This is the final evaluation of the website homepage. For this evaluation we had to answer 4 questions. These were:
- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
- How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts
- What have you learned from your audience feedback
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
This is the entry page we created for our website. We noticed quite a few band website had these entry pages encorporated within them, so we decided to create one too. When previewing the site, if you click on the Stentorian logo or the "Enter Here" text, it takes you to our homepage. We will be answering the four questions for our entry page seperate to our home page.
The first question was "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?". This media product uses many forms of real media products. Many entry pages we have looked at are simple, as is our one, and have a logo with some text on the page. An example of this is the Kamelot entry page we analysed in our preproduction research. This page is built up of a black background, much like our own, and has an image one it, which has a feather effect around the edges to help it blend into the page in a more dynamic way. However, apart from this, there are few similarities between the forms we use on our entry page, and the forms used on the Kamelot entry page. For example I challenge the form that they have a language selection, instead of an enter here text on their page, whereas I have opted for Enter Here. I decided to do this as we are producing a website for a band which is looking to get a record deal. Therefore, they would not be attracting audiences from all around the world yet, and their main fan base would originate in the U.K. With this is mind, in a real development situation, there would be little point in spending more money in expanding the site to reach more continents and display it in different languages at the moment as there would be no need for the band to be trying to reach those countries. Another reason I did this as there is no need to have a language selection option on any website as you can select languages in Internet browser options, and websites load particular content, and don't load others, based on the computers Internet Protocol address (IP address) too, so if the content isn't compatible in that country it wouldn't matter anyway. Another form that we challenged is that they included the band name as a separate section. We decided not to do that as the band name is included within the logo we were given permission to use. If we placed the band name on the page as well, it would look very strange. We also didn't include the name of the album on the entry page, this is because we felt that this website wouldn't just be promoting one album, but the band as a whole, so we decided against using this on our entry page. We feel that our entry page does still work as a media production and only difference from real media products are visual aspects such as fonts etc.
The second question is "How effective is the combination of your ancillary texts and main text?". This question doesn't really effect this part, although it is a small part of our ancillary texts. We feel that this entry page works well with the website homepage, it shares similar themes, similar fonts, and a similar contextual layout. We also feel that my website works well with my main text, being a music promo video, although we will expand on this when we answer these questions about the website homepage.
The third question is "What have your learned from your audience feedback?". We didn't learn much from our audience feedback about this part of this product. We did not feel that it was a major part of our project, so included little about it in the audience feedback questionnaire, although we do feel that we realise now, for any future projects we may do, a broader range of colours should be used, and more detail should be added to our productions.
The fourth question is "How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning stages?". In the construction phase of our project we used media technologies a lot. The main program we used for the website design was Serif Web Plus. We decided to use this program as it offers good results with simple user interfaces and simple effects. It is very easy to reach a professional looking finished product, we would consider ours to be professional looking. We also used Web Plus as we knew we were going to be using hyper links in our site, so we chose to use Web Plus as it allows us to do this easily. We obviously used a computer in the production of our texts. This allowed to be a little bit experimental with effects on pictures, different filters, image positioning, fonts etc, which all helped us constantly improve our website until we got a point where we are happy with it. The simplicity of Web Plus allowed us to experiment too, although compared to last years production, we both feel we were much more direct with our experiments, and knew what we wanted to experiment with and why. For example, on the entry page, we experimented to see which level of blur on the image would make it blend to the page nicely, without distorting the image too much. We also used the Internet a lot in the construction stages of our texts. This was partly to see what other website had done with their design, so we could be inspired by them to create our own high quality website. In the research stages we also used the Internet a lot. We used this to gather up ideas again, and gather up different websites and their enter pages so we could analyse them, and start to build up an idea of what we wanted to create as a text. We used Microsoft office based software to brain storm ideas for this too. For our planning we also brainstormed ideas using office suit software, this can be seen on our research page for website design. This was just a basic over view of the ideas we would like to incorporate into our website.
Now we will analyse the main homepage for our website. This is one of the ancillary texts to be produced along side a DVD cover and a music promo video. For the analysis of each individual stage in the development of this website home page, please click here.
