Website Critique and Journal

Highsocieteanj.com is a website that advertises on a beverage; tea that is offered to the high socioeconomic class people. This website targets the high income earners in the society as its primary audiences. Although it does not contain a subject statement to indicate that its major concern is the high income earners, its title indicates both its subject and purpose. The title specifies it to be advertising on a high-society tea house, and images of luxurious facilities portrayed on its homepage. The term “high societea” refers to service for the economically stable people who can afford luxuries in their lives. Therefore, they are the primary audiences of the website since the can afford the services being rendered.

However, despite targeting the high income earners who are associated with the urge for perfect sophistication and attractive presentations, the website contains a poor design. The developers of this website did put into to consideration the effective features of a good website design. Its homepage contains a lot of blank space which makes it to seem empty. An effective website design focuses on putting adequate content on the homepage which clearly portrays what is contained in it. The website is filled up with pictures on the homepage without providing an explanation about their origin or the main purpose of putting them there. There is no subject statement that states its main purpose hence making the audiences to rely on the suggestive terms in discovering its purpose. For instance, an interested audience would only rely on the term “tea house” within the website’s title in order to know that it is advertising about tea beverages that are being served within its outlets.

The website’s color scheme is effective since most of its colors rhyme. They provide adequate contrast that enables its audiences to view its contents clearly. This is an effective feature of its design that makes it to reveal all its contents to the viewers without being strenuous. Moreover, its letters have been written in a medium size font that makes them clearly visible and able to pass message effectively. The developers can also be congratulated for actively using images to portray the real picture of the tea outlets that are being advertised on website. Its homepage does not include unrelated advertisements hence enabling the viewers to gain confidence in exploring its contents. According to Nielsen (2001), a website design that involves excessive advertisements on unrelated contents discourages viewers from exploring its contents. They feel that they are being tricked to fall trap of scammers or malicious software hence avoiding further exploration.

Its homepage is also free from dead links. This aspect makes it able to cover most of its weaknesses hence proving the credibility of its developers to the audiences. Involvement of dead links in the homepage of any website makes the audiences to start doubting on whether the website’s content if often updated (Niederst, 2001). Therefore, they fear they may spend much of their time view content that talks about non-existing facilities or services. The developers also made it free from blue links which in most cases are placed near the main topics or at strategic positions within the website that may cause the viewer to click them accidentally. The blues links direct the viewers to useless or remote pages hence making them to feel that exploring the website content is simply wastage of time.  Its audiences are made sure that all the links which are available on the website would direct them to the required content hence being willing to spend more time examining the advertisement.

The website also contains appropriate graphics that fit well on the screen. They have alt labels and free from extremely large thumbnail images. All the graphics which are included are meaningful and do not take a lot of time to load. Macotte (2010) says that websites that contain meaningless graphics or ones which take long time to load discourage viewers from viewing much of its content. The Internet community is aware that there are very many related contents within the websites hence there is no need of wasting time exploring unresponsive websites or the ones that contain meaningless graphics. Bearing in mind the effect of this fact, developers of societeanj.com included responsive graphics that hold a meaning concerning the website’s content hence making it worthy to be viewed by its audiences.

Despite the several good website design features that have been included on the website, they are not effective enough to make it to be regarded as having an overall good design.  The website does not exercise continuous styling within its homepage. Different styles of text formatting have been used. For instance, its title is not italicized as its content within the bottom part of the homepage. A different font type has been used for its title from the one used to structure the rest of its contents. The developers can be termed to have had worked too hard to make the website different from others hence failing to observe the concepts of a good website design. A good design should have a continuous styling which makes it to seem official and worthy to be viewed by its primary audiences. According to Niederst (2001), Internet users depend on simple aspects in determining whether a website is worthy exploring or not. For instance, excessive use of different formatting and font styles make them to doubt the credibility of its developers. The experienced website developers do not spend much of their time making unnecessary decorations in order to improve the attractiveness of the websites. They depend on effective arrangement of content, proper color schemes and useful links to make the websites unique from others and attractive to explorations. Moreover, most Internet users bear in mind that the companies that can afford to hire well qualified developers to design their websites, value their contents and see it to be worthy advertising. This notion makes them to use the design features in determining whether the website’s content is worthy viewing or not.

The website also lacks personality. The developers did not consider incorporating explanative sections on the website which explain deeply about its content and purpose hence failing to elude a sense of self. Its homepage is comprised of information that is too general to make it convincing to its primary audiences. A good website design includes various sections that explain about the websites content deeply hence making the viewers to notice the uniqueness of its advertisements. Internet users access different websites in order to obtain specific pieces of information. Therefore, if they fail to notice relevant sections which would guide them towards the interested content, they get discouraged from continue to view its content. Developers of highsocieteanj.com should have paid attention on including specific sections which describe the unique services which are offered by the outlets being advertised.

For any website design to be effective it should be convincing to the viewers and directive in making them discover its uniqueness from the other websites. It should exercise comprehensive description of the websites content within its homepage without making it excessively crowded (Oleksy, 2001). Moreover, images should be used to provide supplementary information about the content being described. They should not be relied upon entirely to explain the website’s content as it was done by developers of highsocieteanj.com.

Conclusion

There are several features which can be relied upon in judging whether a particular website contains a good or bad design. The homepage of any website contains the most crucial aspects of design that guides viewers in making decisions on whether to continue exploring its content or not. Therefore, it should be developed carefully encompassing all the most important sections that explain its purpose and awards it a sense of personality.

Highsocieteanj.com contains ineffective website design although there are certain good features which were included by its developers. The website is free from unresponsive graphics, and blue or dead links which might make the viewers to get discouraged from continuing to view its content. However, its design is made poor by several features which include; too much blank space on the homepage, lack of personality, and lack of continuous styling.

Website Journal

Highsocieteanj.com was established with the main aim of advertising tea beverages that are offered by the company’s tearooms located in 20 Old Newark Pompton Turnpike. This location can be described as an historical township of Wayne. These tearooms can date their origin back to the year 1895. The website explains about their existence and gives customers information about the services render, and the exact directions which would lead them to the outlets. It also contains information about the series of events which have taken place since establishment of the tearooms and the development which has been experienced.

The website uses a formal tone entirely to present information about the services which are being advertised. However, it does not make full utilization of its homepage to describe about the major sections encompassed by its content. Audiences are forced to make persisted efforts in clicking several links before tracing the necessary information of their interest. This aspect is among the several features that impair information relying to the audiences hence making its design to be poor.

However, despite the weakness of the website which include; improper styling, emptiness of its homepage, and lack of personality, the website contains some strengths which make its content worthy viewing. Content within the homepage has been effectively arranged and proper color scheme used hence making it easily viewable. Texts have also been written using a medium size font that makes the audiences to read them without straining.

References

Macotte, E. (2010). Responsive Web Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Niederst, J. (2001). Web Design in a Nutshell. New York: O'Rielly Media.

Nielsen, J. (2001). Homepage Usability. New York: New Riders Publishing.

Oleksy, W. (2001). Web Design. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group.

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