Website Evaluation
I have created a website what is made for information and advice on drugs, sexual health and alcohol. It has been made for young people who feel they need help with such subjects. I started by planning out what the best conventions my website needed so looked at other websites what offered similar information. I took from these websites a lot of similar conventions so decided to develop these on my website but also challenge them to change the normal ways the websites are presented. The website I looked at was Talk to Frank; YPSH (young peoples sexual health); and (Red) all sites what have a similarity in them.
I started by developing these conventions on my website. Looking at the colours used on other websites with the same target audience have used very bright attractive colours throughout their websites, they were also very consistent throughout the site. I decided to use this and started a house style what I used throughout my website. I used black and white as the main colour theme what contrast on each other using white as the backgrounds and black as the text. This was a different look as the background and font colour is usually the other way round. I decided to use a colour style throughout the page giving each page a personal colour in which that webpage would use for its titles what gives a nice style to it. This was different to what the other websites done as instead of me choosing a certain colour throughout the website I used a variety for each page. It made the website more colourful but also still kept a house style how I used the layout of the colours what kept it looking smart and tidy.
The language in most of the sites was matched to the type of audience they were aiming at. All the sites I looked at what were aiming at young people same as mine gave information in big bulks of writing and me myself being a young person would not like to read all of that just wanting to get the main points I needed. I wanted to challenge this convention using short effective information what got to the point. An example of this is how I showed the top 5 most common drugs instead of putting information into big blocks I put them into bullet points stating the effects of each drug and its effects. I done this, as young people like to get the information quickly and move on not having to put a lot of effort into getting the information. The evidence of this is from experts what shows that when young people come onto a site ‘they have very short attention spans’ so if they do not find the information easily and quickly there attention may be lost. Another way to grab there attention was to use bold headlines stating what each piece of information was about this made it easy for the young person to find what kind of information they were looking for.
Leading onto the layout of the website I started planning this by looking at other websites on the Internet and seeing how they presented their sites. Often the websites I looked at would keep a consistent layout and felt this was important to use this on my site. I chose to do this because it showed that the website had a flow that will attract the targeted audience into staying and reading on with other information we have to offer on the website. Using a navigation bar at the top also added to the flow of the website, every page had this navigation bar keeping the consistent layout. The navigation bar was also the main way of navigating through the site. From the survey I distributed it also came back from the analyzed data that a high percentage thought a navigation bar would be the best way possible to navigate around a site. I used social links at the bottom of my screen what was also conventional. I thought this was important as young people use these social websites a lot so is a good way to get more audience and followers to our website increasing the hits on the site would get.
Asking what young people would like to see on the website I thought was a good way to see what they wanted. One question was how would you like your information to be presented there was a high percentage of people wanted to see it through images and videos. So I decided to use these things to attract my audience and distribute the important information. It showed that this was a conventional way to present information as from my research on other websites all showed images. This is a good way to present information and a picture can speak a 1000 words. The NHS website gave good examples of using images to shock the audience. Showing vile images of STI’s, I thought this would be a good way to attract your audience and educate them what these diseases could look like.
My website helps represent a problem that needs to be solved and in this case is the subjects of drugs sexual health and alcohol in young peoples society, and I am representing this information young people into solving this. I have given a specific age what is young people aged 14-24. I have shown it’s aimed at this age by keeping the site colourful and attractive using images and videos to help explain some of the subject matters. From the website research I done it showed colour can attracting the young audience however it also makes the websites look young bright and fun. The colours will liven up the website instead of being dull no young people will want to read information off a dull colourless website. This is supported by survey I asked the question ‘state a colour what you feel would be appealing to both genders for us to use as our theme colour?’ in every response there was bright life full colours like baby blues green and yellows. Also in the images and videos are young people featured in them so the young people are able to relate emotively and physically to the photos. And in these photos I used a range of different locations ethnicity and sexuality. This is because I want my audiences to be able to relate as much as possible to the graphics used, as it will be more attractive to them. It would be unconventional for an older person to go to this to get the information as they would not be able to relate to anything on the website.
I used very emotive photos on sexual health and drugs. Firstly on the sexual health there are graphical images of what STI’s can look like once you are infected I thought this would be good so you can get a response and attract the audience in I can then give them a solution so avoid this the end result with a massive effect on the young person. The signs of these pictures are very good giving off very meaningful images what the audience can use. The information I included was how to avoid these STI’s, the symptoms of them and what they even are. I used this information and talked about STI’s as in my second survey what asked the targeted audience what they knew about sexual health drugs and alcohol I found that the knowledge on STI’s was low. It showed in one of the questions asking about the symptoms of diseases and when said about Gonorrhoea 93.8% of people didn’t know what they were. I gave this information out in bullet point with headings above each of the infections. I think the images did make the biggest impact and make them think what getting the infections can do to you. The way I used both text and images as well to again address the audience worked well. It was a the placement of both images and ext that gives off a good way of representing the information available on the website.
