TO: John Bruns
FROM: Paul Young and the students of GDS 215
SUBJECT: Web Projects
DATE: March 15, 2004

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to submit some recommendations for a new Ashton Publication web site. The following is a summation of our discussion held Monday, March 15 concerning the new web site design.

BACKGROUND: Started 4 years ago, Quilterswarehouse.com is a group of vendors sell quilting patterns over the internet. Located in the small community of Cissna Park, Quilterswarehouse.com has grown from a small town business to one of the biggest and best quilting web sites today. Quilterswarehouse and Prairieland, Inc., its parent holding company, is now selling quilting patterns from approximately 160 designers. Prairieland, Inc. does approximately 40-60 orders per day. Prairieland, Inc. handles the order placement, web hosting, and the websites for its sponsored designers. Ashton Publications is one of the vendors Quilterswarehouse features. The web site will offer quilt patterns & book designed by Darcy Ashton.

TARGET AUDIENCE: The audience of both Prairieland Inc, and Ashton Publications will be roughly 95% female and therefore should have a feminine feel. All Prairieland Inc. sites should appeal to quilters, crafters, and anyone who likes handmade items.

CHARACTER OF THE ASHTON PUBLICATIONS SITE: The new web site design should be warm, friendly, professional, sensitive, strong, classic, dependable, open, and trustworthy. It should instill a sense of honesty to potential customers who view the products being offered. Anyone using this site should find it easy to navigate and have a greater knowledge of how many new patterns there are out there for quilting. It should also be easy to order and easy to understand the process of ordering and shipping.

CHARACTER OF THE PRAIRIELAND INC SITE: Like the Ashton Publications site, the Prairieland Inc, site should also be warm, friendly, feminine, and trustworthy. The site should cater to the needs of your designers as well as the customers who visit the site. The customers should have easy access to anything they wish to find, therefore simple and effective navigation is key.

APPLICATION: The new web design will be optimized for at 800 x 600 resolution monitor. The site will be accessible to anyone, young or old, so it must have the functionality to be user friendly to any standard or non-standard browser. The design should be flexible in order for any future changes to be accommodated. Care should be taken to keep download times to a minimum. We will deliver web-ready templates for your webmaster to implement. The templates will contain style sheets and navigation systems that will accommodate a variety of content.

Thank you for your time. We are looking forward to presenting you with our concepts in the near future. Please feel free to contact me at 398-1923, with any questions you may have.