Websites

    

   In this week's reading of Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works, Redish talks about the important aspects of what websites do to attract their audience. Obviously there are websites that are geared towards different types of people and interests - female, male, sports, music, etc. I went through the list of websites that I typically visit a couple times a day which is really anything from Facebook to different blogs to Pinterest to Facebook. In the end, I went to 8tracks.com, which is an online radio where you can search for music by genre and also create playlists to share with friends. Apparently, according to my sister, this website was like, so last year(ha ha) but I still love it anyways.

One of the main things I got out of Redish's reading was that it is so important to know your audience. For websites like Amazon or something super general, the demographics and age groups and stuff are anywhere from teenagers to people in their 60s and 70s (i'm guessing). But anyways, the demographics for 8tracks.com is pretty much teenagers and people in their early to late twenties, maybe even thirties. You can tell this by the names of the playlists that people upload (i.e uuuuuuuh yeah or "if we were a movie"). 



The point is, this internet online radio is so successful because of how simplistic the website is. As Redish points out, "all of us interpret what we read in light of our own knowledge and experiences." Literally, there are only so many buttons on the home page. There's Explore, which gives you a variety of genres, then theres Login and Signup. It's a complete no-brainer. 

Redish even pointed this out through these cartoon drawings of people with bubbles of what people might say. Literally all of them say the same thing just in different ways - that they want efficiency. Whoever created this website knew it would most likely attract this age-group of teenagers/young-adults whatever you want to call them, and knew that we are probably the biggest age group who would really not want to spend the time trying to figure out how to navigate to places and stuff!

Another thing that I think this site does really well is the fact that they use a lot of visuals without being overwhelming. I may be biased when I say that their use of visuals is really good because I am a visual person, and that is what attracts me first. Every playlist basically has a picture, very instagram-y/hipster-y which is the type of people that this website is obviously serving.