The first question we have to answer is "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?". This website isn't like many website's we have seen before. A traditional technique of website design is to split the page into 3 sections, the banner, the index and the main bulk section of the page. I chose not to use this traditional way of designing a website. We still did technically use the rule of 3, but I developed this form of web design to suit my individual needs for this home page. I split my pages up into 3 sections, the banner across the top, the main bulk in the middle, and then a banner along the bottom of the page. We both feel that this is a really effective way of designing a website, without having to 100% stick to codes and conventions of web design, although in more modern web design, traditional ideas and concepts of how to design a website are considered out dated, so new monochrome website are becoming more and more common. In the top banner of the website we included the homepage icon, I.E. the Stentorian.com symbol, and the index/navigation section. We decided these would be best at the top of the page as it is the first part of the page people generally look at when they enter a website. Therefore if they are looking for a particular section within the website, they can jump strait to it without having to wait for the rest of the page to load. We positioned the index on a slant so it fits on the page better and is more aesthetically appealing. This is challenging a form on web design as most websites have a standard index box down the left hand side of the page, not a smaller box, which is slanted on the top right hand side of the page. We feel that our index is a better way of doing an index as it is more compact, and part of our research suggested people wanted the homepage to be on one page, so they didn't have to scroll down, so listening to this suggestion, we decided to do that, so having a smaller index space was necessary. The Stentorian.com symbol is at the top of the page so people know they are on the right web page. Having the website logo and index page at the top of the page is using forms of media and website design as most website's will feature these at the top of their web pages, for practical reasons more than anything. The middle section of the website does all 3. By having 4 individual pictures like that is something that we are challenging conventional forms of media production by going against standard web design features. Having them lined up like that may not have worked on another website, but due to the freedom we opened up for ourselves by not creating a standard website, we opened up a lot of doors to get creative and really experiment with what we want to do with our website, and we could try and push boundaries and challenge how web design in done. We were heavily inspired by the Led Zeppelin website when we produced this text, and we feel that that website is the only thing that we have seen that closely resembles what we have decided to do with our pictures. We used other conventions when we produced this website too. For example, the slight tilt on the pictures is something which is commonly used to create an unrest in the readers mind, and create a sort of feeling of breaking away from the norm, although, now it has become so widely used, it is quite normal to tilt pictures, in fact, it would be abnormal if the pictures were dead strait, something which we didn't do. Feathering the edges of the pictures is also something which is commonly used in media texts to help the image sit nicely on the page. We did this as otherwise the image looks as if it has just been stuck on the page and no though has gone into it at all. We also used forms by the content of the images. All the subjects in the pictures are playing a musical instrument, or in the lead singers case, doing something to do with music. This is a typical convention of music website pictures as it is what the bands featured on the websites do for a living, and the main reason the visitors to the website are going there. Some conventions we developed were the use of the images. As said before, the Led Zeppelin website is the closest we have seen to what we have produced. They have a main image in the middle of the page, and then smaller images layering over the top, creating a collage of images, all of the band when they were younger. We developed this idea and made it so we had 4, decent pictures of each individual band member's looking like they are rocking out, and playing their music. We feel very pleased with how we did use and challenge/develop forms and conventions with these images and the way they are layed out as we feel it has worked considerably well. The bottom section of the page is the bottom banner. This section of the website contains links to video archives and email updates, it also has a media player, and the title of their album they are promoting, "The Unseen". We do generally use many forms and conventions of web design in media on this section. We used an image of the band all together for the link to the video archive, as well as having the link on the text too. This is quite a standard thing to have on a web page for a band, as people like to watch video's of the band doing live performances, so having a link to a video archive is quite standard, and should be included on most, if not all band websites. Again the image used is feathered, something quite standard in web design. One thing we haven't seen much though is the reflected writing, which gives an effect like the writing is sat on water, which we feel gives the website a very natural feel. The filter on the text is quite unique as well, that particular effect anyway, we haven't seen many websites like it, but websites do have effects similar on their website's, so that is also an example of how we have developed a media convention. The text "The Unseen" is also something which developed a form in media based web design. It is standard to have the bands current album advertised on the website, but normally it is at the top of the page. We decided to put it at the bottom of the page, this is because of the amount of space we had on the page, it made it a lot more efficient to put this at the bottom of the page. We think this worked really well and suits the web page more at the bottom of the page than it would at the top, otherwise it would look cramped, something which was pointed out as a bad thing on our research. We placed the filter over the text on "The Unseen" as again we felt that it is a good way to develop different forms and conventions of web design. The register for email updates section is quite standard too. It is the same format as before, so challenges the same conventions, but also used a few as email updates are very important to many websites, not just band websites. We used a standard font, and placed the filter over the text again, so we develop the same conventions of web design. The media player uses many conventions of web design. With proper development it could work, but it is built up of basic shapes. It is a quite common layout for a website based media player, with the play button, which would turn into the pause button, the volume control and then the volume visual display.
