W05 Reflection: Site Design

 This week we learned about site design and construction. Mostly we learned the basics about what makes a website appealing to it's intended audience, like formatting and font. We learned about how setting up an ecommerce website takes more than just designing a pleasing page. One of the things that shocked me most was the ignorance of the class in the last discussion. I admit I have little knowledge of how websites are programed or built. My most intensive experience (aside from this class) is when I created my portfolio website on Wix.com. But my husband works creating computers and programs for fun so I do have an idea of how much time it takes. The question for the discussion was how do ecommerce websites handle setting up things like taxes and shipping costs and most people in the discussion just agreed to it. They agreed that all ecommerce site has things like calculated sales tax and easy returns. They spoke about how easy ecommerce sites are to use nowadays. They just assumed that if they set prices on their website the website itself would magically calculate taxes and shipping costs and the like. I was baffled. In my own minimal research I found that nothing calculates anything unless you tell it to. Granted today's platforms are wonderful because mostly it's just a feature you have to enable instead of having to build it yourself but you still have to do it. You have to decide everything you want and add it to the site program so that your customers have the experience you want them to have. No matter how easy, it's not automatic.