren't showing and the items seem to be misplaced You should add more content to website. A portfolio of your previous works will be an advantage A good site and I hope to develop more and that added some Showing videos The web design is very bad and the servers is very slow. Change the entire design and font. Move contact us information on the top. It is good. Add more images,colors and info..In this way looks like frogotten website.. The images and pictures are clearly define just put some background and layout to the web... It look like distorted,it cannot display the images This website definetly needs better design. It's poor apperance may "scare off" potential customer. It should have more information about services and the contact information should be more exposed. first of all, the page does not load completely, images can not be seen, links are not clickable, navigation through services categories is impossible, since the categories can not be clicked. The webpage needs a lot of improvement, and in the current situation it is not useful at all, any visitor would leave it and look for another webpage for the same service Is good but should be more attractive to compete. In that website every information should be given clearly and the design should be perfect. Its nice website! thanks I don't like the website because its too simple and seems likes its from 90s
New JobWellDone Website - Focus Group Review How would you rate the NEW website? >> Rate Excellent Acceptable Good Good Excellent Good Good Good Excellent Good Good Excellent Excellent Excellent Excellent Good Has the new website met all your expectations? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 65
Submission Date 2011-10-22 16:19:04 2011-10-22 16:00:45 2011-10-22 15:55:27 2011-10-22 15:52:37 2011-10-22 15:52:04 2011-10-22 15:46:35 2011-10-22 15:12:13 2011-10-22 14:59:35 2011-10-22 14:59:13 2011-10-22 14:52:02 2011-10-22 14:46:53 2011-10-22 14:35:15 2011-10-22 13:57:47 2011-10-22 13:56:50 2011-10-22 13:47:50 2011-10-22 13:43:18
2011-10-22 13:04:47 2011-10-22 12:59:45 2011-10-22 12:38:28 2011-10-22 12:36:38 2011-10-22 12:28:43 2011-10-22 12:20:08 2011-10-22 12:17:12 2011-10-22 12:16:04 2011-10-22 12:14:18 2011-10-22 12:08:36 2011-10-22 11:57:03 2011-10-22 11:44:09 2011-10-22 11:35:22 2011-10-22 11:19:43 2011-10-22 11:16:14 2011-10-22 11:12:40 2011-10-22 10:59:50 2011-10-22 10:55:49 2011-10-22 10:52:51 2011-10-22 10:52:35 2011-10-22 10:51:01 2011-10-22 10:49:25 2011-10-22 10:45:50 2011-10-22 10:45:41 2011-10-22 10:15:45 2011-10-22 10:14:33 2011-10-22 10:05:27 2011-10-22 10:02:26 2011-10-22 09:58:56 2011-10-22 09:56:06 2011-10-22 09:50:35 2011-10-21 12:16:13
Excellent Acceptable Excellent Excellent Excellent Excellent Good Good Excellent Good Excellent Good Excellent Excellent Excellent Excellent Good Acceptable Excellent Excellent Good Excellent Good Good Good Excellent Good Excellent Excellent Good Good Good
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Is there anything else that could be improved on the new website? No No No Yes No No No Yes No Yes
what is it?
Online Customer services
detail as font size, contrast , colours etc. I see that the website is based in Webpress, typical of the Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 66
"Archives" and "Categories" on the left side. I think it would be nicer if the website is recreated into something that does not replicate blog sites. No No No No Yes Yes No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes It is all whitish colour it would have look better if you use little bit blue or green light theme too. Option for online shopping & Google +1 tab is missing.
design
Top menu - different word colour - green
Change the font size and style with different types. vision
you can add blog/forums to be able to get new/other ideas from customers as well as their feedbacks on the product. Put some background and layout. the reservation form
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As the website changed, are you more likely to order from the company now? Yes No Yes
Your overall opinion of the NEW website
Really good very good website in loading and browsing This new website has changed its look so captivating. The design is so alluring, I simply love this new look. Keep it up. For me, the design of this site is really attractive and unique, I love the website design! Just Online customer services should be add to this website, it is more easier for us, as customers to contact with the site owner! Very attractive! i think that it has changed very good and it now more easy and with more graphics Looks very good. The website is well designed. You may change some details. IMHO the headers ("home", "about us" should be more exposed. an excellent design with lots of choices for your house...nice graphichs and slides! The new website is sleeker, uncluttered, and more appealing to the eyes. It is more organized and the placement of pictures is well planned. However, I am bothered by some extra features, like the Popular post, Archives, and Categories, which makes the whole website blog-like. I really think it would be nicer if the "Categories" is