Week One Task Two

I have been asked to view and evaluate a few websites and then to choose a few of my own to look at. Most notable from the suggested sites were

1) www.scotland.org, this one i felt was the easiest to look at and navigate through and also most modern with a lot of information. This would probably be the least viewed from the three websites as its aimed at a niche market.

3) www.bbc.co.uk, this website is a very informative website covering a lot of different topics so it isn't aimed at a particular market so this definitely would appeal to a lot of people.

While these websites were different in they're own ways they all had similar qualities. They all were easy to navigate while sticking to the most basic qualities of a good website. What i noticed as well that these websites have a blue and white layout. This must be no accident as the contrast between background and text is definitely easy to get used to and makes the website more appealing. I will use similar qualities when designing my website.

I viewed another two websites of my own preference and they were,

1.) www.mmajunkie.com - this is a website aimed at mixed martial arts fans this websites sticks to the general ruling of keeping it simple. It also uses same features that the suggested sites use and was a blue and white template.

2.) www.facebook.com - this is the worlds most popular social networking site and uses web 2.0. it is very easy to use and really interactive. it also uses a blue and white back ground.

The website i didnt like the most was www.2006.org this was too basic it had no images not a lot of information and no site map. These are characteristics that you would come to expect with the most popular websites. I feel i must add that it wasnt blue and white, this is a feature im surprised about although black backgrounds with white text will be easy to get used to there must be something about blue and white as these websites are some of the most popular in the world and they are using this colour scheme.

Another website that i was asked to visit was www.amazon.com this website is the one i chose to do a direct comparison with another similar website. The website i chose to compare it with was www.play.com while both websites were similar in what they are trying to do they are definitely different in design. To start off with amazon, as soon as you went on to this website one of the first things you notice is advertisements as they are pretty large. While advertisements are everywhere in life they arent something that appeals to a viewer. While there are advertisements on play they are all banners to different shops within the website so this definitely gives the feeling of being part of the website. Ok it might encourage you to buy a particular brand but you are still using play.com to access this. On the play website the first thing you notice is a massive sale sign. This is very intelligent as it catches your eye straight away and encourages you to use it. Both websites have very easy to use layouts they use a hierarchical layout which to me seems most logical and is the type of layout i will use for my website.