Three Page E-Commerce Catalog Site Design

We're putting together a new web site for a client that sells Chinese antique furniture. The site needs to showcase the furniture, and so a clean, simple web 2.0 design is preferred. The site should appeal to collectors of fine antiques, or interior decorators that purchase on behalf of their clients. Design will need to be delivered as a layered PSD file.

Chinese Antique Furniture Shop - ChineseAntiqueFurnitureShop.com

Description:

As mentioned in the project summary, we're building a new site to showcase the collection of a Chinese antique furniture dealer.  The site needs to convey that the owner is both knowledgeable and trustworthy.  It should be clean, uncluttered, and classic in appearance, without being too formal or stuffy.  The site is currently live so you can visit it but the current design is terrible and needs to be completely replaced.

Our Target Audience:

Customers are either interior decorators buying for clients, individual collectors, or dealers looking to purchase for their own inventory.

Purpose of the Site:

As each piece of Chinese antique furniture that is for sale is unique, the site is more of a catalog than a true e-commerce site. Here are some examples of web sites in the niche that we consider to be reasonably well done:

http://www.chaosantiques.com/

http://www.classicchineseantiques.com/

http://www.chinafurnitureonline.com/

http://www.antiquesbyzaar.com/

Design Style:

We need a professional looking site that appeals to the customer groups identified above. We want a Web 2.0 design that is clean and easy to navigate.

Design Pages:

All contest entrants should create a home page, a category page, and a product page.  The category and product pages should just be variations of the home page.  As the site does not currently have a logo, we will give special consideration to contestants that are able to attractively use the site name "Chinese Antique Furniture Shop" in the header that will be common throughout the site.

Contest Notes:

We will give feedback to all entries with 4 and 5 star ratings. We are not interested in entries that we rate with 3 stars or less.

Technical Specifications:

The design should be optimized for a 1024x768 screen resolution.  Accounting for scroll bars, that equals a width of exactly 960px and the above the fold content (header images, search form, navigation, email opt-in form, first paragraph of text) should be visible within a height of 580px.  The true height of the page, of course, will be dependent upon the content, and does not need to be restricted to 580px.

Stock Photos:

Please feel free to use the product images posted on the site.  If you wish to use iStockPhoto or a similar service for the site images, please use the comp images in your design submissions. We will pay for the winning contestants stock images. Please bookmark or save the image numbers so we can easily locate them and pay for a license.

Questions/Comments:

If you have any questions or feedback for us please leave a comment in the discussion thread. We will be checking this on a regular basis while the contest is happening.

Good luck on the contest. We look forward to seeing your work!

Future Opportunities:

Even if you don't win this contest we are still interested in quality designers for future projects. We will exchange contact information with 4 and 5 star entrants for the potential to work on future projects.

Best,

David

- Classic, elegant, professional site
- Web 2.0 style
- The primary content areas should be clean, uncluttered, and easy to read.
- Use of a specific color palette isn't mandatory, but some use oftraditional Chinese colors such as red and gold would be nice
- Original design concept
- Usable, easy to navigate site
- Fast loading graphics

-  A site that feels busy, cluttered, or congested