Website Proposal for

Timothy Howard ● 360 Raleigh Street ● Holly Springs, NC 27540 ● (919) 577-9907 ● www.clarity-connect.com ● [email protected]

Website Proposal for

February 14, 2013 – Revision 1.0

Dylan Harris 534 Spunky Ridge Road

Meredosia, IL 62665 (217) 584-1125

[email protected]

http://www.clarity-connect.com/

mailto:[email protected]

Website Proposal February 14, 2013 of 23

Website Overview Websites designed by CCI consist of a custom designed site with virtually all of the content (text, images and video) being added and modified by our customer through the use of Clarity Console™, CCI’s proprietary content management system (CMS). The Clarity Console CMS is Internet based and requires no software on the client’s computer. It works equally well on both PCs and Mac. A successful web project will be a joint effort where CCI provides design, programming and back office tools for content management and you provide content with the Clarity Console tools.

Graphic Design Based on our conversations and the understanding we have of your objectives and sound website design, CCI will develop one Website User Interface (WUI) design for your review. We will incorporate your comments to refine the initial designs. This proposal includes up to five iterations of design changes to arrive at the final WUI. If more graphic time is required, we will jointly decide how to proceed. Our standard graphic design rate is $75/hour.

General Navigation General navigation for your website is outlined in the following site map. Our designers will create the Website to draw attention to the most important elements and navigation items to “drive” the traffic to the proper areas of the site. The Clarity Console Tools used for the various sections are outlined on subsequent pages.


Content Management System Overview Administration Pages

Authorized staff will have access (login and password) to the BackOffice to utilize Clarity Console Tools to add, modify, delete, publish and deactivate content for their site. The User Profile will indicate what tools they have access to and if they can Publish and Delete records or just create (and not publish) and edit records. Your Clarity Console BackOffice will have links to the relevant tools licensed and would be similar to the one shown here Content Control that’s Quick and Easy Clarity Console is a powerful, extremely flexible web content management system that gives non-technical users the power to keep text, images and online documents up-to-date in real-time. Users can add, modify, delete, publish and deactivate website content from any location with an Internet connection. A consistent, intuitive publisher interface is at the core of all Clarity Console tools. You can type in the desired information or "cut and paste" the information from other applications1.

Custom Site Design Means Your Content Looks Good, Every Time Clarity Console stores the content you enter in a secure client database. The website display of that information is controlled by our innovative, flexible system that is customized to meet your requirements. This ensures the content you create with Clarity Console is displayed in a manner consistent with your site design. In short, you provide the content; we make sure it looks great.

Add Images & Documents Easily Adding images and documents is as simple as attaching a file to an e-mail. Our proprietary ImageMagic™ technology "automagically" takes care of the rest, from sizing and optimizing for

1 There may be issues with text formatting, so you will need to review the results to ensure the formatting is how you want it.


the web (so the image loads quickly) to automatically creating the thumbnail image when required. You can also easily crop (trim) your image to focus on areas of interest. The new or updated image is immediately displayed on your website with the corresponding text.

Clarity Console Tools Included in Your Website

Random Image Editor and Slide Show With Clarity Console’s™ Random Image Manager, you can load dozens of images and corresponding captions to give your home page a consistent, fresh look. Each time the home page is viewed, a new image is randomly picked and displayed along with its text. You can link the image to either another page on your site or to another website.

If you want to emphasize a particular image, you can deactivate the other entries so the “focus” item will always be displayed. At the proper time, simply reactivate the other entries to reintroduce them into the random display. The tool allows you to link the image to any other website page. The link can be to a section on your site, or to an external website.


