Media Website Evaluation

Media Website Evalution

Level 2 create media website

I was set the task of creating a website for all my work on Level 2 creative media.

I created an account on http://www.wix.com/, and started thinking about what kinda things I would put on my website.
I could add some of the pictures I took whilst on the Harry Potter trip, also if I can find the diagram I made outlining the basic concept of a camera, what it looks like and the different buttons you can press to set things like the ISO, shutter speed, aperture and exposure.
I also had to look at three media professionals (a film director, a fashion designer and a professional illustrator)  look at their websites and criticize their website, explaining what is good and what is bad about it.

Film Director's Website:

George Lucas's Website (http://www.lucasfilm.com/).
The first page you come to seems quite simplistic, giving you clear directions to where you might want to go, also there are links on the first page to different clips, as well as a link to applying for a job in their company (careers), finding out more about Lucasfilm (Titled: Our  Story when you click the link "About"), there is a link to all the films that Lucasfilm has taken part in i.e.:

• Indiana Jones
• Star Wars
• Strange Magic
• American Graffiti

There is also a like on the main page called "What we do", which is a page that explains everything what they do as a company, these are the following:

• Game Development, 
• Skywalker Sound
• ILM
• Animation
• Products (where you can buy special Lucasfilm Merchandise).

All of the categories above do not seem to have any links leading to external sources/ websites.

This appears un-usual but this could be a way to keep people from leaving the page quickly and persuaded to look at everything on there, but there is a link to social media on the page (Facebook) that appear to be the only external leading link.

Fashion Designer's Website:

Jeremy Hackett's Website (http://www.hackett.com/gb/)

The first page you come to (the Home Page), seems a lot more complex than the last one I saw, so many more buttons to press, so many things to look at; you'd have to have a specific thing you're looking for because you could get easily lost in the website if you didn't.

The first thing you notice (straight away) is the pictures scrolling across the page (from right to left), generally, the main purpose of this feature is to draw the user's eye to that specific part of the page.

I also notice that when you change the size of the window on your computer, the layout of the webpage changes too, I really like this because you can do other things while you are doing cloth shopping.

There is a section for Junior and Kids wear as well so that it serves more than one group of people.

Also there are links to the the following things:

• Men
• Accessories
• Collections
• Hackett Lifestyle
• Sponsorship

There are a lot of pictures of products that the store sells, Links to like/ follow them on Social Media and also a link to sign up for exclusive news and events, a link called "about us", "customer services" and "In-store services".

There are links to external websites (mainly social media) these are the only external leading links, but there is one external leading link that could distract customers into something different the link is to YouTube, this is the only let-down I can see in this website as they could loose customers because they got distracted by YouTube, even though the chances of this happening are very unlikely.

Fine Artists's Website

Samantha Payne's website (http://www.samanthapaynepainting.com/)
The home page is very, very simplistic, there are only three buttons on this page, The home page button and a main image in the background (which you can click on, this will bring up a window where you can view all the images that cycle in the background at your own pace), a button that goes to her Portfolio, button that goes to "About".

When you click the "Portfolio" button it comes up with a grid like form layout with all different paintings also one of the things I noticed on this page was that when you clicked on an image in the background, you can view it when it enlarges and view all the other images from this too if you so wish, a lot of the images are real-life based, with paintings titled "Mum", "Dave", "Pete", "Barbados" etc.

When you click the "About" button, you are taken to another very simplistic page, giving a basic outline of the person, their contact details and links to external websites (Facebook and "bgallery.co.uk").

Templates

As a template for my website, I decided to choose the following template because it was quite easy to adapt to what I wanted, the general layout of the webite was good; and I make it look unique by adding my own pictures (taken off Google), added different text to it (to make it more orriginal)... obiously, I've added my own work into the website as I should have; but I have added eight images instead of the suggested two images....
I also have five grapical images as well, to really show off what I've done.
Also, I have added the two videos as required by the brief.

This layout also inspired me to use space as the main theme on my website... manly because I've always liked space and wanted to do it as a thmem because then it would look unique.
It would compliment my work in the way that the layout and the way that users can easily nevigate thorugh the website, also, I like the fact that you can have a little logo on the side if you choose to.
As already stated, I will add pictures of space to the background, add different ways to display my work to the main frame of the website and include a space for users to give feedback if they choose to also, although this was not stated in the main brief I  decided to add it anyway; to help me understand wah t people are looking for in a website.

Peer review.

As part of my project, I have to get feedback off students about my website: the things I could improve on and the things that are already good about it.


The first student that I talked to was Linda Ozola; she said that she liked my website, but she didn't like the the size of my font, they said: "Your writing should be bigger", but overall the response was positive, she also liked the backgrounds on my website that I had chosen too because they were "Spacey", meaning they had the general .

This reveiw was from Kaza Brookbanks:

"Home page: the text boxes have a white background tot hem which don't give it a good look
the scrolling images are good but not sure if you can fix it or not but has that odd grey on side to side
on bottom text you don't have to say is "(like a portfolio)"
there was no point for the ewp text box
 
about page: it has that odd white background on the text box but you explained what you needed to explain
 
contact page: has a sort of basic look but still has everything it needs
photos: you explain the point of the creatures section but maybe add more sections of your work also remove the numbers under the photos and maybe explain each image
 
Videography: you explained well and clear of each video 
Graphic design: is explained well and clear but maybe explain what is each picture like what were they for".


I find this feedback very helpful, now I know some of the things I might need to take extra care on; for example not having logos on my webpage, not having white text boxes and making sure that certain things are in the right.
http://danielsemakula89.wix.com/epicwebsite

Tutor Feedback
"Beautiful!" what you could do if you had to continue the project on another, say; six weeks- you could make a tutorial on one of the things you made, this draws people into your website because then they become interested in the work that you're doing. (These aren't the exact words the tutor spoke but they are as close as I can get to it seen as my memory isn't that good.