Module : COMF413 Web Design & Development

Assignment : 1

Issue Date : 18th October 2011

Review Date : 29th November 2011

Submission Date : 13th December 2011

Lecturer : Sarah Thompson

Verified by : Graham Hall

Tomos Ellis

Task 1

Consider a suitable topic for the creation of a web site. You will need to prepare a report that will, compare and contrast two current online websites similar in nature to your own that display different design approaches.

Your report should make reference to the apparent target audience for the sites used, and any usability / accessibility issues that you discover during your research of the competition.

You should also consider some of the features that constitute a good web site, together with advantages and disadvantages. You should then, based on your research, make some initial recommendations for the features that will be used within your own web site.

My Choice

I have Decided to design a web site based on advertises musicians (my mother and my brother) performing at weddings. The reason I have decided to chose this is because my mother has asked me before to create a website for her and this is the perfect opportunity to do so. My website will be targeting both the younger and older generation because marriage can concern people of all ages, you can’t be too old to marry, so based on this, the site needs to be as user friendly as possible but still looking modern and appropriate for the occasion. I must make sure that the navigation through the site is simple enough. As I have mentioned before, the design of the site needs to be appropriate for the occasion however I must not fill the pages with texts and none relevant pictures that could bore people rigid or confuse them completely. I am confident that I will be able to make a success of my idea and am looking forward to the final product.

My choice of research

My research will be based on two existing websites similar in nature to my own. During my research I will discuss , in my opinion , the effectiveness of my “competitors’” websites and how I will make sure my website will be different and how my design will be.

Website 1 : http://www.bethanmyfanwy.com/

This is a website by Bethan Myfanwy Hughes who is an international harpist and a harp therapist. The site gives her life achievements and mentions her charity work to date and also advertises various packages she offers for weddings etc. She is based in Glamorgan and will charge for travel expenses if you want her to travel out of Glamorgan.

When I saw this site for the first time, I was not impressed. And after looking at the site multiple times my opinion on it has not changed.

In my opinion the website shown above is a rather dull and plain website. While I do agree that simple and basic is a good way to go but there is such a thing as being TOO basic .

When making a website, there are “do’s” and “Don’ts” . in other words there are rules to follow and one of them rules are not to fill a website with text and hardly any pictures because there is the strong risk of losing customers because nobody is going to spend the hour needed to read through all that writing...This sites homepage is filled with text and only has one picture of Bethan Myfanwy herself.

Another issue with the website in the homepage alone, is the badly edited photo in her banner . when looking at the site, you will notice that the photo at the top is blurred a little because of bad photo editing. Bad photo editing is unprofessional and does not give a good impression to potential clients. If bethan is trying to give a professional image, she is not succeeding with photos like the one highlighted above.

As a whole I am not impressed with the homepage itself , The only impressive feature of it in my opinion is the MP3 Jukebox of some of her songs, this is a good idea because it shows potential clients what she can do.

Another issue I have with this site is the navigation. The navigation through the site itself isn’t complicated as such, as you can see from the screen shot of the site below, each page link clearly explains what content is in each page,

However I do feel there might be just a bit too many pages in this site, some link could easily be turned into one, for example .... “Music in hospitals” could have gone into “Bethan’s Charity work” . it just seems like she

has tried to put as much into the site as possible even though it might be relevant. For

example, this “Int'l Healing Harp Foundation” that is on the site and is displayed in the photo below.

Is there really a need for the page? ...

The layout of the site isn’t great either, here is an example of an error that has been made due t not paying close enough attention to the layout...

Notice how some of the letters on “Bethan’s Personal Charity” is touching and being overlapped by the top sentence?.

I can even say I like the colour scheme if I’m brutally honest , the colour is just so dull and needs to have a bit of “life” into it. Within the colour theory , green is the colour of healthy living and nature…..this site has nothing to do with nature or healthy living.

However, There are good points to the site. The site does have plenty of information about her and the prices for her services are clearly shown on the site and it clearly shows that she does charge travel expenses if need be.

Website 2 : http://www.andywilshersings.co.uk/?gclid=CNTIwMqw26wCFQMPfAodqnfy6g

Andy wisher is a wedding singer who does a Rat Pack tribute, Robbie Williams tribute, Michael Buble tribute and does wedding entertainment in general. He is based in the UK and will travel.

Now the second website I chose to look at was a man who sings at weddings and does various tribute acts .

Now just by looking at the homepage, it looks more professional compared to the first site we reviewed. The colour scheme is much better and the layout of the site also. At least people who are colour blind could see the site with ease seeing how most of the site is in black and white. The pictures in it and the different colours give this site a little more life to it compared to the last site.

As you can see from the image above. The navigation on this site is much simpler on this site because there are less pages compared to the other and all the pages here are necessary.

Another good thing about this site is the way they layout everything, its laid out simple and tidy . the site just looks modern and eye catching and isn’t filled with just text like the first site.

There are a few bad points about this site however, one of them is there is no price range within his site what so ever, it seems you must email him to enquire and cold take a few days to find out.

The more I look into the site, the more I notice of how much writing there actually is in the website, especially in the Rat pack , Robbie Williams and the Michael Buble tribute pages . In addition to them pages, the “Testimonials” page where is it just literally filled with text which are links to even more texts. Slightly to extreme in my opinion.

My Designing

My design was not hard to think up of. I realised that my site design had to be soft and suitable for the occasion. I began with hand drawing them on a note pad to see the general layout of my idea. Once I was satisfied I began to design the site in Photoshop.

The picture above is a screenshot of the homepage of my website with notes on each feature of the site. I believe that the colour scheme I have chosen works because it is a calm, relaxing colour which is what you want in a wedding. The text I have chosen is Lucida handwriting , now the reason I have chosen this font is because of the distinguish look that the font gives. With weddings you want a posh, neat like theme. Not some common random text that would just “do” .

One of the rules of usability when it comes to content is not to use clever phrases that will make people having to think to understand what it is. Another rule I believe is important to follow is to locate the primary navigation area in a highly noticeable place, preferably directly adjacent to the main body of the page. Also it is important not to offer a feature to “Search the web” from the site because it is not needed . I have also not included any unnecessary tools for users who come to my site which again is a usability rule.

As you can see from another page I have done, (the contact page) , I have followed the same colour scheme and content layout as the homepage and I will be following the same method throughout every page. As you can see from my site, the page looks simple but tidy. Not over filling a page is very important when it comes to web designing because it looks much neater.

All in all I am very happy with how the design looks on photoshop so far and believe it will be a success once I install it onto the web designing software.