The second question we have to answer is "How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? ". We both feel that the 3 texts on combination would offer quite a broad and effective promotional package. The website, with further development could offer a lot in the way of interactive promotions, for example, list streaming of gigs, interviews etc, as well as music based games, and of course, promotions and competitions regarding the new release of the album. The promo video could also be featured in the video archive of the website, and the DVD of the promotional video and relevant songs could be sold on the on line shop. In regards to the look and feel of our texts we feel we have delivered a recurring theme within our texts, which is built up of recurring fonts, image style and design style. In particular the DVD cover and website work very well together. For example if you brought the DVD, and then went on the website, you would automatically know that you are on the right website as the image we used on the DVD cover is also the image used on the entry page to the Stentorian.com website, this therefore is an example of a recurring theme within the 3 texts. The music video, also uses the same image at the start of the video. I would say in the real media world, the three pronged attack of the Website, DVD cover and Promo video would be an effective force at promoting the album and the band, and would most likely catch the eye of an R&R rep.
The third question we need to answer is "What have you learned from your audience feedback? " The answer to this question is quite simply a lot. Before we set out to do this production, we had a general idea of what our target audience would want in these texts, but there were something we couldn't predict, and even then, when we had our research back, and we produced a text which meets the specification given to us by our audience through our original questionnaires, we still got some negative feedback, which shows that the audience we are trying to reach out to and commune our ideas with isn't a mass audience which value the same things in every text, they are independant and think for themselves on different texts in different ways. Our audience feedback for our text was mainly positive. 40% said that they felt the colour was better on our site, something we are very pleased about as it was something raised as being very important in our preproduction results. On top of this 80% of our audience agreed that the website jumped out at them and caught their eyes, something which is very important when producing a promotional package as it is very important to get noticed in the pile of promotional packs sent to record labels. Some feedback we received from our audience feedback though was that the website was maybe a bit too simple, and maybe could have done with a little bit extra on the website, although we are very happy with the way it turned out, we take these comments, and if we were to reproduce this website, we would take it into consideration when re making the website. Another thing that was raised was that our audience would suggest using proper studio pictures on the website, instead of using pictures from one of the bands practise rooms. But more on the positive side, our website gave 90% of our audience the feel that they were viewing a rock music website, which is always a good thing when producing a text for a rock band. In total 70% of our audience said that they would be effected in a positive way, I.E. they would buy this promotion package, or look at it at least if they saw it advertised. This is a very positive statistic, one which we feel reflects the level or effort we have put into making these texts, and the quality we feel we have produced. Overall our feedback was positive from our audience, but we did pick up a few things which we feel we need to improve on in order to really reach out and effect a larger audience.
The fourth and final question we had to answer was "How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?". We used media technologies, like in the enter page, a lot in the production of this website. We produced this website using Serif Web Plus, which is a very easy piece of software to use, but also still has potential for really professional looking websites. We decided to use this software, ultimately because we didn't have time to hard code xhtml and css script, and also didn't have time to learn how to use Adobe Dreamweaver effectively enough to produce the same quality of produce we could do with Serif Web Plus with a small amount of experimenting. We also had to use the Internet to seek inspiration for our website homepage. We found a lot of inspiration in the Led Zeppelin.com website, and our website has very similar features. We also had to use the Internet to preview our site, just to make sure that our hyper links worked, which they did. The Internet was used a lot in the research stages of our website production as well. We looked at many different website's, in ranging styles, and genre's of rock, trying to pick out the best bits from all of them. We also used office based software to document our research, and plan our own website in the form of brainstorms, which can be found on our research page on the blog.
