seven point evaluation Q5

How did you attract/address your audience?

From my survey and website research I established a good understanding of what the target audience would be attracted and interested by.

I used interactive features such as rollovers slideshows and video as the survey showed visual content was most attractive to the audience.

I used simple but hard hitting language on the site as this appealed to the widest audience and was most understandable.

I stuck with a simple but bold colour scheme of white red, white and blue this made the page interesting and associated with Britian as it’s the colours of the union jack.

Our logo is in the top right corner of the page with the title and navigation bar this stuck to the demographics of website layouts and made the site look professional.

seven point evaluation Q2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The Drug Stop is aimed at people with either an addiction to drugs or people that want to help our aims. The social groups I am aiming my media product at are age and class. As I have already shown I have tried to keep my audience range as wide as possible so I can reach lots of people who have been affected by drugs. The social demographics I am mostly aimed at are C2, D and E these social grades are at the lower end of the spectrum and stereotypically more prone to drug use.

My product is simple and user friendly in every way I have used a large link bar at the top of the page. I have made my home page have an interactive centre point that is the picture slideshow; this gives the audience a clear idea of what drugs can do and how they can affect your life.

I would say that the site has a fair ratio of images to text however when I conducted my survey I got a high percentage of people who said that visual content is preferred to text. Even though I probably should have used more images I think I have appealed to a wider audience by using more text than I had originally planned.

The language I used in my website had to appeal to my target audience if the language was to intelligent it may not be understood by all however if the language is simple but mot undermining the audiences intelligence it will be much more appreciated by the audience.

Furthermore my website includes a video based on a personal testimonial of a previous drug addict. The video gives us an opinion of the charity and site and may improve the audience’s attitudes toward the charity.

In conclusion to the question I have tried to mainly aim my product at lower class people in the C2, D and E demographics.

seven point evaluation Q4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

To establish a target audience I researched using a survey asking different people the same simple questions.

Our website obviously already has a target audience of drug abusers or anyone being effected by drugs however we wanted to gain a more in depth insight into there attitudes and morals.

I could already see how other similar drug help or information websites such as “Talk to Frank” had reacted to there target audience by making the website very interactive and colourful. I have tried to base my own product around this and think I have done a relatively good job however I would have liked to be able to make it much more interactive but didn’t have the time for such tasks.

I have made the website feel warm and inviting with my simple colour scheme and easy accessible layout. I think these features reflect the audience’s needs and need for information on drugs. Of course the main aim of the website is to get help to people who most need it but also get as much donations as possible so I have had to carefully balance these two needs with the content of the site.

seven point evaluation Q6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When creating my website I used an apple Mac computer.

Because I have created this website I have gained a much wider knowledge of the different programs and technology on the MAC computers. I have previously worked with these computers at home and school and knew how to operate the programs we would be using. One downside about the Mac’s were if you had to work on a different machine you had to take all your work which was time consuming and annoying.

The main program I used throughout the construction of the website was Iweb. This like most of the software included on Mac’s was very user friendly. I previously had used the program to create my preliminary website and knew how to use it quite well. The Iweb program was much simpler than other website design programs such as Dreamweaver and I created my website quite quickly.

Another program I only used briefly was Imovie. This is a movie-editing program and is also easy to operate. I only briefly used this program to edit and create my video and don’t have a great understanding of the program.

The last program I used was Microsoft Word. I have a wide knowledge of this program as I use it in ICT. All of my written coursework was created with this program and then uploaded

The work to Blogger.

seven point evaluation Q7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it too the full product?

From my preliminary task of creating a simple two page website with a partner to creating a much more complex four page site I think I have learned lots and improved my understanding of media products and media theory in general.

My preliminary site was called “” we chose this name randomly and just thought it sounded quite professional and posh. The colour scheme for this site was two different gradient blues and white. We used a plain white background as this made the features on the page stand out more.

As you can see the two sites are quite different this is mostly because the preliminary website was influenced mostly by my partner. The preliminary site looks much calmer than my main site as I have used bold but simple colours. I think my main website is more inviting and interesting and appeals to a wider audience with the simple layout.

My main site has more content on the page and has a centre point that is the picture slideshow in the middle of the page. The main website also contains more links compared with the preliminary site making it more interactive

I have also used video in my main site and more of my own photography giving the website a personal touch.

In addition as stated in the previous question I have gained a much wider in depth knowledge of the programs that I used in the creation of the site.

industry research

Industry research

Web hosting is a service which you are usually charged for, it makes sites created by companies or individuals accessible by the internet.

The cost of hosting a website can be nothing if you are the only provider of the site, however if you have someone else to host it, it may cost £10 – £100 per month. Big companies will usually be charged much more due to the fact they are profiting from the site. You can register your site with a site called Reg123 and host your site.

Domain names are the coded form of a website address transferred into a easily understandable address. Domain names are used to identify sites for example if I were to host my website it would be called www.thedrugstop.com.

Domain names make up the address of a site and can end in any of these: .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, .biz.

seven point evaluation Q3