Evaluation

My task was to create a charity website that used conventions of a real charity website using the theme of children being effected by the goings on of warfare in our world. Within which I was to make my website and charity easy and accessible for members of the public to understand using media products such as images and video to make the audience interested and involved within my website and charity as a whole.

I think that my website used a few of the usual conventions that would be found on a normal charity website, I used the charity WarChild as inspiration and guideance and despite obviously not creating something of its obvious professional calibre I believe I did a fairly good job. My website and charity needed to reach out to the audience I was aiming to appeal to by using conventions of media like accessible and easy to navigate toolbars and an effective logo and slogan. I aimed to develop rather than challenge current media product by putting my own stint on the way I presented my charity rather than going at it from a totally different angle, I feel that my website was similar to that or websites like WarChild, in sense that i attempted to use effective and enticing photographs aswell as using persuasive and emotional text to try and include the audience within my cause and make them want to help out and donate. Despite having fairly limited resources I feel i achieved this to a certain extent but I do on the other hand feel if I had managed my time more productively the overall product would of been much better.

I feel my website represents quite a large current social group of people wanting to help people in poverty stricken areas that do not have the benefits that we take for granted. This I feel was a strong subject to use as my cause as it is widely recognised as something that must be addressed without social barriers of personal choice. By that I mean in the case of my website it would appeal to almost everyone within the audience and public target market, this is because it just not have opinionated and personal barriers that other charities have, for example with charities for animals in most cases only people that like animals would tend to donate leaving a large amount of the public that feel their money could be donated better elsewhere. This I feel is one of the main advantages of my cause as it does not have such social barriers which enables it to be quite widely recognised and more likely to be donated to.

This leads me on to what sort of institutions would distribute my product as a whole, in my opinion due to the nature of my charity which I have expressed above a large ranch of establishments would back my charity and help distribute it through the mediums of global media. Using the example of LiveAid where the charity used the music indusrty to attract the attention of a massive global market and achieve large donations with people within the public eye supporting the cause. I feel my charity could go down a similar route using famous people that members of the general public idolise to help persuade people to donate to the cause, I feel this would be one of the most effective ways of advertising the product to the market and also it would reach large numbers of the audience which suits the nature of my charity. Another more obvious way of distributing the charities website and label would be through the internet, through things like google the charity can be promoted indirectly to into the public. This is a good form of distribution as it is free as very effective.

Carrying on from that I feel that my target market would be a wider spectrum of the audience, making demographics and psychographics matter less in a sense that it would appeal to almost everyone and large donations would be achieved with money coming from all parts of the audience no matter their personal circumstance. For this reason I addressed my audience on my website in a fairly general fashion to keep my target market and variable as possible, because I felt by doing this it would help more money be donated and not single out a particular section of the demographic or psychographic standing to be the main ones to donate. This I feel is a big advantage to my product as a whole.

Throughout this process I have learnt quite a few things about the technologies and processes or constructing a product like mine. Firstly I have learnt to use WebPlus10 quite compitently when trying to construct a webpage, in conjunction with this I have developed my skills using Paintshop Elements when refining photographs and texts to put onto my website. These are two pieces of technology I had used very little in the past and I believe I would be quite able to use these in the future on any other projects using the skills I have learnt.

When looking back at my preliminary tasks now it is clear for me to see the progession to which I have made since I started the course, one of the main things that stood out for me is how I have developed in making a site look more professional and easy on the eye for an audience where as in the past on my school website it looked messy and unrefined. One example of this would be my use of colour theory as in my charity website the colours flow much better than my past primary school project. Another thing would be my improvement in making logos, my first logo for my preliminary task was an obscure shape and had too many colours that didn't work effecttively on it, where as now using Duncan McAdams article I have been able to produce a simple but effective logo. All in all I feel I have learnt alot over the course and have learnt you use the resources at my disposal as well as my media knowledge to create an effective product.