Website Design Mock-up

In today's lesson, Ned and I sketched out a few designs for our television channel website. Out of the sketched designs, we chose two or three that we would sketch out in more detail.

The following design was the one that I chose to expand on:

I chose this design as I believe this would suit our channel the most. Together, we decided that our website's main aim would be to deliver information to its readers and promote the television channel. For this reason, we designed the website like you can see now.

The website design is very clean and easy to look at, with simple boxes dividing up the page, giving many different things for the viewer to look at. This allows us to display as much information as possible on one page.

We took influence from many different websites that we visited and looked at in depth, including Channel Five's, ITV's and the BBC's. We then took pieces of each of these designs and put them into one design, which is shown above.

In the upper most box, we will have a selection of images and videos, which would fade from one to another. This will pause when you hover over it, allowing you to select a video to watch or click through to more information about the programme.  The three smaller boxes below will contain images of selected programmes from our channel. These will help show the wide variety of shows that we will broadcast and again, give the viewer as much information as possible on one page. The boxes underneath these will contain information about the channel, including a programme guide for the upcoming week.

Once we had created the rough mock-up seen above, we also created a colour version of the webpage in Photoshop. This helps show our chosen colour scheme and what the design will look like once it is finished. At the moment, there is no content in the design as we have yet to discuss the layout of the content within the webpage.

However, this is not the final design but a quick colour mock-up. If this design is chosen, the next stage would be to discuss the small details of the webpage, including the logo, fonts and of course the content to be displayed in the boxes.

Why do TV channels need websites?

Its a question that has been bugging me for a while now - why do TV channels need websites?

Many television channels decided to reach out to their audience members through the medium of the web during the late 1990's. The BBC was one of them, creating BBC Online in 1994. However, it did not launch until 1997, when it secured governement approval to fund the website by TV licence fee revenue. Since then, the website has gone through several branding changes, changing its name to BBCi, then bbc.co.uk and then back to BBC Online in 2008. Nowadays, the BBC's website is one of the world's largest and most visited website, ranking forty-seventh most visited according to Alexa.

Nowadays, many television channels use their websites as another form of promotion, showing clips and information about upcoming shows, what is on for the future weeks and months and also information about a certain few featured programmes. This is a free form of advertising for the channel, saving them money as they no longer have to pay out as much for advertising across other advertising networks.

Another reason television channels have their own websites is to increase the popularity of the channel. Channels like Dave often have websites that are full of viral and funny content, aimed at the same audience group and the channel itself. This helps make the website more popular, as a greater amount of people visit the website when bored, therefore making the television channel more popular.

One further reason is simply to provide information. Many of the larger channels use their websites to provide information to their audience members. The BBC's website is full of information, including a television guide, the news, weather and entertainment gossip. Many people visit the BBC's website to get information, even if they don't watch the TV channels. This is one of the reasons why the BBC's website is as popular as it is.

In my opinion, I believe the majority of television channels create websites for themselves to help promote the channel. This gives the channels a major boost in promotion which would have cost them a lot if they used other forms of advertising to achieve this. One such website that is solely aimed at promoting their own channel is five.tv. Five's website contains very little information like the BBC's website, but instead only contains clips and information about its own shows, attracting viewers to them.

Channel Research - Channel 4

Channel 4 is a UK public-service television broadcaster which began broadcasting on November 2, 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned, whilst being operated by the Channel Four Television Corporation, a public body established in 1990.

Unlike Dave, Channel 4 has a much wider target audience and has to suit everyone, so can not create an image for itself like that of Dave's which connects with the very small audience of the channel. Also, Channel 4 is now more like a television network than just a standalone channel, with sister channels including More 4, E4, FILM 4 and 4Music. All of this affects the image of the channel and of its website, channel4.com.

The website design itself is very simple and plain, being mainly black and white. This keeps the pages very clean and easy to read. The website contains only a few images, all of these being pictures of programmes, promoting the wide range of shows on the channel. To help make the website a richer experience for the user, there are a lot of interactive areas to the website, including the menu at the top of the page. Also on the page is a very interactive programme guide for the following few hours, which expands when you hover over parts of it. This works very well and is extremely helpful to those looking at the website, as it provides a simple to use programme guide which provides a lot of information when needed.

This website works extremely well, with all the relevant information needed spread over a few pages, with separate pages for the programme guide, the different channels and some special pages for a handful of programmes themselves.

