Ancillary Task Production - Website Homepage 1st Draft & Audience Feedback

Here is the my first draft of my website homepage - one of my ancillary tasks. For this brief, I have to create a website homepage which caters as a site for my main production - my trailer. Therefore, I needed to focus on maintaining continuity with the two products as well as being creative to make my site of a high standard and look visually pleasing for my target audience. 

I decided to use a wesbite called, Wix.com, a free and easy to use site which acts as a platform for you to then create your own website for whatever purpose. They had a range of existing templates for me to use, although, I started from scratch as I knew in my mind, exactly how I wanted my website to look.  

*The lines on the picture below are from the editing mode on the site, they will not show once the site has been finished*

As part of the mark scheme for my website homepage brief, I needed to show evidence of moving image on my site. This will be easy enough to do as I can simply embed and feature my trailer on the sites homepage for visitors to play. However, I haven't finished my trailer and so I created a white box to act as a template as to where my trailer will be placed once I have finished it. I also created four further template boxes where I plan on showing some stills from my trailer. 

From my research on existing website homepages for films, I found that they all varied and there was no set, conventional style on what layout to use. So, I went out and gathered some opinions from my target audience so that I could use this feedback and consider it when planning my designs. All 10 of my audience participants agreed that they would expect to find the name of the film at the top of the site to make it clear what that the site is advertising and promoting. Therefore, once I had created my banner I placed it directly at the top of the page and chose a large font to make visibility clear and precise. When creating my banner, I chose to make the 'X' red as it added a unique and creative flair to the site as soon as you looked at it. I also added two 'crack-like- effects in the corners in the same colour to make the name appear more mysterious and eerie. I found that that the white text worked well as the title then stood out against the harsh contrast of the black background. 

Moreover, I added a countdown where I selected a random date to act as the release date for my film. It is something I hadn't previously seen on any other film sites. When I asked my audiences opinion on the countdown, once again, all 10 said they liked the feature as it would build up their excitement to see the film more and also reinforces the release date even more to make people aware. 

I added a few more gadgets to the site to improve the sites social media links as every site that I analysed seemed to focus heavily on trying to get their audiences to engage with their film through their social media accounts.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK 

• Consider adding a few more page names to the menu
• Have the trailer bigger than the images next to it 
• Rearrange gadgets because some of the site looks a lot bare. 

MY RESPONSE 

I agree with all three of the main criticisms of my work and will go back to my website and follow all the advice I've been given.