For the main task I had to create a website for a charity which I believed in and felt strongly about. It had to include original photographs, my own made navigation bar, written text, information about the charity and a video with sound. I choose a charity for helping wounded Armed Forces Personnel, Servicemen and Women who are injured in warzones because friends I know are serving in Afghanistan and I believed they need recognition.
The target audience for my charity are wounded Armed Forces Personnel, and their family and friends. It is also aimed at anyone who wants to help with charity fundraiser events and raising money for the soldiers. This means that my site needs to include the proper information and the focus is on the text, not the images. To attract and address my audience then, I made the website simple but informative, by placing the text in the centre with the necessary images around the sides. The text is addressing the readers directly, and is treating them like intelligent people and not being too demanding or critical. The images are there to show all the great things the charity do, so help to promote our cause and attract more people to the site.
My website tires to stick with normal website conventions because of it's layout and navigation. Like the websites I analyzed, it has the charity name, logo, slogan and page title along the top of page, so the users instantly know where they are, and can navigate easily around the site. Another convention I have kept to is to put the logo in the top left-hand corner, because it follows a lot of other charity websites and is generally useful for the audience. Overall, it is much easier to follow normal website conventions because then the audience can use it easier, and the whole point of a charity is to have public appeal. The analysis of other websites helped me to identify these conventions and I have tried to implement as much as possible into my website.
To get my website distributed, I would place it on Internet Search Engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves so when people search for certain keywords my site should appear on the list. However, if I want it to appear on the first search page or at the very top, I would have to keep altering the content to give it a good page ranking. My website has to be consistently much better written than competitors, and be constanlty updated with useful and relevant information so Search Engines rank it higher up on their list. I will also distribute and advertise my website by having the web address written on posters and banners during the charity fundraising events so we recieve as much publicity as possible.
While doing this entire project, I have learnt many things on how to construct a successful website. I have learnt how to effectively use Paintshop Pro in creating navigation bars and logos, by using all the tools to make something which looks stylish but professional. I also learnt a lot about using Serif Webplus 10, in inserting the created nav bars, adding the rollovers to them and anchoring them to each page so they work. As I went along, from the preliminary task to the main task, I developed these skills of using the programmes and have put my full effort into creating a Professional, high quality Charity website which audiences will like.
As I look back and compare my work from the Preliminary task, I can see a clear improvement in areas such as logo design, navigation bar design, use and placement of photographs, filling in empty space in on each page. My first website looks empty, unfinished and generally rubbish because I didn't have the skills which I gradually learnt whilst creating my proper website.
However, there are many things which I could have improved on in the finished product. The first is adding a video into my website. As time was pressing on, I focused more on photographs, creating the website and updating the blog, so it eventually got too late for me to create a video and so the website is left without one. This a great weakness because my site is now left unfinished which would not go down well if this was real. Also, I think my website appears rushed and it looks like it has been put together in only a couple of minutes. I could have spent more time refining and polishing up each page so every one looks as professional and stylish as possible, instead of this cluttered up mess. I also could have kept looking back at the colour theory, audience identification and Preliminary Task evaluations so I knew exactly what I had to do and not to do, because as you go through the pages it looks as if I had forgotten these things and just thrown together a load of images and text. Overall, the one thing I am most concerned about was time. As the deadline got nearer and nearer, I didn't spend much time on the website so with only a couple of days left I had to rush everything which is why I think it is of poor quality overall.
