Revised finished website.

I continued this new colour theme throughout the rest of the site and feel I have achieved an overall, more sophisticated and professional site, more likely to attract my target audience.



After completing my site I asked for audience opinion of my finished product. I learned that the finishe dlook of the site was not to the professional standard I desired. The responses I had said that the objects on the website should be lined up in a more uniformed formation, and the colour pallet should be much simpler and slighley different so that the target audience can be best targeted. Above is my final finished site with alterations made. You can see the different colours throughout the site and also in the logo. Also all objects are now lined up. This will help appeal to a professional, sophisticated target audience.

Initial logo sketches and finshed logo

When placed upon the maroon background, this looks very effective.

Here are my rough designs for my logo. I felt that the colours were innapropriate as they would appeal to my target audience better if they were deeper and more welcoming. I also thought that the design worked best in the top left as it combined both bulky text and also an image. i therefore took this idea into my final logo design as seen at the top. Overall I think the logo is effective as it follows what a good logo should be, simple yet interesting.

Preliminary task finished site

Evaluation

My brief for this task was to produce a campaign website for a charity. It had to include sound and video, logo, original photographs, written text, and easy navigation. I chose to create a website of my own called Dogs Help UK. I chose this because I had seen many other websites for a dog charity and felt I had ideas to make my own site better than those produced in real life.

My site will be distributed to my target audience prodominantly through search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. I will have to use search optimisation to ensure the website is seen by as many as possible. The website is looking for donations so a large amount of viewers is key. The best way to do this is to use keywords to optimise the search engine. By using specific words that relate to your site, you can attract a greater audience. Another way to attract more audience is to be featured on complementary sites. For example, a similar site for the welfare of dogs could house a link to the DHUK site.THis will further increase the audience profile and make the site both more effective and attract more donations. Any other distribution will fit in with the overall marketing campaign of the charity, rather than being specific to the website itself.

As I’ve explained previously in the task, a convention is an unwritten rule as to what makes an effective media design, in this case, the design of a website. Examples of a website convention can be to have a navigation bar either down the side or across the top, in a list style format. I felt that the websites I analysed didn’t conform strictly to media conventions and therefore were not as effective as they may have possibly been. This made me think that by following media conventions, I could produce an overall better website. The reason I think following conventions will create a better site is audiences respond very well to familiarity and any change needs to be adjusted to and therefore is not as effective.

I have also followed the conventions when it came to making the logo for my website. To work out some of the conventions of logos I analysed other charity’s logos (I went through a similar process to when I analysed other websites). This gave me inspiration on what my target audience might want or be attracted to. Once I had done this I pulled together a document with all of the main conventions of logos in and worked from there. In my final logo I have only used two colours and the basis of the design is clean and simple. It is a versatile design, and is easily recognisable as the DHuk charity logo. The colours I chose to use were blue and a deep maroon. The reason why I combined the colour maroon with the blue was because they work really well together. They are known as complementary colours this is because they ‘complement’ each other or make the other one stand out more. This means that they would make the site more appealing to my audience. Also, the decision to use these colours was made after I carried out market research with my target audience. Not only did the results help me to choose a colour scheme, but it also helped me finalise the design too. Following what my target audience wanted would be more likely to appeal to them and draw them in therefore I decided to respond to my research and keep my logo very simple, opting for the most popular one.

