Website Design

Karimmetwaly.com is an artistic website that presents the acting portfolio of an actor named Karim Metwaly. The primary audiences of this website are the fans of the named actor. The website presents a biography of the actor that explains about the start of his acting career and the achievements he has gained so far. This information is only relevant to people who are interested in knowing more about his life, acting collections, and his entire history in his career. The people with such interests would be definitely his fans.

The website has several features which makes its design to be poor. First, the homepage contains many pictures without involving adequate descriptive information concerning its content. Suffer (2011) argues that good website design should focus majorly on developing meaning of its content rather than being obsessed with inducing attractiveness. Therefore, the developers of this website should have awarded attention towards including various sections which would depict the sense of creating it. They were obsessed with portraying the attractive pictures of the actor without explaining to the audiences the reason behind displaying them.

The greatest portion of the homepage has been occupied by pictures hence making it to seem more of a photo gallery than an advertisement website. The audiences will be forced to spend much of their time viewing attractive photos of the actor before discovering the necessity of seeing them. The content within the homepage does not support the website’s subject statement. The subject statement indicates “acting portfolio” while the content within the homepage is general photo gallery of the actor without providing a relation between the photos and his acting events. The developers should have included sections indicating when and where the pictures were taken in order to explain to the audiences the reason behind publishing them on the website. The viewers are forced to compare them in order to discover that they might have been taken on different occasions hence associating them to the different series of events he has been participating in. This is an ineffective quality of a website design according to Luppa (2001). He explains that a good website design should be the one that is able to rely on certain pieces of information to the audiences without being too demanding in terms of mental activity. The audiences should be able to understand the content being displayed without thinking too much.

The homepage of this website also contains large blank space which makes it to look empty. This aspect discourages viewers from continuing to examine its content since they develop a feeling of securing low benefit from the content being displayed. The homepage should be rich in meaningful information which is of interest to the audiences in order to motivate them to spend adequate time viewing it. Kolko (2011) insists that the homepage should be developed with comprehensive information which is displayed in an organized manner in order to winning user confidence in accessing the content. However, websites that contain rather empty homepages discourage audiences from exploring their content due to the feeling that they are underdeveloped.

On the bottom part of the homepage there is a section that contains excessively large graphic that cannot be loaded by a normal browser. This graphic makes the browser to display a timeout message which indicates that “the connection was reset”. A good website design involves graphics with medium size thumbnails that can easily be loaded by a normal browser. This feature indicates that the website content is only limited to some audiences since the ones using normal browser are not able to view its content fully. The developers of karimmetwaly.com should have emphasized on ensuring that all links and graphics within the homepage are responsive. They should all contain labels are be able to load in order to display the required content to the users.

The website also experiences poor arrangement of content within the homepage. Although the greatest portion is comprised of photos, they are not arranged in a good manner that would make it to be presentable. The photos have not been aligned in a continuous form although the developers attempted to copy the function of a photo grid. There is a space left on the second row which can fit two of the photos placed within the successive rows. This makes the content to seem disorganized hence triggering the audiences to develop doubts concerning the website’s credibility. According to Pedersen (2001), an effective website design should be the one that proves credibility of the website right from the homepage. The Internet users are aware that most qualified web designer put emphases on developing a presentable website that contains attractive arrangement of content right from its homepage.

However, the website design cannot be claimed to be entirely poor since it encompasses several good features. For instance, the developers observed a continuous styling which is necessary for developing effective websites. The same font type has been used for all major sections of the website hence making it appealing. A good color scheme has also been observed throughout all sections of the website which makes able to display all contents to the viewers without straining. The developers avoided leaving excessive white space on the homepage which would have aggravated the sense of low quality by its audiences. The white background was substituted with a black one hence reducing the ability of most audiences to notice that the homepage contains little content.

Moreover, all its content has been written in a medium size font that is able to be easily read by the audiences. This feature enables them to easily spot the major sections of interest and obtain the necessary information without straining. According to Perker (2004), websites that contain too small font sized letter discourage the audiences from exploring their contents. The Internet community is prone to harm from malicious software or unfriendly terms of service. Therefore, the users are keen to monitor any suspicious content that might be a potential threat to their welfare hence avoiding it. The small font sized letters are associated with contents that are not aimed at being discovered by the audiences hence making them discouraged from continuing exploring them.

The website is free from unnecessary advertisements that might be drawing references to external sources irrelevant to the website’s content. All the links which are involved within the website direct users to meaningful sites that contain information about Karim Matwaly. It is also free from dead links. These are non-functioning links which reference themselves or unrelated to any particular webpage. The developers made sure that all links within the website are functioning hence winning user confidence to some extent.

Never the less, karimmetwaly.com has used a formal tone unlike most artistic websites. The language used to explain about the biography of the actor and the various events in which he has participated in is respectful. Although some sections have employed used on informal tone, it is not offensive but aimed at inducing fun.

Conclusion

The difference between a good and a bad website design is its effectiveness in passing the intended message to the viewers. A good website design involves effective features such as responsive graphics, functional links, proper color scheme, and a good arrangement of its content. On the other hand, a bad website design does not observe such features hence most of its content might be disarranged, texts written in too small font sizes, unresponsive graphics, excessive advertisements, and dead or blue links.

Karimmetwaly.com contains some good features in its web design although there are several aspects that make it poor. The developers paid attention towards involving functional links and eliminated irrelevant contents from the website. They also maintained continuous styling which makes the website rather appealing. However, its homepage contains large percentage of blank space that generates the sense of emptiness on its audiences. The developers also failed to include adequate descriptive content within the homepage that explains about its purpose. The content within the homepage is also disarranged. A grid system should have been used in aligning the content in order to make it more appealing. These aspects make its design not to be good enough to be described as being effective in displaying the website content.

Website Journal

Karimmetwaly.com was established in 2013 to present a biography of an actor named Karim Metwaly also present a series of different events in which he was involved. The website traces origin of Karim’s discovery on his acting talent to the age of 7. It succeeds in explaining the driving forces that triggered the actor to venture in his career; which is an interesting piece of information to his funs. The website documents series of thrilling events which were made successful by his contributions hence portraying his prominence in the acting industry.

Both formal and informal tones have been used to present the biography of the actor and historical occurrences which have been experienced in his career. Each piece of information is presented to leave the reader in suspense hence aggravating the urge to continuing reading the other successive pieces. The informal tone has basically been associated with the amusing performance of the actor rather than being offensive to the readers.

The website has got several strengths which makes its audiences willing to explore its content despite the ineffective features which have been included in its design. It displays attractive images of the actor which creates the urge of the audiences to read more about the occasions in which they were taken. They are forced to follow the links directing them to the actor’s events in order to obtain answers to their questions. However, it also contains some weaknesses in that all important content about the life history of the actor is not presented. It also fails to involve adequate links which would enable audiences to navigate through its contents effectively.

References

Kolko, J. (2011). Thought on Interactive Design. Massachusetts: John Wiley & Sons.

Luppa, N. (2001). Web Design. Boston: Focal Print.

Parker, L. (2004). Interactive Web Design. London: V & A Publishers.

Pedersen, M. (2010). Graphis Interactive Design 1. New York: Graphis Inc.

Suffer, D. (2011). Designing for Interaction. Berkeley: New Riders Press.