Homepage
Websites have several forms and conventions. Above is a screenshot of my homepage; a common convention of websites is the use of a homepage as a means of entrance to the content of the website. This feature makes the website more usable and is a convention relied on by most website users in order to make the website more coherent and easier to navigate.
Navigation and Hyperlinks
As can be seen from the screenshot of my homepage, I used the convention of a navigation in my website. Navigations again aid the usability of the website by making it easier for the user to access the content they wish to find. I decided to use the convention in the form of a top navigation; top navigations were a feature noticeable amongst the websites aimed at my target audience which I analysed as part of my research, such as Kerrang! and Bliss. I felt that this aided my ability to construct the layout of the page.
Navigations would not work without hyperlinks. Hyperlinks allow the linking of pages within the website, and without them it would not be possible to move easily around the website. All websites with more than one page have hyperlinks to link the pages together, and I have used hyperlinks extensively throughout my website in order to link pages and allow the user to find the content that they want to access easily.
Forum and Interactive Content
A convention that is used in many websites is a forum; in my website, I created a sign in page (the construction of which is shown in a screenshot above) for a forum, just as I created a sign in page for the games page. I did not create a full forum page due to technical and time limitations, but I was able to include the forum as a feature of the design for my website. Forums and other interactive content were common features amongst the websites that I analysed as part of my research. Features such as this were also recommended for websites designed for teenagers by Jakob Nielsen’s website (http://www.useit.com/), so in making the decision to include the forum, for example, I was able to keep my target audience of teenagers in mind.
Images and Video Clips
Another convention of websites which is popular amongst teenagers is the use of images and video clips. I used original images throughout my website in order to illustrate the pages of the website, and provide visual examples of the programmes that my TV channel would offer. Images also aid the attraction of the audience to the page; this is also used in advertising, and I did use images throughout my ancillary texts which were a magazine double-page spread and newspaper advertisement.
I embedded a video clip into my featured show page. Many teenage websites include video clips in order to advertise upcoming TV programmes, or provide exclusive or new content, such as a new music video, or an interview which can only be seen on their website. The E4 website (http://www.e4.com/) has video clips of TV programmes for example, whilst the Kerrang! website (http://www.kerrang.com/) often has video clips of new music videos (for example the My Chemical Romance video on http://www.kerrang.com/blog/2011/03/watch_my_chemical_romances_new_1.html). I decided to use less text alongside the video clip than many websites use, and also decided to make the area the video took up quite big to increase its visibility and use it as a focus point of the page. Video clips add to the attraction of a teenage audience as the visual nature of video clips, as well as images, is attractive to a teenage audience and helps to keep the attention of this audience.
Ancillary Texts
In terms of my ancillary texts, I followed some of the codes and conventions of newspaper advertisements and magazine double-page spreads, as I had identified from my research. This included the use of images to attract the audience, the use of information about the product such as the launch date on the newspaper advertisement, and the use of large quantities of text used in double-page spreads to inform about specific programmes and other details of the channel. I found the use of these conventions important in terms of creating realistic and effective ancillary tasks.
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