The colours of my logo were also influenced by the base, primary and highlight colours of my website. I chose these to be deep colours to give a sense of sophistication to my higher demographic audience and make the website more welcoming. The deep maroon gives a welcoming feel whilst the blue adds a vibrant edge connoting happiness. Also the elements of grey in the site are there as they highlight the deep maroon emphasising the intended ideology of the website.
The target audience of my charity website will be adults, both male and female, mostly of a higher age bracket, 25-65. This is my target audience as I believe they are the best to target for a charity as the funds and developed ideologies are in place for them to donate to a charity. The site will be aimed at a generally higher demographic (A,B,C1) as they are more likely to have spare money to donate into the charity. It will also appeal to a higher bracket of psychographic as the ideas needed to give donations compassionately are more likely to occur in a higher psychographic grouping. A young person is unlikely to want to donate money to a charity as stereotypically they do not have inkling to help others. To appeal to this bracket of audience, the site must be sophisticated, simple and welcoming. The aim will be to evoke happiness as well sympathy through adding many pictures of dogs in order to prompt a donation from the audience. A healthy donation will be best received from this group and the site must target these people who share the same aims as the charity in helping others and creating happiness. To target this group I have added specific content likely to appeal to this audience. This includes sophisticated imagery, deep welcoming colours and a refined typography using Serif font.
Through the making of my website I have encountered many media technologies that I am very inexperienced in. For example the use of photoshop to edit and enhance images was very challenging for me however I have learnt that the benefits to my images are enormous once enhanced in photoshop. I can clearly see that once an image is edited in photoshop the outcome looks very professional and of a standard that would be accepted in the real world. I also feel that my ability to use this software has increased dramatically after using it to improve my website. Through doing this project, I have developed my IT skills base dramatically. The use of Web Plus 10 has also helped this. I found this easier to use than photoshop however still initially challenging. Once I knew my way around the programme it was simple and easy to construct a very effective and professional website. Specific skills I learnt are adding rollover, hyperlinks, anchoring items and constructing a personalised navigation bar.

Looking back at the preliminary task I feel I have benefited greatly from editing images and using original ones which creates a much more professional front. One of my personal objectives was to make the site look professional and I feel that the preliminary website was no where near looking professional. I feel that my final task has gone part of the way but can be much improved if I was given another chance. Next time I would put deeper thought and time into choosing the correct colours for my website to make sure that it appealed to the target audience. I would also take this colour theory to my logo making sure it coincided both with the other colours on the site and the expectations of the target audience.

Construction

The way I added all the pictures on my site, including the logo was going to insert, picture, from file and then dragging it to the desired location and size. This is a very simple process of adding images and very useful.




Here I used the 'hotspot' tool to create a link directly from my site to both Twitter and Facebook. I did this as my target audience is likely to be part of the social networking craze and I saw it as a good opportunity to appeal further to my target audience.

This is how I added my navigation bar. By using this function of web plus 10 i could add the glow seen on all my pages. This took lots of time as I had to make each button of my nav bar seperately as seen above this page.

Here you can see the final terms and conditions page.


This is the final page, partners.



Here is a screen shot of the video once downloaded and actually playing showing that it has been added to the site successfully.




This is the pop up box that appears when you click on the video link. This shows it has been installed correctly and is very simple to operate for a user of the website.

This is the dogs page. I have added an extra picture of a dog to emphasise the meaning of the page. This image also acts as the link to the video.

This is the donate page. The donate button links successfully to the Paypal website so that users can donate to the charity with ease and convenience.

This is the about us page. It holds all the aspects of the master page as all the others do and once again you can see how the 'about us' glows when highlighted with the cursor.


This is the home page of my website. I feel the balance of colours makes it welcoming and appeals to a higher demographic of audience (A, B, C1)

The 'home' part of the navigation bar glows when highlighted with the cursor. All the elements of the master page are clearly seen as the masthead, including logo and also the foot of the page showing the partners. it also shows a search bar, available on all pages in the site.

Colour Theory

Colour combination is a key element of the overall design of a website. First of all a primary colour must be chosen. This is the main colour on the page and the connotations that surround this particular colour are vital in expressing the ideas and aims of the charity. For my charity website, I intend to aim it at a higher demographic audience so it is likely I will use warm, sophisticated and inviting colours such as deep maroons or deep blues. Next, a secondary colour must be picked to accompany the primary colour. The job of this colour is to back up the primary colour and it is very likely to be very similar as a contrasting colour will stand out too much and contrast rather than enhance.
Finally a highlight colour must be chosen. This is a colour that draws user attention to a certain aspect of the site. The best type of colour for this is one that contrasts the base colour. On the colour wheel this is shown as complimentary or split-complimentary as shown below.

Split - Complimentary






Complimentary

By using the correct colours, a website can have an overall feeling that welcomes the audience and entices them into using the site. Also it is very important to give off the correct connotations that portray the ideology of the website or in this case the charity.

