Effective Website Design for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses in New Zealand

Scenario
You are the newly appointed communication assistant for a NZ based small/medium sized business/company (of your choice). The business/company has a website that is poorly designed. As a result, it does not receive many visitors and those who do find the site do not stay any longer than 5 to 10 seconds. To address this issue, your manager has decided to set up a new website. You have been asked to study existing websites of NZ based companies that are similar to your business/company and by applying problem solving and decision-making methodologies provide actionable recommendations for the new website to ensure efficient and effective communication with stakeholders. 

Task:
1.    Look at websites of NZ based companies (two companies) which are similar to your company and identify the most effective features of their website.
2.    Use the information collected from the other company websites to draw actionable recommendations for your company’s website.
3.    Write a formal report (refer to the marking schedule for the structure of the report).

Marking Schedule
Also refer to Matrix Assessment Marking Guide for grades available
Contents    Marks
available    Marks
achieved

Executive Summary    
•    Objective of the report – should include basic information about your business/company and purpose of writing this report (3 marks)
•    Briefly explain the data collection method used (3 marks)
•    Summarize the findings (2 marks)
•    summarize the Recommendations (2 marks)    
   
Body
•    Discuss how a website can enhance business. (5 points discussed, 2 marks each)

•    From the companies researched (NZ website) – Discuss any five features of their website that attracted your attention. (3 mark each - 1 mark for identifying a feature and 2 marks for discussion) 10  15    

Conclusion/Recommendations    
•    Based on your findings provide 5 appropriate, actionable recommendations for your company’s website. Your recommendation should relate back to the purpose of writing this report. (1 mark each) 5    

Professional Appearance
•    Cover page (1 marks)
•    Correct table of contents with page numbers (2 marks)
•    Professional layout and correct format (2 marks)
•    Impersonal (do not use ‘I’, we, us..) style of writing (2 marks)    
    
References (at least 3 required)
•    An alphabetical referencing list is attached 
•    Correct referencing and citation as per APA (7th ed) 
•    Only references cited in the assessment are listed in the reference list  3  Total    50