Media Website Evaluation 1

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

My charity website uses many of the basic conventions of other similar websites. The layout of my home page is fairly similar to other charity websites such as; www.horsetrust.org.com with the links to other pages clearly placed at the top of the page and with a very large, visible logo in the top left hand corner. The colours used on our website seem to be very calm and passive using light yellow’s and brown’s this is done to build a suitable and passive atmosphere. Although, its hard not to follow the conventions with a simple charity website because many of the photos taken will look very similar because all the websites have the same purpose- to persuade the audience to donate money.

However, I feel we have developed these conventions greatly to make them unique to our own website. For example, the introduction to our website is not just to introduce to website but it is also to build a rapport with our audience to make them seem welcome as our audience being slightly younger than other horse charity websites. Therefore, the language we use is not as complex and is slightly more simple and persuasive to draw the reader into our website.

I feel we have certainly challenged the conventions the make our website different to others and our own creation. The pictures we tried to use were not just really depressing but we did use others to make the horses seem delightful and pretty as we felt this would be more suitable to a younger audience and also more effective. Also, the colours used in our website was mainly very light and calm colours this was done to build a certain atmosphere and it also fits in with the website theme.

Some comparisons can be made between our website and other charity websites such as, similar page layouts, some pictures which have the same purpose and some of the colours used are fairly comparable. However, few charity website layouts can’t be called similar, most having links at the top of the page, a large logo in the left hand corner and then various other things scattered over the page. Although, we did try to make our layout as unique as possible. The pictures are bound to be similar as they’re all of horses however, we did make sure we got various different horses, in different conditions so it wasn’t too dull. The colours we used were again to make a calm and passive atmosphere for the audience.