Overall, Channel 4's website is very simple and clean, to suit its image and to also make it simple to use. Unlike Dave, everything is kept plain, with no golden image frames or colourful wallpapers in sight. The website is also very functional, with a detailed programme guide and information. However, unlike Dave's website, Channel 4's has no real content of its own and is simply filled with information about the channel. This makes it more boring than joindave.co.uk and ensures viewers stay on the website for less amount of time.

Channel Research - Dave

Dave, the new name and image for UKTV Gold, was launched on 22nd January 2009. The channel was launched across all media platforms, including Freeview, Sky and Cable television. Dave has grown in popularity considerably, becoming the UK’s largest channel within just a month of its launch.

The channel focuses on a particular audience group: 16-34 year old males. This is clear from just looking at the type of shows shown, including continuous Top Gear repeats, QI, Live at the Apollo, Ray Mears survival and Mock the Week. It is also clear from the design of the channel and its accompanying website.


The website for Dave is quite image and flash heavy so it does take a while to load first time round.

Once it has fully loaded, the website has many flashy and inteactive items, including the menus and the sliding content. This creates a very rich experience for the user.

The website itself is very easy to navigate, with a simple menu at the top and along the side. The lack of external links ensures that the viewer stays on the website for as long as possible.


Just like all of the other UKTV channels, Dave's website contains a simple television guide, relevant information about certain programmes and of course advertising to increase revenue for the channel.

To suit the very blokey image of the television channel, the website has a very posh design. The black wallpaper-like background and the gold picture frames that surround every image on the site creates design that looks very much like a gentlemen's club. The text on the website gives a feel of a lack of seriousness, maybe due to the specific intended audience. As the channel's main proportion of its viewers are male, the website does not have to appeal to as many people as a website such as the BBC's, so the content on the page can be specifically based around that certain group of people.

The content on the website itself matches both the theme of the television channel and the website, with short clips of outtakes and the best of Top Gear. Also included are the usual array of competitions and quizzes, all aimed at the same demographic of 16-34 year old males.

Vox Pop - Results

After walking around Norwich city center for around an hour, we managed to get three people's opinions, which isn't all too great. The reason for this was many people simply didn't stop or walked away from us when we were trying to ask questions.

Out of the three people we stopped, one of these was recorded using the camera on our phone, as seen below:

As this was not enough data to fully count as a vox pop, we decided to continue the investigation at school, asking fellow members of sixth form the same questions. The results can be seen below:

Voxpop

Later today, our media group is travelling to Norwich to conduct a voxpop. Vox pop, or vox populi as it is fully known, simply means voice of the people and is a term commonly used in broadcasting.

During this vox pop, Ned and I will ask the public a series of short questions about television channel websites, to help get a good idea of what to create later on. The questions that we will ask will include the following:

1. Do you visit the BBC's website?
2. For what reason do you visit this website? (Check the news, look at a programme guide, find weather information)
3. What other television channel websites do you visit?
4. What is the first thing you notice on a website such as the BBC's? (such as design, pictures, information etc)

When I return from Norwich later this evening, I wil post the results of the vox pop

First Steps...

As part of our work in class last week, we were set a task to create a pitch for our product.

Aften several minutes of writing ideas, I cut the list down to the following three:

• A new TV channel, unlike the rest, showing you what life is really like
• A brand new channel, showing you the alternate side to life
• Life isn't all bright on static, a new channel that shows you the alternate side to life

As you can tell, our fictional television channel (possibly called Static) focuses on everything alternate. The channel would reveal the other side of life, showing programmes like Louis Theroux's documentaries.

Whilst my mind was working, I came up with a colour scheme for the channel's website and multimedia items. The colours throughout the product will be primarily green, grey and black. These colours go well together and create a mise en scene that is bright and vibrant, but also different to most, matching the products main aim.

More is to come in the following days, including more ideas, a caption and a simple plan of the product.

Research

Before I can get onto making my actual product, I must conduct research to gain an idea on what to create.

I have split this research up into different categories:

• Existing Websites - comparing many different websites that already exist. 
• Existing Websites (Advanced) - Looking deeper into a select group of websites, comparing what type of content they contain, how many people use them daily and why they are like how they are.
• History - investigating how long television channels have had their own websites and how they have changed as the internet has progressed.
  
• Audience Research - looking into what type of people would  use my final product.
• First Hand Experience - travel to a company that specialises in web design - take ideas and interview members of staff.
• Vox pop - travel to Norwich and ask members of the public about the opinions.

F1RST

This is the first post on my brand new blog made especially for my A2 Media Studies course.

On this blog I will post all of the stages and work that goes into making my final product, a website for a fictional television channel. 

Keep checking back to see how I am doing and to see my final product when it is complete.