Construction grade: 46/60

Proficient in technical skills. Site is clear and easy to navigate. Message of site clearly communicated through design and photos.
EBI: Video doesn't add to the happy vibe and isn't as good technically as the other areas

Evaluation feedback: 15/20

AS PLANNING GRADE: 15/20

Your planning for this site was very good Tarik. You investigated similar media products and you thought carefully about how you wanted your site to look and what is was going to represent about your campaign to the target audience. You completed your site on schedule. Well done.

Editing the website

Demographic profile

1) Age: 25-40 – in a job, working class people
2) Gender: Both
3) Social Background – all different classes
4) Economic Status – all different status’
5) Ethnic Background – all ethnicity

I feel that it is very hard to define my target audience through demographics, as it does not fit into any specific categories except for the age group as people in their 30’s are the ones who are most affected by Cancer and are part of the working class and are in the economic lower middle to upper class. Gender is also something which is no matter when involved with my website as my charity helps both genders. My Internet usage survey helped me to realize this because a lot of people with all kind of different ethnicity, culture and lifestyles etc were asked all the same questions.

VALS – Values, Attitudes, Lifestyles

Achievers: Successful and career orientated people. They are politically conservative and value the status quo. Image is important to them and they tend to buy established, well known products. I feel that these people represent a certain minority of the working class.

Believers: Conservative people who believe in traditional institutions, such as the church, and the importance of family and community. Their lifestyles tend to be very routine. Their income is small but sufficient. I feel that these types of people are another minority of the working class.

Makers: Do I yourself enthusiasts and tend to live a conventional family life. These types of people fit the working class style.

Carers: People with a conscience who care about the world around them and the people in it. These type of people would help very much in the donation for my website as they are generous people.

Young Psychographics

Utopians: Want the world to be a better place - more likely to donate

Puritans: Those who wish to feel virtuous - will always do something good and for a cause as well

Photo analysis of other cancer websites

Website Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My website is conventional in the sense that it uses bright natural colours that calm people just like most of the cancer websites on the web. The bright green colour that I have used in my website is supposed to signify the peaceful ambiance of nature, thus the calming effect. Another convention that I have reproduced in my website is the ability to highlight the most important parts of the webpage in a different or darker colour which provokes the viewers looking at the page to be familiar with what is the most important. I have also taken on board the constant need to emphasize the donate button as this is what is the main significance of a cancer charity website.

The creative decisions that I made whilst making my website is the decision to apply a bright coloured green that reminds people about nature which creates a peaceful atmosphere within people and makes them feel happy or want to smile, for e.g. a park full of green scenery with a group of people enjoying themselves. The text that I chose when explaining parts about what my website is in a formal and very neat text as it helps in showing the seriousness of what I am trying to explain, whereas when I would start to explain about donations and the donate button itself I would use a much less formal text but yet maintain the seriousness of the subject. My website logo has similar conventions compared to other Cancer charity websites like the bold and sometimes bubbled font which gives a symbol of kind, sweet and gentle emotions within the website. The navigation bars that was used in the website is conventional in the sense that it follows the detail of other websites movement around pages, with big tabs, short links and a colourful bubbly feeling towards it.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Whilst making my website I decided that I should be looking at what social groups I would be targeting, so I thought that the right social group would defiantly be the working class as cancer affects those most of all and ruins their life plans and goals. We represented the working class in the way that the pictures we will use show with families sitting down together enjoying life everyday as it comes. As I have made my target social group the working class I have had to exclude the elderly and the young although my website targets all in different ways.

The way that my website convinces a visitor to donate is the way that I was able to make a relation between the viewer and the person that I wrote about in extraordinary stories. I done this to appeal to the viewer in a way that it could recount towards the viewer himself or to their family or friends. My extraordinary stories page represents people with Cancer in the way that it tells the audience about past experiences and the damage it has done to them and their families.

The way I represented the reality of both the problem and the solution is by first talking about and showing what different types of cancer there are and its effects as this I feel grabs the viewer’s attention, then I talked about the little things of what can help prevent cancer like eating your fruit and vegetables as well as taking your vitamins. I feel that the viewers will take this in mind after hearing the negatives about cancer then hearing the positives, which will make the viewers think that cancer can really affect the lives of themselves or their family. I am representing people who have Cancer by giving them hope rather than sympathy in the prospect that I can raise money in the donations for sufferers of Cancer.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

It is very hard to say which media institution would actually distribute my charity website as there are other media products that would rather distribute things like film or radio as it is much easier to tell a story and quicker to make than to design a whole new website. Web design is also more unreliable than either film or radio as you can straightforwardly figure out by watching or listening rather than having to look at a website and read what it is they do and why, when in film or radio its being told to you without really having to think about it.

