Meeting with the client

Had another meeting with the client to talk more about the web site. At the same time I showed him some previous site I developed such as Raux, DLegal, Concept Tours, Chamara, my portfolio, and some site thats under construction such as kanleo, contractmarketing.

Researching Researching and Researching.

Researching about oscommerce. Playing around with it online. Its fun but php sucks.

Meeting was goooooood! and Money Matters!!

The client is happy with the web site idea, but at 1st he didn't like selling gems online. His point was that people wont buy gems online until they touch it and see. Then I had to show him some live gem shops i bookmarked in my laptop's Mozilla.

After a small chat, he liked the idea of doing the online shop. Then he asked the cost for this site. Yes, I have heard that its very unprofessional to give a quote as soon as a designer get the order. So I said to the client that I'll go home and calculate the hours I will be working and let him know the price by an email.

After calculating the hours, it was around 40. But how much could I charge per hour? Best way is to research some web sites and quote a price slightly lower than other companies.I researched some Aussie web sites to get an idea of quoting a price for an online shop, and they are much expensive than I thought. So I thought of charging about $1000 for this web site.

Shopping cart coding?? No way

Adding a shopping cart to the web site was my main idea. But How?? Im not a php or coldfusion programmer...This was stressing me every minute.

I look up on google, for shopping cart softwares. If I have no choice , i'll have to buy a shopping cart software from the internet, and i felt it isn't a good idea.

Researched more and more.. Then I found this "OsCommerce" web site which looks really simple.Went to its live shops section. WooWWW.. This is what I wanted. An Open source shopping cart. But I was curious whether I can edit the php files in it even though its free. I went to it's "forum" forums.oscommerce.com and read all the postings till my head blasts. It doesn't look hard, and it doesn't look simple either. But I know This Is My ONLY choice unless i buy a software.

Installed it for the 1st time in my server www.u-d-a-r-a.com

Looks alright and Im extremely happy that I found what I really needed.

Then I made up a mock web site to show to the client. Eventhough I didn't really have a good idea of the online shopping cart feature, I made a real looking mock to show the client that i'm experienced in it. :)

Finding a client

I went out looking for a client to do a web site. Through another client of mine, I heard about Mr.Indunil Arambawela, who is a gem seller in Australia. He didn't have a web site but he has already taken his domain name which is http://preciousgems.com.au/

I rang him up and explained about my idea of designing a web site for him and made an appointment to talk about the web site. He liked the idea of designing a web site. The appointment is on the 22nd of March.

I researched for gem sellers web sites and designed a mock site to give him an idea of how his web site will look like.

Project

I'm planning of doing a realistic project for studio1. Afterall its putting what you learn into practice. Few choice I came across are, Doing a short video clip with after effect's help and doing a beautiful web site with some new features. Then i wanted to do a real project to a real client, as it is almost the end of the course and I felt that I should be able to find a real client. I am experienced in doing web sites for real cients, so I thought doing a better web site for a client is a good choice.

Since I go only 2 members in my team, I was able to take the decision of doing a web site becasue i feel im good at designing web sites.