part of the main menu at the top. Just my two cents. . I like the new website, because the long textual article is no longer present, which I cannot understand because I cannot read the word, its written in a language I cannot understand. very nice and good website . website is perfect, everything is well managed. It has got new and best too. Attractive one. Overall it is good and it'll be better to modify the features as per the need & facilities of the people as the time passes! great design, i like it I't good Loved the improvement of the site, Designs and appearance both are outstanding! best site The site appears complete to me now. of course as new projects are done by the company, the images of them will be added to the gallery... but that's site maintenance, not design. good job
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Yes Yes
Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Yes
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Yes Yes Yes Yes
I think the minimalist look works really well for the site and fits the theme of interior design very well. the social share buttons that it has are the three main ones and are not intrusive at all in the scheme of things. The pictures are all clean and crisp and look great and the site in general is very easy to navigate and everything can be found easily. i like the site very good Its awesome website as its gives more information about interior design to the consumers. The new Website is nice,very plainly and easy to review.Realy impressivly like Categories,Archives,Popular post and Pictures.Ilike it I like this website a lot, everything is neatly arranged and easy to find. This is probably one of the best websites I've seen. the design and the quality of picture is so impressive. I find it appealing and presentable to viewers and readers. Great design, it looks modern and futuristic. I like it. It's modern and great. It lacks a main menu but the graphics and the images are wonderful. The website is excellent! I viewed it and I think you have done your best. This will bring more customers... Website is clean and future. Good colour contrasts. I like it ,i think it's best of his area I think that the site does not lack anything It is very cool. He's great It has improved a lot and is very easy to surf. Hello! Your new website is very nicely done. Posted images are high quality. The text is clearly visible, transparent, good reading. Colors are very well matched. The menu is well-matched. I could easily and quickly find the information interesting to me. Generally, the page I really like. Do not change anything! Very stylish :) Its look is stunning. I really like how it is constructed with all the options on the right place. Also it has great style. No option Very good..If the photos in the home page about all rooms are little bit small in size then the other parts of the website can been seen more clear as these pictures occupying more when i opened the website. very very good I like it..Maybe must put more info and colors :) very user friendly, easy navigation on it between different posts, wonderful design, great aspect on the products and the variety of products, keeps the attention of the visitor on the page I think that that website looks great.It is very well organized,there are a lot of interesting texts,and a lot of pictures so that you can see what is this company offering.Job well done for this site Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 69
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
No Yes Yes Yes
Yes Yes Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes Yes Yes
It is great website, user friendly.You can easily navigate on the website,even those who are not that computer literate.Good job. The pictures are now more clearly but need to put some background and layout... The new website looks much better!
Interview with Rhyan De La Isla - Old Website
1) What hosting do you currently have? Provided by a friend 2) Do you need the ability to update the website on your own (CMS like Joomla or Wordpress) Yes I do, other than iweb 3) What is your timeframe? No more one month. 4) Who is your target audience and what message are you trying to send? Expats, non-czech speaking people. Quality service at ease of communicating in english 5) How often will you need your website to be updated? Once month 6) Do you need more text on your new website, than the previous one? As things change with the business, the site will to be updated. 7) Would you like to have several different pages on your website, or remain with one homepage? Yes more pages more different purpose of page. 8) Are there any specific images you would like to include? Yes, before and after photos of work. 9) Can you estimate the average number of words you would like to have per page? Not sure of the amount. I might partially provide the content. 10) What pages are you interested in (homepage, about, contact, etc.) Homepage, about, contact, services, gallery, customer feedback
