Website Analysis

The screen shot above is a picture of ‘FourFourTwo’ magazines website. I used this to look at the common conventions of sports magazine websites in order to gain some knowledge of how to create a popular product. 

The layout of the website is very simplistic and is easy to navigate around. At the top of the page there is a tool bar where you are able to navigate between the different pages with sufficient ease and on this tool bar there is a search tab where you can find what you want. This will attract football fans because they are stereotypically people that do not want a difficult read and would want something simple. This is the header of the magazine and I will look to recreate something similar when I come to making my product because as Bentley said in 1997, “media products are best create when rearranging the old to create the new.” This will mean that my product is able to target my audience, as I know they will like it. The colour of the header is predominantly red and white. This connotes the target audience because these colours are common kit colours within football and they have connotations that are directly linked with passion and commitment which are linked with football. As well as this it is the same colour scheme that is used on the FourFourTwo magazine.

The main body of the website consists of mostly images with the title of the story on, this means there is a greater image to text ratio which is something that is a common convention within football products. There are images that are of action from within the football world, interviews, match action and celebrations. Beneath the main stories that have images with them there is a latest news section that has other stories and is just a text title for the story, which is a link. Throughout the main body of the website the same colour pallet is continued. There is also small yellow title above the images which are eye catching and will complete that purpose for the target audience as people aged 15-26 will be attracted to bright to colours.  There is also a consistent organisation and simplicity, which will appeal to the target audience as they are usually young and don’t want anything to difficult to deal with. In regards to typography and lexis, the typography is a fairly basic font with the titles being more exciting to draw readers in. The lexis used isn't too complex and has a very specific semantic field of football. 

The footer of the page is fairly dull and there isn’t much there. It consists of having links to the legal and formal information surrounding the site including how to advertise, privacy policy and cookie policy. This is a common convention of these types of websites because they do not want to see this amongst the main information on the page. There is also another tab where you can subscribe to the magazine. The colour of the footer is grey. This connotes responsibility so having this colour on the footer makes the tone of what is in the footer seem more important and formal, which it is.

The second website that I analysed was ‘World Soccer’. I researched into the common conventions of websites and saw how this website applied them and if there was anything new I had not seen before. I will then use the information I gathered to create my own product.

A common convention of football magazines is to have a very simplistic layout due to the nature of the fans and this website follows this. At the top is a navigation bar where you can change between pages on the website with relative ease. Above this bar there is a banner, which contains an image of one of the products and the masthead. This will attract the target audience because they will not be looking for something that is difficult to work. This is often seen on websites of this genre. The colours in the header are red, white and black. This is a popular colour scheme to use, as they are colours that are commonly seen within football, having a colour pallet of three main colours in the header is also a key common convention that I will look to follow. I will be looking to do this because as theorist Bentley said is 1997, “media products are best created when rearranging the old to create the new.” This will mean that if I use already known conventions then I will already have a way in with my target audience and my product will be able to become a success more easily. 

       

The main body of the website contains the main story with a large image and smaller images with the titles of other football stories, beneath that. This is a very simplistic layout that you often see on these types of websites because the readers are stereotypically people that aren’t looking for something complicated and difficult. This and the high image to text ration is something that is very common to see on the main body of a football website and is something that I will be looking to do when I come to making my own website for my media product.  A similar colour pallet of black and white is continued through the whole website. This is a simple colour scheme that will attract the target audience because they are colours that they are used to seeing within football and it continues the colour scheme that is on the printed product that world soccer also produces.  This will appeal to the target audience as it shows consistency throughout their products.

The footer of the page is fairly dull and there isn’t much there. It consists of having links to the legal and formal information surrounding the site including how to advertise, privacy policy and cookie policy. This is a common convention of these types of websites because they do not want to see this amongst the main information on the page. There is also another tab where you can subscribe to the magazine. The colour of the footer is black. This connotes responsibility so having this colour on the footer makes the tone of what is in the footer seem more important and formal, which it is. There is also another search bar, which pulls the reader back into the website so they spend longer on it.