Billboard audience research

Billboard audience research

In order to get a good understanding of what my target audience want to see of my billboard I decided to create a survey and distribute it on social media where it would get answered by people that fit into my target audience.

The first question I asked was regarding age. 90% of respondents were aged 16 to 24. This was going to be the primary age that I target with my billboard. If I could can make a product that represents this age group as best as possible then I have a greater chance of my products being a success. I will have a secondary target audience of older than this age range as 10% of my responses fit into that.

100% of my respondents to this question were males. This means that they will be my primary target audience and I will be looking to represent them with my billboard as they will be the ones that will hopefully be buying my product if my billboard is enough to make them want too.

From the responses that I collected from this question I discovered that 80% of answers were from White Cornish people and 20% were from White British. This means that my primary target audience for this product is going to be White Cornish, with a secondary target audience of White British. I will need to construct my product so that it appeals to this target audience.

All of the responses that I got were from people that fall into the social class band C1-E. Therefore this will be my primary target audience.

In terms of sexuality, this questions shows that 100% of my respondents were straight and this means that I am going to make straight people my primary target audience and I will look to represent them where possible in order to make my product a success.

The next question asked whether or not the audience would like to see an image of my magazine on the billboard. 100% of answers said yes. This means that I will be including an image of my print product on my billboard as this will meet the demands of the target audience.

100% of respondents voted for a sporty, simple style of font. I will try my best to use a font that matches were the target audience want in order to represent them as best as possible.

100% of respondents said that they wish to see action/outdoor images on my billboard. I will use these types of images as evidently they will represent my target audience the best.

The shots that I will use will be medium shots as this is what the target audience have expressed that they want through answering this survey.

Billboard institution

With the creation of my billboard I strongly need to consider the best location for my billboard where it will be seen and attract and appeal to the target audience the most. The first three locations that I initially thought of were outside local sporting facilities (sports centre, local football pitches etc), near a large chain supermarket and in and around the local towns and cities, in various locations. I think it would be suitable for it to go near local sporting facilities as it while drawing a lot of attention from people that fit with my target audience and would lead to a greater chance of people that are interested in my genre noticing the billboard and purchasing my product. After I had decided a location I now needed somewhere to print my billboard. I used the internet in order to find a company that would do so.  I came across three printing companies that I highlighted as potential printers.  Mid Cornwall Printing, PJ Press and The Cornish Print Company. Depending on the quantity the price varied. For 50 billboards prices ranged from £350-£650 and fro around 400 billboards the price was going to be between £1200-£1400. I would need to choose the cheapest price in order for me to make the maximum amount of profit from my products and as Cornwall is only small, 50 billboards would be a sufficient amount.

The final thing I needed to take into consideration is the location cost. I will also need to budget for how much the location of my billboard is going to cost.

Website Creation Research

Prior to the creation of my website, I attended a dreamweaver workshop with a local university lecturer where I learnt The basic skills of how to create a website and use dreamweaver in order to create a good product.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORV1HOSgv2Q

I found this YouTube video regarding creating websites and found it really useful for when I came to creating my product as it taught me how to create a basic website and then I could develop my skill further to create a better website.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMZARc_GdLE\

This is another YouTube video that enhanced my skills further and I felt after I had watched both of these videos and attended the workshop that my skills were suitable for creating a successful media product.

Website Audience Research

If I was to create a quality and successful product I would need to get my target audience representation perfect. As before, I made a Survey Monkey survey in order to gain some genuine and honest audience feedback that would allow me to analyse the responses to turn the answers into a product that would represent them and sell. I posted the survey to Facebook as my friends of Facebook fit in with the target audience.

The most popular age that was answered on this question of my survey was 16 – 24 years old.This means that this will be my target audience and in order to get the most views and for my website to be a success, I need to primarily target this age range. I need to consider a secondary target audience of 25-24 according to my responses.

The results from this question show that the majority of people that will be viewing and using my website will be White Cornish. This works for what I am trying to achieve as I am looking to put a regional slant on my products. The other responses were from White British people, this also is something that will help me as they will have heard of Cornwall and may have an interest in my product due to the regional slant, as they could be tourists who are staying in the local area.

The responses from the gender question showed that 100% of respondents were male which means that I need to tailor my website so that it is more appealing to males as they are going to be my primary target audience. I will include a secondary target audience of females so I will look to represent them too.

Around 90% of the responses that I collected answers fit into the social class band C1-E this means that this will be my target audience and they will need to be represented on my website in order for them to want to continue to visit my product and for it to be a success. I will need to consider a secondary target audience of social bands higher than this, as I did receive some responses that were higher and I want to appeal to the widest possible audience of people that I can with my product in order to make it a success.

All of the responses that I collected were of a straight sexual persuasion. This will be my target audience and I will need to take into consideration this when I am constructing my site as I want to make my target audience feel represented in all aspects.

This question got 100% responses that the colours wanted were black, white and gold. This will mean that the target audience wish to see these colours on the website and will feel most represented by these colours, I can assume this is because these are colours that represent Cornwall and that is the region that I am targeting with my product.

My results showed that I will need to include match reports, player interviews, equipment reviews, local league round ups and diet plans of football players on website in order to represent the target audience successfully. If I am going to have them visit and like my website these are the types of stories that I will need to include in order to make a website that they will enjoy and come back too.

The next question asked was about what was important to website users. The response that I received showed that 90% of people think that ease of use is the most important whilst 10% think speed is most important. When it comes to creating my product, I will need to primarily consider the ease of use of my website, and bare a second thought to the speed of the site. This will give me the best chance of making my product successful.

I asked what types of images that my target audience would like to see on my website and 100% of responses said that they want to see still images. This means that I will look to include still images where possible in order to represent the target audience as much as possible.

Now that I have done some in depth research into what my target audience want to see and what I need to include to make my product successful I am now ready to take the next step toward the construction of my website.

Website institution

In order to make my website live on the internet for everyone to view, I will need to use a server to host my website. I decided that I would do some research into servers that would launch my website. The first website server I came across was Fast Hosts. The initial price is £4.99 a month but then there is a monthly increase in price until it reaches £19.99; I kept this server in mind, but ideally was looking for something slightly cheaper. As I continued my research, I found Heart Server. The price was £10.83 a month. Although I was happy with this price, I continued to research to see if there was anything cheape3r out there, as in order of income and success of my magazine, if I could find a server of an equal quality for cheaper then that is what I would do. I continued to search the internet comparing monthly costs of internet serves and their quality and came across Data flame. This was the cheapest out of all the servers I could find, when considering paying for domain name and host site, this monthly price was £5.95.

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.