Website research findings

From researching many stop smoking and other charity websites I have found that the majority of them follow the basic conventions of, have a title positioned at the top of the page, having tabs ruinning along the top of the page and some to either sides, sticking with certain colours and mainly using either 2 or 3, including images, including either factual text or text that navigates you through the website. These are the main conventions I have found whilst researching.

A lot of the websites that I looked at involved the colour blue on the page and I feel they have down this to have a carm feeling about the page and to make the reader feel relaxed and confident about reading the information.

Every site has placed the title at the top of the page normally along side the websites logo or slogan. For example ‘Can stop smoking’ doesn’t use a logo instead it has the slogan, ‘Get ready for a change’.

The websites I looked at all had information tabs at the top so it makes it easy to navigate through the website without having to search through pages looking for what you need. Instead they are well positioned and the typography included in them is spot on to catch the readers eye.

All of the websites include images on their homepage, more some than others. The ‘Niquitin’ website has used cartoon pictures instead of real photographs on there homepage and I feel this is the wrong decision made. I feel that the audience they are targeting would prefer real pictures as they probably feel that cartoons is not suitable to what the task is of stop smoking.

I feel if you want to attract your audience you must stick closely to the conventions of a charity website. Unless you feel that your target audience challenges the needs to include some of the conventions. For example if your audience are young then maybe cartoon pictures are better than photographs. This may help lighting the mood you are setting.