There was some research that I done to find out about some institutions behind web design and management such as Ogilvy which does a lot of advertising for big clients especially ones like cancer research UK which I based my website off of. The role of ad agencies like Ogilvy is to spread the word of a certain company/organization through advertising by expressing what it is they do and why whether it be through television, email, newspaper ads or billboards. Web hosting and Domain names are important to distribution as it helps get the company name out, and possibly send it worldwide. It also helps gather an audience which is an essential factor, especially when you have a charity website which requires donations.

There are a lot of things to take in to consideration within the design for my website, the distribution, whether or not an institution finds my website suitable enough, then, the initial reaction of the audience and of course be on your way to creating a successful campaign. In order for this to happen you would need funding by an institution to go live on the World Wide Web and also an available web address to take use of. Going through the process of Web hosting and Domain Name registration. A main objective would be try and get your website high in the listing when key words are typed into google or a different search engine, making the site popular.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for my media product is cancer patients of all ages but my website really focuses on both males and females around the age of 21-35 as they are the youth of working class I feel that cancer affects them most of all as they may have a small family which they provide for and can no longer do so because cancer has halted their life progress.

The way that I addressed my audience was through many ways, one of them was through the design and the navigation of my website. The bright green colour that I decided upon is to give the audience a calm natural feeling that you get when in the outdoors. The navigation of the website I feel is very easy to navigate through which gives the audience plenty of understanding and is able to take their time reading and watching what my website has to offer. As you open up my website there will be a homepage with a video and very quick easy links to the next page along the side of the page with related websites along the other side of the page. This gives the audience a chance to compare different websites with my own. My links would encourage the visitors to stay on my website as it is colourful and vibrant and rather than bring people down it would do the opposite and bring some hope or possibly even a happy feeling so the audience does not get to bored at any stage.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

My website is compelling in the sense that it is active with the video that will be on the homepage and the donate page plus the big slideshow that I will have on the top of every page. The text on all my pages is not a lot and should be read by the audience without the writing dragging on down the page and with no strain on the eyes as the text is reasonable big. The song that is on my website is a very welcoming and is an awfully cool and calming instrumental so should be enjoyable for the visitor, which was one of my intentions. The audience would feel part of a community because they would find out that the website is made for many different people but all with the same problem and that would antagonise them to want to donate making them feel more and more together. Family members of Cancer patients would feel more at home with this website.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Whilst working through my website using different types of software I learnt how to use a lot of tools which helped in putting things like image, video, sound and graphics up onto my website. On the other hand though some of the digital software did not work in my favour and needed to be done in different ways which indeed slowed down the development of my website, for example, I had most of my links on the website deleted and had to do them again, thus taking up an important amount of time. I learnt how to cut, crop and place images to my satisfaction which I felt was best for my website as well as editing a video in Final Cut and placing my self-made song onto the website so it could be played when opened.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The school site that I produced now helped me in many ways to improve and understand what it is that I had to do for the main site, as it was hard for me to think about what it was I wanted to do in the first place. I learned the effectiveness of photos when it is being used for a certain purpose on the website. The design to me is always an important factor in making a website and that was something that I had to think about quite a bit. Video and animation was something I improved on and felt it was a choice to put on my website as this type of things appeal to an audience which is something I unfortunately did not do in my preliminary website. I feel my skills have developed and it is definitely in the area of digital technology as there are some features which are much more difficult than others, but I feel I have certainly improved in these features. The school website was different from the campaign one in the logic that I followed more conventions in the campaign compared to the school one and was able to produce a far better site. I now know more about the conventions of web design as compared to before I had done the school site like knowing how a video is important to the communication between your website and its audience, plus, how colour and other little details like font, tabs and logos help justify the meaning behind the website giving a much clearer view of what it is about towards the audience by following the necessary conventions.

One of the main things that I learnt was that there is such a big amount of work that goes into making and advertising a campaign website on the outside than the actual design work itself, for example the research of institutions was effective in creating a successful campaign. The amount of work that I have had to do on the outside has shown me just how much work needs to be done which is something that I never realized until now.