Post 9: My Website and Social Media Pages

Website

I have analysed the websites of various pop stars, this will allow me to understand the codes and conventions of a website. 

The first website I looked at was Khalid's:

The first thing that I noticed was that his website consisted of very bright colours and  had a clear colour scheme of lime green, blue and grey. The website has a lot of visual content for instance videos and pics of Khalid which is a convention of a website. As soon as you enter the homepage the 1st thing that you can see is a his latest music video with clickable what now button, this is another convention of an artist's website as websites are often used to promote the latest single. At the top of each page there is a navigation bar, this allows the user to easily navigate between pages, this clearly is a convention of a website. Khalid's website has a section where it says "follow" and has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and apple music icons all these icons are hyperlinked to his social media accounts. This shows convergence between his media products. Something, that is missing from Khalid's website is a sense of community. For instance, there is a section where the user can sign up to a newsletter but there's only a join button there are no hashtags and there's no call to action for example "become a free spirit." This is an area which I would to improve on in comparison to Khalid's website. In terms of industry, the website refers to Sony Music as the record label. As the footer of each page there is the RCA logo, which is a subsidiary of Sony Music, there is a sentence saying " Sony Music Entertainment. All Rights Reserved." Under this there is are hyperlinks to the Sony Music website. The website itself is one single page where the navigation bar takes the user to different places on the same page, this helps minimise the time being used to navigate the website.  The website is very eye-catching and visually appealing. The majority  of strips have different colours or different images this keeps the user interested.

This research had inspired me to create a flat plan of my own website:

In my flat plan there are many different elements from my research which I had incorporated into my website. For instance, the navigation bar at the top, the follow the socials with the twitter and instagram links. And audio/visual content is present in my flat plan. 

An example from my finished website where I have been inspired by my research as I have a similar footer the footer used in Khalid's website.

Another example is when I used my music video a strip and then linked my music video in a similar way to how it was done on Khalid's website. I also linked the music video with a watch now button. 

Social Media

I decided to look at Taylor's Instagram page as she is a pop star with a big online presence. The first thing I noticed that despite having 122 million followers she does not follow anyone, I believe this because Swift posses star quality. Also, she shows digital convergence as her bio has a link to her music video. 

Another artist who I looked at was Stormzy, I noticed that he there is a clear colour scheme, most of the pictures have a dark theme and most of the posts have the colour black or red. There is a lot of promotional content on his feed with sponsorship with different brands for example, Time and Relentless. 

I also took inspiration from my research and applied some of it to my finished social media pages. For instance, on my Instagram account I follow 0 people and I have the link to my music video in my bio.