On the drug page I showed images of what the drug would look like. When doing my website research I found that the frank website does this very well giving facts on the drugs with an image. It then mixes up the information and these two ways of distributing with the text and images young people rated highly in my surveys of ways to distribute the information. However the frank website I felt went into such depths it made the writing to bulky, I wanted to use the images with short bullet points telling the young people what each of them do. It can also help the audience to know what drugs we are talking about and maybe relate to some encounters with these drugs creating an emotive response through the images and it’s the placement of these images what will get this response.
My website is going to be distributed by me the designer of my website. It may be seen that anyone can make a website and with some skills give a professional image to it. So I will be in need to make the site look authentic and feel I have done so by using the conventions from there websites to give the website a good image to it. This can all be done with the language of the website what I have created. The Internet provider is going to help distribute my information on the Internet. I am going to use such web service providers as AOL what will transmit the information to the Internet. The website prices can vary to how much it will cost to have the website online depending on how big your website is the lengths you are doing to distribute the website. As my website is not to large it will not cost as much to use the Internet provider to put it online. It will be a commercial system so will need somewhere on the region of 500-700 mbps this will mean the webserver who sends the signal will have a higher price for us to give them rather than a domestic system. And as the website has a smaller target audience just in London the cost of advertising the site will be less also.
My website is aimed at young people in London. However it may not appeal to young people outside of London as the convention I used on my website and aimed at young people in London. Also the surveys what were completed were completed by young people in London so got an idea of what they would have wanted on the website. This is then reflected onto my website using there ideas from my questions onto the site. And this can then differ to what other young people outside of London may want to see. This can be seen when looking at the change of classes and ethnicity when you come outside of London. So when I am going to advertise the website it will only have to be within London.
When you look at radio station or movies the distribution of them is a lot larger to what my website may be. With radio stations the way in which people receive this information is a lot different also. On the radio you receive the signal from a broadcasting tower, and that station has to own the frequency it is broadcasting at what cost them money similar to you having to pay the website provider for your website to be online. However the radio towers can only broadcast to people within a certain radius where as Internet can reach anywhere in the world. This makes the use of the Internet to distribute information a lot better.
My website was designed to give information to young people. When I done my research I found that there are no other websites what are deigned only specifically for young people on subjects on sexual health drugs and alcohol when I was researching other websites. So I used this opportunity of doing something different and creating a website designed just for this target audience. I thought this would maximise my audience having a small amount of competition.
When looking over my survey what I gave to young people aged 14-24 they gave me what they would most want to see on a website. Once I analysed the data I got the most popular conventions to use on the website to attract this audience. I wanted to reflect on the needs of this audience so kept to what they wanted on the website. An example of this is one of the questions asked how they would like the information on the website to be presented, they gave answers using images a videos what was most popular. I decided to add videos and images to help discuss the different subjects the website had talked about.
The demographics from my survey helped show that certain young people would want things to be presented. This included the way in which the information was shown through images text videos etc, type of information given, what would be most entertaining like web banners interactivity videos in. I found coming from my analysed data that people from a lower class who stated E2 D C2 and It showed that they wanted more images a videos. This comes from my survey, which showed in the analyzed data they prefer the information presented, with images and text. Where as people coming from a higher class wanted the information in text to read, I could see this coming from the classes such as A B C1. I found this interesting and to maximise the audience I used both throughout my website to satisfy both what I felt would still attract different types of young people to my site. This identified that I would get more than one class of young people using my website. And the important thing to think about is that all young people no matter what class they are have to encounter these problems so need to meet the needs of the two different classes I have identified.
I used different kinds of conventions what would suit my wide range of young people who would use the website. I had to use the survey as much as possible to give the audience what they wanted to attract them to the site even if it meant challenging conventions. This meant looking at both of my surveys I completed in the planning process to making the website. The first survey ask them what they wanted to see how they wanted to see it and where they want to see it. It asked such questions as how do you think the website should be distributed. The other website concentrated on mainly on different questions to do with sexual health drugs and alcohol and peoples knowledge of what they knew them self’s. I could then look at what the young people didn’t know the most and I then added this to my website having this information as the priority to have on the site. This would this address the needs of my targeted audience. An example of one of these questions is ‘Is wearing a condom important’, it was answer as agreed but not strongly agreed this needs to be addressed and shown that is extremely important to wear one/
The layout of the website was designed to make it flow so that young people wouldn’t have to scour the website to find what they were looking for. I help do this by adding a navigation bar at the top the screen and a search bar. From the survey I asked how would people prefer to navigate around the site and them to be most suggested so included them.
