5. Positioning the E-CAF
5.3 Developing questions for generating travel site design requirements
Web design process starts with analysing and specifying the different features of the
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site. This is what Oldach (2000) called Web design information gathering stage. At this stage Web designers need to communicate with their clients to gather all the necessary information in order to understand the clients‘ requirements. Birnberg (2008) warned designers who fail to start with understanding their clients‘ priorities. He mentioned that designers need to keep in mind that they are not the owner of the project. They are just helping their clients to build a site that should match their ways of business operation.
Therefore, designers need to collect information that includes their clients‘ methods of operation (Birnberg, 2008), business and marketing strategy (Chaffey et al., 2006), communication tools and competitive information (Oldach, 2000). In order to collect these information Web designers need to interview their clients to gain the basis for their expected design (Oldach, 2000). Clients are usually not sure what information designers need to know to provide them with their expected Web site. Oldach argued that clients‘ interviews help them to be more objective to express needs and expectations. Similarly, Gulid (2003) mentioned that a perfect way of collecting design information is using a list of clients‘ questions. These questions provide clients with the basis to best present and promote their design requirements and expectations.
From the previous literature review, it is clear that there is a need for a list of questions at the initial stage of the design process; where Web designers need to collect their clients‘ design requirements. However, the literature focused mainly on what information designers may need to collect; there was no attempt to offer a tool that helps designers to collect the required information. The E-CAF serves as a tool that provides designers with a list of questions, which serves as a tool to gather the necessary information for the site design. As mentioned through the literature, this information includes marketing strategy, ways of operations and communication tools.
Table 5.3 shows a list of questions that each E-CAF category can offer to serve in gathering the site design information. Ch 8 will evaluate the usefulness of those questions using professional Web designers‘ reviews.
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Categories Questions
High risk vs. low risk concern
What type of information do you want to view on your travel site?
Do you suggest a specific structure or flow for the travel information?
Do you suggest specific tools for facilitating your trading transactions?
Do you suggest specific navigation devices for your travel site?
Do you suggest specific navigation tools for minimizing the navigation effort?
What type of navigation bars do you prefer: horizontal or vertical?
Is there any information or links you want to make permanently visible on the entire travel site pages?
What content do you want users to see first on travel site?
List the important customer service options you need on your travel site
Do you need short or long scrolling for your travel site pages?
Emotional vs.
functionality
List any important words you want users to associate with your travel agency brand/image
Give us some information about what your offline promotional message looks like. Are you planning to continue with the same promotional message online?
What is the dominant appeal you want to give your travel site? This may be a friendly appeal or a more functional and formal one.
Do you suggest specific tools for maintaining online relations with your travel consumers?
Do you think user interactions is an important aspect to consider on your site? Explain your answer.
122 Family and group vs.
individual role
Are there is any pictures, themes or symbols you want to use for your travel site?
Are you planning to use any external links on your travel site? If yes, list sites you want to link with your pages.
Do you suggest a specific content organisation for page harmony?
Dependency vs.
independence
Do you want to avoid any expressions or words on your travel site?
What best describes your targeted travel users: dependent or independent users? Describe suggested strategies for each type of user.
List any suggested tools for achieving customer-to-customer interactivity.
Image vs. lexical context role
Are you interested in developing your travel site with rich media such as video, audio or virtual tours?
Do you have any graphics for your travel site?
Would you like to use any animated graphic or text?
Are there any colours you had in your mind to incorporate into your travel site pages?
Do you have idea about the colour contrast you want maintain on your travel site pages?
Are you planning to depend more on written text or visual page content?
Are there any text styles you want to use for your travel site pages?
What technique you suggest for identifying different travel site pages?
Are you interested in using graphical links on your travel site?
What size do you suggest for your page body links?
Oral communication vs.
written communication
What tools do you want to use for communicating with your customers?
What tools do you want to use for gathering your customers‘ feedback?
Table 5.3 - Travel site design generating questions
123 5.4 Summary
This chapter discusses how the E-CAF serves as a useful tool to adapt local Web interfaces such as a travel interface for Egyptian consumers. This includes using the E-CAF to provide international travel marketers and Egyptian marketers with suitable online strategies for targeting Egyptian online consumers, checklists that can be used to evaluate competitive travel sites and providing designers with a list of questions that can help them to generate their clients‘ travel site design requirements. Chapters 6 to 8 will discuss the E-CAF evaluation using the methods mentioned in sections 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3.
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