Overall, I think my project has been rather successful. I tried to stick to my original plan as much as I could and at the same time take on board and try implementing the changes suggested in the feedback from the first assignment. Some of the changes were required due to the limitations in Webnode's functionality.

One of the things that I changed from my original report was the use of adverts on the website. This decision was made following the feedback received as it made me realise how much of a negative impact it can have on the customer experience. I made further research and noticed how frustrating I found the websites that were full of adverts. I was more relaxed and more felt more likely to return to websites which had no or little adverts.

Another point that I took from the initial feedback was the creation of a Twitter account to allow customers to follow the tweets of the club in regards with news, competition information, course information and respond to any queries people might have. For example let them know how busy it is, the course condition and so on. Furthermore, in terms of feedback, I found I was unable to edit the existing feedback form that Webnode provides in its template. This has restricted me in following my initial plan as the existing form only allows general feedback to be submitted. Ideally I would have more fields in the form that the user can complete and I would also separate the feedback into categories. This is to allow the user to leave feedback for particular areas or members of staff. They will, of course, have the option to leave general feedback as well.

To increase the number of options for the users to leave feedback or just to have a simple conversation with other people who visited the club or plan to visit, I set up a forum. The forum can also be a great way of interaction with members of staff. Webnode though, does not allow anyone to create a new discussion and the person in charge of the website will need to think of different discussion topics. The risk is that some of them might be of no interest at all to users. Webnode also does not allow displaying only the topic titles as links to the full discussion for that topic. Instead, it has to display at least one comment which can take a lot of the page space therefore it could make it difficult to see all available topics.

Another change that I made from the original plan was in regards to splitting the content for members and non-members. I made this decision because I felt that all of the content should be made available to visitors as well. If this was to represent a real company, further research could be made and see what the customers think i.e. if content should be separated or not. If so, what content is expected on the members’ page and what content is expected on the visitors’ page. Once research is complete, the changes could be implemented.

I found that Webnode was rather restrictive when it comes to making major changes to the templates. For example I was unable to add a link to the home page in the main menu. The only place that this link exists in the template that I used is at the top right hand side of the page and I feel that most customers would struggle to find this link.

Furthermore, as I do not have a Premium account, it would not let me to change the system footer. I also found that it took a long time to load at times in particular when it came to change the header picture and add text. It often crashed as well. It was also very difficult to add a logo. This was due to the settings of the template and it took me a lot of time to go through the CSS of the template and see which configuration corresponds to the logo area and edit it accordingly. I was still unable to add some text next to the logo as it has to be one or the other but at least I managed to increase the area in displays the logo.

But it is not all bad with Webnode as it allowed me to have a website in a matter of seconds. The preloaded templates would allow a small company such as a local golf club, to have a website up and running in no time with very little knowledge and all they would have to do is fill in the content. Webnode allowed me to add widgets such as RSS feeds, Google maps, weather forecasts and Twitter feeds at a click of a button more or less. The template I used came with a search tool embedded in all pages. Not sure how weak or powerful the search tool is as I did not get enough time to test it thoroughly but it seems to return relevant results for each search I made.

Another think I liked about Webnode is that it allows you to set tags in everything you add to your website from news and events to blogs, forums and so on.

Overall, Webnode is a great tool for small companies that have little or no knowledge of web development and cannot afford to employ a specialist. It allows you to have an online presence in no time.

If I would be working on a project for a business that requires a website and I would be using Webnode, I would probably look into designing my own template and upload it to webnode because once you have the template the way you want it, Webnode can prove to be quite a powerful tool. The only think that I would like to add is that it would be great if Webnode would allow you to change some of the HTML and CSS a lot easier than it currently does i.e. provide comments in the code so that you know which part of the website each section represents.

Finally, I like to think that my website is very successful as it follows my initial plan with some minor changes as discussed. I also believe that all my links are very descriptive and I do not feel that any information on the website is misleading. In the development of a website there is always room for improvement and further research and development would be required in order to improve it. For example a discussion can be started on the forum where people give their opinions and ideas on what should be added to the site and what needs to be removed. This will allow the development to concentrate on user needs and ensure customers return.

The website has been developed in Firefox 4.0 and tested in Firefox 4.0, Safari 5.0.4 and Internet Explorer 9.

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