Page Generator Editor The page creator tool allows you to create unlimited pages for your website and “assign” them to another page of your site. These “publish to” locations are defined in the initial setup of your site. Subsequently, you can create as many sub pages and sub-sub pages as you need. For example, you could have the following:

About Us - History - 1941 – 1980 - 1981 - Current ‘About Us ‘ is the ‘root page’ created by Clarity and then you can create unlimited sub pages such as ‘1941 – 1980’. The fields in this tool are: 1. Name of page 2. Title 3. Subtitle 4. Summary 5. Content Prior to bullets 6. Bullet List 7. Content Following Bullets

8. 12 Images with captions 9. Unlimited Attachments (i.e. PDFs, Excel,

Word, PowerPoint, etc.) 10. Name of Title for Sub Pages 11. Mobile Header and Footer (for use on a

phone friendly version of your site – if we are also developing that for you)


Page Styles You can select from 6 different page styles without video and 2 page styles with video for any Page Generator Created page. Click on the desired Page Layout and the page on the site will immediately reflect the different page style. Four different page styles are shown on the following pages. The content is 100% the same, but it displays differently based on the page style.


Sub Pages

You can create as many sub-pages as required. You can then order them so the links on the “parent” page appear in the order you choose.

Meta Tags This tool allows you to modify the pages corresponding Title, Keywords and Description to help improve the likelihood you’re your site will be found during searches.


Locations Editor The Locations Editor allows you to easily add all of the information your customers need to know to find your location, including:

1. Contact Information 2. Intro text 3. Detailed text (not in this

example) 4. Your personalized

directions to your location 5. Hours of Operation 6. Holiday Closings 7. 2 images (Only one image is in

the example shown here. Images could be of your store front, office building, etc.)

8. Google® map A contact form is typically included as well.


Photo Gallery Manager The tool allows you to enter pictures and create categories to organize into specific “photo albums.” You can create as many categories as you need and load hundreds of images per category. If you load more than 12 images per category, “Next/Pervious” pagination will automatically be displayed to make it easy for site visitors to view all the pictures. You can describe each category and then assign pictures to the category. Clicking on the thumbnail displays the larger image with the optional corresponding caption. When you upload an image Clarity ImageMagic™ technology automatically optimizes the image for the web and creates a thumbnail.


Plant Database Manager The front end of the Plant Database usually consists of an alpha index so users can view the plants by either Botanical or Common

name. The alpha index can be organized in a way that groups the plant records to be manageable. The resulting list of plants is displayed with a small photograph and short description. The user can click on a particular plant to view a detailed plant record with a larger photo. Pictured is an example of a plant detail page:

Timothy Howard ● 360 Raleigh Street ● Holly Springs, NC 27540 ● (919) 577-9907 ● www.clarity-connect.com ● [email protected]

Plant Categories/Types You can easily create plant categories and sub-categories. You can then assign a variety to one or more of the categories. For example, you may want to have Calamagrostis acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' in both the Perennial and Ornamental Grass categories.

http://www.clarity-connect.com/


Data Entry The plant database tool is broken down into sections with “TABS”. The standard tabs are GENERAL, CHARACTERISTICS, COMPANIONS, SKU LIST, SUBSTITUTIONS, IMAGES and USER DEFINED. You use those areas to completely describe each plant record in your library. The various tabs are outlined on the following pages.


New Introductions

What's New? It's easy for your customers to answer that question on your website by setting the current year and using that year as the 'intro' year in the appropriate plant records in the Plant Database Manager.

Set Site Current Year You can quickly call attention to new plants. If you have a “New Introductions” section of your site, plants with the current year can automatically be displayed on that page. Additionally, a 'New' graphic

can display on both the plant listing page as well as the plant detail page. You can switch the “current year” manually as soon as you know the new plants you will be offering in the subsequent year. Typically you would switch the current year to the next calendar year at some point in the fall.

Set Plant Intro Year On the GENERAL tab of

your plant database manager, you can indicate which year you first offer a plant with the 'Intro Year' option. The plant will be considered new when Plant Intro Year = Site Current Year.