To also address the targeted audience I took other things from my survey and website research on the language of websites to use. I have used bright colours on parts of the webpage’s what helps draw the audience in but the colours used create a house style so at the same time the site gives off a professional look as we are giving professional advice we need to keep that image.
When using the text for the advice and information on each subject we wanted to keep a font style using the same font throughout the site again giving off a professional image to the audience. We used an appropriate font size as well so they were able to read what we talking about. But mainly we made sure we kept the text short and snappy down to the point, we found this would make the audience want to read it. Examples of this is how I used bullet points through the website so people can get the facts they want fast what attracts my target audience to read it.
The video I used on the sexual health page was a way in which I attracted people to look at the site as from my survey it shows that young people prefer to get the information from videos. It made my website more appealing to the target audience now as it had other ways than through text and images to find there information what was a good technique to use. The way I used young people as the actors in the video I thought would be good. I thought this, as I would get a reaction from the audience, as they will be able to relate to what is happening in the video. Making it easier for them to put them self’s in the actors shoes. And think of them self’s in such a situations. This can boost peoples confident if they did come to such a situation.
Another way in which I attracted the target audience was how I edited the images in Photoshop creating the effect that the person was under influence of alcohol how I edited made it look like a rush and how you would feel and see if you were drunk. It was very creative moreover effective for the audience to see.
When creating my website learnt a lot of things on all different aspects of making the website and all the different processes leading up to it. I feel after I have now completed the main website I realise how important the planning process of the website is. When researching all of the websites what are relevant to mine I found they gave good conventions what I could use on my website. The survey created gave me great information what I analysed to make my website even more attractive to the targeted audience. Drawing a sketch of what you think your main website is going to look like is also a good way to start. And all aspects like this got me off to a good start.
When I took my photos I wanted to process some of them what I used in Photoshop. One of the images I wanted to add effects to emphasis how drunk the person is in the photo. I learned techniques and all different effects and other features you can add to the photo. An example of this is when I added an effect called wipe and swirl it gave out the effect that the person was drunk and came out very effective.
When I came to creating my video I made my storyboard to help me plan what was going to take place. After I filmed it I uploaded this into movie express I was able to edit the video to how I wanted it to look. It enabled me to cut and move different parts and came up with the idea of adding text titles in. It let me add text over the top of the video. I found this to be very useful and there were many other different skills I could use to edit the video. However there was a problem when you add effects to the video you have to keep on rendering the video what was very time consuming and slowed the process of making the film down. When uploading the film onto the website all you had to do was simply drag and edit the settings of the video to let it play. The software made this very easy to do.
When I came to designing the website on each page I wanted to have a forum in which people can talk about the subject on that webpage. However when I came to do it I could not find a way to set one up. I went online to find forum codes to set it up but you would have to pay. I found that even though I have learned a lot about making the website you still need skills what you would need therefore limited me.
When I started my school website it was my first time using I Web software so did not have a lot of skills to design the website. When I compare my decisions and aims between my preliminary website and the main website they differ a lot. When I started my main website I knew what I was doing as I had the practise and developed skills. I done this by creating my school website what I designed with two different pages learning how to create hyperlink, add multimedia functions and how to edit the site. So going into making the main website I felt I had more skill to develop the site.
We had different audience to present to different information and other things to consider to make the main website. This meant I had to start from the beginning and design a totally different website to adjust to the new target audience and topic. I had a lot more things to focus on with the main website as I and to design 4 pages. I wanted to keep the conventions of keeping a consistent style throughout the website like I did on my preliminary.
So I learnt I had to look at who I am aiming the website at and adjust what my website will look like to what would appeal to them. So I used new fonts and colours for the text and this text was to be short and to the point as my target audience have a short attention span.
Other multimedia functions like the images and videos used featured young people as I learnt this would help the audience to relate.
I know skills in which I can edit videos to how I want them to play and what messages I want to give off from them.
I felt that my skills in editing the video and the images have developed the most from creating the Drop Inn website. When I first started editing the video we filmed for the website I found that we had a lot of videoing what was really boring for the audience. So I edited the video to quiet an extent to get the best results and my skills developed doing so. When I was editing the photo I took of someone being drunk I wanted to emphasis what state he was in so edited the photo when done so I learnt different skills of editing the photo and made it look as if he was under the influence of alcohol.
In the production of my website Drop Inn I felt went according to my planning I designed when making the website and met my briefs targets I set. I felt I have used devolved and challenge the conventions of the type of website I have made through my research before hand. I feel I have adjusted my website well to accommodate the needs of my target audience when designing the language of the site. I created a good house style throughout the site giving it a professional look so the audience feel it is a trust worthy site. My skills have developed dramatically over the course of making the website in using different software such an adobe Photoshop and the use of IWeb. I think my website has fulfilled all I wanted and expected it to and would attract my target audience to use its services.
By Jacob Ben-Arie
