Slide 1: In the PowerPoint presentation I am going to outline why I feel our website is successful and why we have either conformed or gone against conventions of real media products.
Slide 2:This is the home page of our website. I am focusing firstly on what I feel is the most important feature of the website; the band name. I feel our band ‘Ignite’ is successfully advertised across the home page to our target audience. I am going to focus on one place in particular; the top corner.
Slide 3:I feel this is particularly successful as its dark green colour not only ties in with the colour scheme but stands out quite clearly against the pale background. Also, the lettering stands out from the rest of the fonts used (similar to Muse's website). Again, this makes it stand out further. The lettering we have chosen for Ignite is slightly gritty indicating our target audience is slightly more mature and possibly darker in their music taste since we have used a more artistic font.
Slide 4:Next I wish to talk about what we have incorporated on our home page and why. We have several features that are common on lots of band websites. We have the promotion of latest music through our music video, and the products themselves which could link to a shop. We have also tried to incorporate a recent news feed, which may not be as advanced as most bands' websites but this is simply due to us not having the technologies to do so). We have chosen a simple sidebar, which is easy to use rather than having links to other pages scattered across the page. This is because of our target audience, again being more mature so we felt the easier the website is to use, the easier they will have access to our products. One of the ways we have integrated all three of our media products on to one platform is on the home page of our website. We have deliberately tried to use the technological convergence that has been created by the internet to help us promote our Band. We have put the digipak front cover as our background and we have also put the video on the home page. This way, our audience is able to access all 3 of our media products.
Slide 5:Having all three of our media products integrated on to one media platform means that we are constantly advertising to our target audience. Since our website is easy to use it makes it easier for our target audience to consume our products.
Slide 6:One of the most important features on any website is the news feed. The news feed enables the band to keep in contact with their target audience and inform them on latest information with the band. We haven’t chosen a technically advanced news feed. Instead we have chosen a very simple, easy to use one as our target audience is more mature and may not be as familiar with some of the more advanced technologies on other websites, therefore in anticipation of this we have kept our website simple.
Slide 7:One convention that we felt was essential was the 'Contact Us' section, which allows the audience to interact with the band. We did this via a separate toggle from the home page, which would allow the audience to easily contact the band.
Slide 8:However, thanks to social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter mean that both the 'Contact Us' section and websites themselves are decreasing in popularity. This is due to the possibilities these sites have; on networks such as twitter or facebook, the audience can be friends with the band and therefore receive constant updates. Also, you can talk to people who also like the band or maybe even talk to the band members themselves. A key feature of these sites is the ability to share videos and music, allowing the band to automatically share their latest music with a large percentage of their target audience. This has lead to a decrease in the amount of people and bands who use websites, instead they use social networking sites. A lot of bands will have links to their social networking sites on their website, again this raises awareness of the band.
Slide 9:Other features that we have chosen to incorporate in the band’s website are biography, photos, videos and interviews. We feel that these are important as they allow the band to interact on a larger scale with their target audience. Also, with photos and videos the audience have something to comment on and form an opinion of the band, rather than face value. These sections are just a few stereotypical items that are found on all websites and we felt it is important to retain them. As you can see we have maintained a theme across the entire website by using the album cover as the background. This challenges the conventions used in most websites, because they often change backgrounds to make a clear distinction between pages. However, we felt that by having greater exposure of our album, this would lead to greater sale of our products.
Slide 10: Thanks for watching :)
