Chapter Four Activity #3 Website Critique

A Critique of CNN.com

Navigation: The overall visual style or aesthetics of CNN.com are relatively well designed. Because CNN is an outlet for gathering news and information about the world, when first arriving at the website you'll find that the numerous articles are arranged into columns; with the most relevant news or "top stories" displayed larger than other pieces of information. CNN does quite a good job at keeping things simple and concise on it's website, which in today's modern world, is exactly what general audiences want. The textbook recommends several methods of creating a good website such as providing people what they want in the fewest number of steps and allowing visitors an easy way of returning to the homepage from anywhere; all of which CNN.com follows well. In addition, the website has a dashboard at the very top of the page which allows readers to access a more specific topic should they feel the urge to and a smaller dashboard that updates daily with current trending news. This encourages people to use the website and makes it easier for a person to find the exact story or piece of news they're looking for. The website establishes a good sense of visual style however at first glance, it does look rather plain. If CNN.com were to try and spice up the homepage more with eye catching colors or titles, it could possibly attract a bit more of a younger audience (say millennial aged). 

Page Layouts: As previously mentioned, the page layout is very concise and allows viewers to jump into a news story as soon as they land on the webpage. For the audience of readers, the websites current layout serves its purpose well. Perhaps the only issue I found with the layout was that there are some pieces of news that seem to be favored over other news. When arriving on the homepage there are several viewable news stories, however, there are also more stories if the reader chooses to scroll down. We learned from the textbook that when viewing online sites, a person is most likely to be somewhat impatient, and knows exactly what they are looking for; therefore, they probably wouldn't take the time to scroll down and see the other news articles the site has to offer. 

Consistency: When pursuing through the site, CNN.com does an excellent job at remaining consistent in it's content across the board. If you click on numerous topics in the dashboard, they all take the reader to a new page that is specifically laid out to topic of their choice. Each news story follows a basic format; a video laid out at the top of the page and an informative article directly below it. In addition, as you scroll down to read the article, the video will minimize so you can watch/listen to it as you read. Based upon these aspects, I believe the website is completely consistent in providing content. 

Tone and Voice:  The overall tone and voice of CNN.com is relatively serious and straight to the point which I believe is appropriate for covering news (since current events are very important in today's society). Because this website is used for news however, many of the articles it offers may seem a bit "dry." This can be considered a good thing because when presenting news to the public outlets should never beat around the bush. Although speaking as a younger audience member, I think this site could benefit from thinking of ways to make articles more eye catching or utilize method of punching up stories to make them more interesting. I think implementing videos is a great way of compensating for this, but there is definitely room for improvement in the lackluster tone of writing. Although, this is also highly dependent on the individual news that is being presented, as well the interests of the person reading it since certain stories are bound to be more interesting than others. 

Writing Quality: As previously mentioned, I think the writing quality and the way that it is formatted is great given the purpose of the site is to inform people. However, I found several of the stories I looked in to to be a bit boring in terms of the writing. If I were a new viewer, if there weren't videos accompanying each segment of writing, I would most likely not bother seeking news from this site. 

Site Organization: I think CNN.com is a very organized website. It completes its job of providing audiences with the news and stories it has to offer. However, the more you scroll through the website, the more cluttered it starts to become. Because some news stories are trending, new, or deal with more important subjects (like politics or global affairs), they seem to be favored over others and therefore take up more space on the homepage. Smaller stories or puff-pieces tend to be given less space and are put into a four-square/ box format which is a bit unsightly when comparing them to the stories given a singular, large space.