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11) Do you want TopWebDesigners to find and modify an existing template (much cheaper) or build everything from scratch? Build from existing template 12) What color scheme are your interested in? White background, and then go with a color scheme blue orange 13) What category would you suggest for the website (business, IT, ecommerce, etc.) Home services, home improvement, or repair services 14) Do you want the website to be simple yet professional, or have more style elements? Simple yet professional is good 15) Do you want to have a slider on your homepage? Yes! 16) Do you need any password protected areas? Possibly in the future, it would be nice to have a page for every individual client with information of their flat, and the job Ive done for them. Of course it would have to be password protected and I would personally create accounts for them to access that page. 17) How do you currently handle your business emails, are you interested in private email addresses like info@jobwelldone.cz) Before I was using private email like gmail, and I did not like it because I it always mixed up with personal and business emails. So yes, I would really like to have a personal email like info@jobwelldone.cz 18) Would you like to have a contact form and a reservation for on the website? I would like a to have a contact form for client to send requests on their projects. And that they will be able to up load photos if needed. 19) Are there any special preferences or requests that you have? Have the site connected to google adcent, ad word, and analytics. 20) Do you want to receive feedback on how you can promote your website and get more visitors? Sure. 21) Would you like TopWebDesigners to make an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign to increase your rankings on search engines like Google and Yahoo
Vlad Medvedev | Research Project 71
Yes. 22) If the answer to the previous question is positive, then what keyword phrases are you interested in? English-handyman in prague, electrical repair. Painter, Plumber, etc. 23) Would you like us to manage a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign? 24) Do you want your website to be optimized on facebook? (we will produce fanpage design and invite thousands of fans) We have one at the moment.
Interview with Rhyan De La Isla - New Website
1) Are you able to update the website on your own? Not at this time 2) Did TopWebDesigners meet their deadline? Yes, better than expected! 3) Did TopWebDesigners meet your expectations in regards to the functionality and design of the website? Yes. 4) Do you think the new website is appropriate for your target audience? Yes. 5) Was all the necessary information including text and images placed on the website? Yes. 6) Did TopWebDesigners meet all the arranged fees with no requirement for any additional payments? Yes. 7) Did TopWebDesigners offer professional consultation and support? Yes.
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8) Have you experienced or think that the SEO and marketing solutions offered by TopWebDesigners will increase the traffic and sales of your website? Yes. 9) Did TopWebDesigners set up private emails for you (info@jobwelldone.cz) Yes. 10) In overall, how would you rate the services offered by TopWebDesigners.cz TopWebDesigners.cz has shown us new and updated styles on helping to improve the jobwelldone.cz site. We rate them 10 out out 10.
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Research Project HND - Vlad

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Research Project HND - Vlad

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Assignment Cover Sheet

Evidence Produced (List separate items) 1. 2. 3. 4.

Were there sufficient resources available?

How could the assignment be improved?

For further comments, please use the reverse of this page.

Improvement of Web Design Services

Research Project (HND)

(+420 608484788) pc@vladmedvedev.com

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Aims and Objectives

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competitive to other web design agencies based on price and quality?

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Justification of the Questionnaire

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Secondary Research Internet Books

Rating of the Old & New Websites

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What People Disliked About the Old Website

What Should Be Improved

Should Reservation Form be Added?

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Does the website design affect visitor's trust?

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Did the New Website Meet Expectations of the Focus Group?

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Does the new website needs any more improvement?

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Are People More Likely to Order Now?

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Pricing Rates of Leading Web Design Agencies in Prague

First interview with Rhyan De La Isla

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Second interview with Rhyan De La Isla

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Online Customer services

Top menu - different word colour - green