Logo design

A clear, simple logo is the key to evoking customer familiarity. A recognisable logo is very important to attract repeat custom once the custom is already there. To attract custom, the simplicity accompanied by a catchy strap line will be the best type of logo according to Duncan McAdams. This can be shown in the dogs trust logo. A simple dog picture lets the potential customer know what the charity does and the small, again simple text shows the name/brand. This is once again exactly the same in the other 2 logo’s. However the RSPCA logo uses only the textual anagram as a logo. This is the height of simplicity and relies on imagery that accompanies the logo to show the audience what the charity does. I feel this is a less effective logo and the addition of a simple design makes a large positive difference to the overall logo design. I have decided to combine, the bold typography of the RSPCA logo and combine it with a very simple image such as the one in the Battersea home for dogs and cats logo. I feel this will be the best way to target a sophisticated audience and achieve the aims of the charity.

Target Audience

The target audience of my charity website will be adults, both male and female, mostly of a higher age bracket, 25-65. This is my target audience as I believe they are the best to target for a charity as the funds and developed ideologies are in place for them to donate to a charity. The site will be aimed at a generally higher demographic (A,B,C1) as they are more likely to have spare money to donate into the charity. It will also appeal to a higher bracket of psychographic as the ideas needed to give donations compassionately are more likely to occur in a higher psychographic grouping. A young person is unlikely to want to donate money to a charity as stereotypically they do not have inkling to help others. To appeal to this bracket of audience, the site must be sophisticated, simple and welcoming. The aim will be to evoke happiness as well sympathy through adding many pictures of dogs in order to prompt a donation from the audience. A healthy donation will be best received from this group and the site must target these people who share the same aims as the charity in helping others and creating happiness. To target this group I will add specific content likely to appeal to this audience. This includes sophisticated imagery, deep welcoming colours and a refined typography using Serif font.

Analysis of 3 similar charity websites

The first website similar to mine is the dogs trust website. The first thing that strikes the audience when they visit this page is the bold yellow background. This colour has been adopted by Dogs Trust and allows an audience to associate the yellow with the particular charity. This helps to build a strong, recognisable brand image. The subject of the website is dogs so they make sure that there are many pictures of dogs to make the intentions of the charity very clear.
The layout of the website is very clear and simple with all information being ‘above the fold.’ This is the section of the site that comes up in full view. It stems from broadsheet newspapers and the most important information is located on the top half of the newspaper, or without scrolling down at all. This makes for easy navigation for the user. Certain aspects of the site are made more prominent by raising the prominence of them. The ‘donate’ button is key for both the survival and message of the charity, so this is put in the most prominent position on the page. The site also has a search bar for easy navigation and a user portal so users can personalise their accounts and donate to specific dogs. The home page contains very little writing and is used like more of a visual hook to entice users into the website, for them to navigate away and find out more about the site on different pages.


The RSPB website once again uses prominence to portray the image the charity wants to give across. Large headings give across the message and they are accompanied by large, colourful pictures to keep the look of the page interesting. The masthead of the site is very clean and simplistic. The navigation bar is located above this, adding to the simplistic, contemporary look of the site. The main difference with this website to the dogs trust website is that there is more textual information on the home page, however it is still a very limited amount, briefly explaining the story behind the pictures. Another difference is that, unlike the dogs trust site, the RSPB site contains a lot of information ‘below the fold.’ This gives a place to locate less important information such as where to follow online, ie. Twitter, as well as news and how to join. The banner that shows where to join has much less prominence than the donate button on the dogs trust site, both of which do the same thing. This may allow the user to gain a different picture of the websites intentions and perceive them in a different way as an overall charity.

The cats protection website once again is very clean and simple. The overriding colour that dominates the site is white. Other colours such as the yellow of the logo stand out from the white and show their importance to the audience. The stark ways in which the bright colours, such as yellow, allows the audience to access the connotations that surround such colours. For example yellow has connotations of warmth and happiness. This lets the audience gather an idea of the charities ideology and possibly their objectives. However, the site is very bare and unwelcoming, fighting against the warmth and happiness of the yellow. There is no useful information on the home page, just a plain background with a navigation bar to other pages. Although there are things such as a donation tin graphic, implemented to make the site more welcoming, this is not achieved and the home page is very ineffective.