Website analysis eval 1

In what ways does my website, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

Evaluation task 1.

Evaluation of Connor James’s website

Layout

• The website is one of the first tools that any audience member will use when they follow their favourite artists online. For this reason it is important that the website is clear, easily to navigate and engaging. A website is an easy way to connect with an artist so it is important that it is well advertised to attract the audience, inform them and most importantly involve them so that they feel closer to the artist.

• When building Connor James’s website it was important that it accurately reflected the his genre, style and target audience that we have built around him. We looked at similar artist's websites, notably Olly Murs and George Ezra. Both these solo male artists perfectly fits this description. Like theirs our website is easily accessible and clearly labeled making it smooth and easy for our audience to find what they want. Research showed us that we should include items such as a social media page which included the artists personal pages.

• Secondly, there were other conventions that we tried to match from real life artists. When you first enter Olly Murs’s website you are immediately greeted by his most recent music video. In our case this is the ‘All-star’ video. On my website the first thing you see is a message informing the audience that the new single is now available to download This cleverly keeps the audience constantly up to date and involved making the artist seem more interested in her audience by trying to involve them in the action. We matched this convention as we wanted to give Connor’s audience the same experience by providing them with his music video ‘All-Star'.

Font (s)

• Like the layout, the font can portray an artists genre, style and target audience. The font can inform the audience of whether or not the artist is synthetic or organic and it helps show the attitude of the artist. Similar stars to Connor such as Robbie Williams, George Ezra and of course Olly Murs, use large, ‘flowy’ almost cartoon-ish fonts. This shows a relaxed, laid back atmosphere and attitude which shows both in their music and personalities. Artists like Robbie and Olly use their cheeky personalities as their trade mark and it defines who they are. We decided to match this convention on Connors website by putting all the text in the most inflated and fun font we could find on each page throughout our website. By matching this convention by doing the same thing, we were able to make our website clear and easy to explore.

• The primary font that was used on the website was called ‘Chelsea market’ as shown on the right. This font succeeded in creating the laid back feel to the website that we were going for.

Colours

• Furthermore, the colours also play a important part in dictating the star image, the target audience of the artist and the genre of music they create. Similar artists to Connor, like Ed Sheeran generally make use of a simple pallet of black and white colours throughout and in Ed’s case a hint of green. The effect this has is to show that Connors image is simple, modern, yet, fun, edgy and urban. We Subverted this convention by adding a splash of colour in. The main colour we used was red. This was done because we thought that the younger audience that Connor would attract would prefer some colour to keep them engaged. Red in particular was used as it symbolic of fun and animation. The background of the website is a dark brown. I purposefully chose this colour in order to make the red stand out even more. However, we were careful not to use any clashing colours that did not match. For Connors website, we matched this convention of simplicity in order to make his website clear and elegant to help appeal to not only the target audience but also a wider audience.

Positioning of the artist

• The positioning of an artist on their website is a key feature. Firstly it shows the audience exactly who the artist is i.e. solo or group, provides an insight into the genre, and can even give emphasis to the synthetic or organic nature of the artist.

• An important demographic of our target audience is young females between the age of 12-19. When they visit the website they are mainly interested in looking at Connor as there is a sense of attractiveness. For this reason we chose to make Connor the focus point of the website. It was important to make the website visually stimulating so the audience would remain engaged.

• On the homepage, the first page that the audience views we placed a show reel of Connor in a variety of locations both by himself, with his girlfriend and with his friends. The effect that this created is that Connor is a well rounded person who is friendly and gets along with everyone.

Bookmarks

• A website bookmark is a link that makes it easy to get back to your favourite places. It allows the audience to be clearly navigate around the site whilst remaining engaged. Our bookmarks include the homepage, social media page, tour date page and the merchandise page