HOME                                                                                                Planning and Designing a Successful Web Site

 Planning and Designing a Successful Web Site

Carol Sue Villalobos

IT 247- 03 Professor Jay Holcomb

At a minimum, you must include the following in your document:

Define three website goals:

• Initiate higher potential for sales by livening up promo’s for bands with a featured page on each one and add a music player to advertise music.
• Create a more personal atmosphere initiating a fan club and/or Forum (Add interactive functions with users.) and inspiring eye appeal through colors and shapes, and graphics.
• Link to other dub artists, suggest and supply links to obtain merchandise and information not on the site.
• Offer free memorabilia that will sell the bands

Identify the website target audience

Age:

• Dizzied Connections = 21 to 35
• Surface Suction = 18 to 30
• Sloth Child = 16 to 25
• Life In Minor Cords = 25 to 40

Gender = Male and Female alike

Education Level = College students as well as newly college graduates

Economic Situation = Middleclass

Geographic Location = Western USA, Canada and Parts of Europe

Primary Language = English

Ethnic Background = There is no specific target (everyone loves dub)

Misc. Unifying Characteristics = Lovers of music, celebrations, life (and retired

beatniks).

Collect information on four website competitors and four target audience demographics and document in your document

• http://www.808state.com/sounds/index.htm

This website contained several links to their music as well as having a forum for their fans. They had demo music and MP3’s to download. The colors were Harley colors, Black and Orange and the rest of the site was very colorful. “ thepsychoecstatictranceenducinggrooveridingtechnofunkalogicalsoundofstate808”. This was above an album cover done in black and white. The language is very hip and funkadelic. There were links on every page: “index, news, forum, live, discogs, sounds images, links and various” and they actually had two navbars, one at the top and one at the bottom, the top one had different things depending upon what the page was portraying, such as one page had years (2001, 2002, etc.).

• http://dub.com

This site is done in black and white and solely for the purpose of providing links to tons of artists. The list is immense with very few graphics. The artist is the link to his/her site.

• http://www.basementjaxx.co.uk/index5.htm

This site is full of activity. The graphics are “off the hook”! Brilliant colors and graphics that pop out (MouseOvers) from seemingly nowhere! They have the option to listen to their music while you surf their site or not. There are links for their music that leads to the cover and suggested places to buy. They even had a video for you to see along with music. There is soo much to this site, it took someone a very long time and a lot of imagination to create!! You’ve just got to go there, and I am certain that that is what they want….people to send other people to there site. Great selling point.

• http://www.doctorecho.com

      Dr. Echo’s site is black and white with shades of gray and colors subtly showing up in the background as well as the keyboard he is sitting at. This site is very Techno. The sounds of his music begin when the site loads, which is right away. There is a graphic of his name at the top of the site which brings you to the home page on each page as well as a navbar that is “music, bio, recording history, (which I have noticed all of the bands I have looked at include in their site), and contact. I think this site is very tastefully done.

• http://www.trumystic.net/direct/index.php

     This site was plain but effective and had quite a bit of information on it. It was done in frames, this was the first site I saw done this way. For what they had layed out it really was well formatted. They had a player as well .

Identify three scenarios how the target audience may access the website:

• Rosalyn Medford is a junior at the University of Los Angeles and is learning about being financially challenged. She has just turned 22 and is learning to budget quickly. She lives on campus and had DSL for her computer, but the budget wouldn’t allow her to keep it and so she accesses the WC3 through a 56k modem. She uses her computer for research and study constantly. While she studies she loves to listen to dub musicians and adores Dizzied Connections, she says they help her to concentrate and she visits Catalyst website everyday hoping that they will update the site. She doesn’t know anyone else who enjoys dub music and has been dreaming that they would put a “chat thing or a forum of some kind” so she could talk to people with like taste. She visits the dub.com site frequently as well because they keep her informed of the bands more personal side.

• Hank Simpson is 26 and lives in a small rural town in the mid western state of Missouri where technology has not yet landed. He has 2 of probably only 15 computers in the whole area and so there really is no way to connect to the internet except for through a 56k modem. He wishes the Catalyst site were a bit more informative about the bands and that the site would be a little more interesting as dub music just grew on him so that he loves it. He works in the corner store delivering groceries and is always singing songs from Sloth Child. He enjoys the Basement Jaxx site intensely because it is so colorful and off the wall, and it changes

• Lenicia Jones is 19 and learning about her Jamaican roots. She lives in Quebec and goes to college part time while working in a hair salon. She discovered dub music through her studies of Jamaica as it did originate there. She was already a fan of Reggae and Ska but she developed an intense passion for dub when she heard Surface Suction and now searches the web for more dub musicians. She just loves sites like dub.com because they are always advertising several different bands of similar genre. Her computer is very minimal yet she got a deal on a contract for DSL and enjoys down loading music so she can enjoy it later.

Illustrate the website architecture:

Catalyst Web Site Category Outline

1. Home Page

      a) Bands

             i.  Dizzied Connections

             ii.  Surface Suction

             iii  Sloth Child

             iv. Life In Minor Cords

      b) Label

             i.  Current Affairs

             ii. What we stand for…

             iii. How we got here

             iv. The People Who Make It Happen

       c) Cool Stuff! (or Product)

              i. CD’s, MP3’s, and Vinyl

              ii. T-Shirts, Sweat Shirts and Hats

             iii. Jewelry and Key chains

      d) Tour Dates

             i.  When and where we’ll be

             ii. Venues and ticket information

             iii.Video of past concerts and behind the scenes

  e) Contact

          i. Contact the company by….

          ii. Directions to…..

          iii.E-mail us

          iv. Fan club forum

   Show flow chart:

• Show the website style guide (layout, fonts, colors, image use)

• Fonts are Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, Serif & the same bold

• Colors will be as follows

• Text = #00FFFF Turquoise Blue
• Background = #000000 Black
• Headings = #FFCC33 Yellow –Gold
• Links = #FFCC33 Yellow-Gold
• Catalyst logo link = #00FFFF, #FFFFFF, and #FFCC33Turquoise Blue, White and Yellow-Gold
• The rest of the links = #FFCC33 Yellow-Gold
• Visited links = #FFFFFF White
• Active links = #FF0000 Red

Current Resources:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/livewire/000371.php

http://users.tpg.com.au/edu_/16.htm

http://users.tpg.com.au/edu_/21.htm

http://www.mels.gouv.qc.ca/STAT/indic02/indic02A/ia02113.pdf

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/livewire/000107.php

http://users.tpg.com.au/edu_/22.htm

http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc1.asp?docid=1G1:63847095&refid=is_allmag1mm

http://www.basementjaxx.co.uk/

http://www.basementjaxx.co.uk/index5.htm

http://www.808state.com/sounds/index.htm

http://www.ikonboard.com/

http://thelarch.com/

http://www.doctorecho.com/

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