Characteristics Tab You can add as many ‘Classes’ like ‘Attracts Wildlife’ as you need and then as many Characteristics (i.e. Butterflies, Hummingbirds, Songbirds, etc.) for that Class as you need. With the tool you can:


1. Add New Classes 2. Indicate if the Class is searchable in the Detailed Plant Search on your site. 3. Organize the Classes to best suit your site. Changing the order in the tool changes the

display of the classes on both the plant detail page and the detailed plant search page (if your site has one).

4. Edit or Delete Classes 5. If you site has a dynamic garden planner, you can exclude classes from the searches in

the garden planner When you Edit a Class, you have the ability to add, edit and delete characteristics as well as change the sequence if you like.

Smart Display Our front end display of this is “smart.” For example, if you do not select a response for “Season of Interest,” then “Season of Interest” does not display on the site. Therefore you can add information to the records over time without compromising the layout.

Companion Plants Each plant record can be associated with other companion plants from your plant database by clicking on corresponding records from a drop down list.


SKU Tab To display size variants for a particular plant, the “SKU” area is added to the Plant Database

Manager. It allows you to add SKUs, such as 1 gallon and 2 gallons sizes, to each plant record. The fields available include: You can also indicate if the item is “e-commerce enabled.” This is helpful if you want to display all items online, but limit certain products to “off line” or retail purchasing. This function is reserved for use with e-commerce implementations.

Substitutions Use the substitution functionality to easily offer replacement plants for an item that is out of stock.


Images The plant database supports up to 6 main images and one thumbnail image. All images are loaded with Clarity ImageMagic™. This makes adding images as easy as attaching a file to an e-mail. The tool will automatically size the image and optimize it. The optimization means the

image will load as fast as possible without losing image quality. Multiple images will be displayed on your plant detail pages as incorporated in your custom designed page. Additional options on the IMAGE tab include: 1. Featured Image.

This is a ‘special’ image slot that can used as a unique image in a featured plant section of your site or you can upload a ‘current crop’ picture in that slot

2. PDF Attachments. You can upload

culture sheets, garden plans or any other relevant document for that plant 3. PDF Benchcard. Wholesale Growers can attach a print quality PDF of a bench card for their

garden center customers. 4. High Resolution Image. You can provide a print quality image of each variety to make it

easy for your customers to access high resolution images directly from your site.

Update Pricing & Inventory via Excel In addition to being able to modify plant information directly in the tool, you will also be able to update pricing and availability via an Excel export/import.


User Defined With this tab, we can add any additional fields required for your particular website project. For example, you can indicate where you want a plant record to display.

Genus Overview You have the option of defining a genus and have that information displayed as a genus section header or to duplicate the information on corresponding plant detail pages.


Training & Support This proposal includes all the training required to teach you and/or your staff how to use the Clarity Console content management tools to update your website. Training will be conducted via a Webinar where you can see what is displayed on the trainers screen. The voice portion will be handled via a conference call. Customer support is available from 8:30am to 5:00pm EST on normal work days. A real human will answer the phone and answer any questions you have and provide any recurring training required.

Website Cost To complete the website as outlined above, the fixed cost is $5,940.00. This includes graphic design, programming, one year license of designated Clarity Console Tools and personal account management. Execution of our standard licensing agreement is required. The standard payment schedule follows: Upon Approval $2,080.00 Progress Payment: After Release of Clarity Console Tools & WUI (Website design) approval and WIP site structure functioning $2,080.00

Upon Completion $1,780.00 Total $5,940.00

Hosting and Subsequent Years’ Licensing Fees The above proposal is based on Clarity Connect hosting your web site at $20.00/month payable quarterly in advance and requires execution of our standard hosting agreement. To continue to utilize the Clarity Console content management tools, there is annual licensing fee of $594.00 for the tools included in this proposal, due on the anniversary date of the site going live. The licensing fee pays for continued use of the tools, all standard upgrades to your licensed tools and customer support from 8:30am to 5pm EST on normal work days. Dylan, thanks for the opportunity to submit our proposal for your website.

Timothy Howard [email protected] (919) 577-9901

mailto:[email protected]

Website Proposal for

Documents

Transcript of Website Proposal for