~My Website Analysis~

The website I chose for my digital analysis is “Click to Give @ The Breast Cancer Site”, and although the name alone should be enough to set the tone for this site, I was quite unprepared for the sheer volume of ads and unrelated patchwork of text segments I was assailed with.

On first glance the website is almost dizzyingly busy; being frustrating to look with so many seemingly unrelated links and random advertisements. It really doesn’t seem like a very informative home page for such a large and important organization, and the expected ‘professional touch’ seems to be missing.

The site also appears to encourage impulse buying, as the many adverts displayed seem to be the main focus. There’s a sense of pressure from a particular ad to the side, mentioning a discontinued product line, and we’re warned to hurry before the products’ seemingly soon disappearance.

With all these ads and requests for donations I don’t feel like I matter as a person, I don’t feel like the Breast Cancer Society cares about me beyond how money I can donate to them, and this makes me feel unimportant disinterested in the site in general.

I will admit that there is information and important facts around halfway down the page, but even this text is surrounded by a barrage of advertisements urging the viewer to purchase a variety of jewellery, woman’s clothing and a selection of other accessories, all pink of course.
The text that is there, however, is so surrounded and intersected by ads I honestly don’t know why they bother.

There is an overwhelming pink, girly theme in the general layout of the site that seems to exclude males, even though male breast cancer is just as deadly but not nearly as accepted or talked about. “Pink signifies romance, love, and friendship. It denotes feminine qualities and passiveness.”
Most people assume breast cancer to strike woman only, and with this view we can not afford to alienate male cancer sufferers with an overload of pink jewellery and clothing!

Another color used heavily on the site is the color white, and after looking up the meaning of colors through the ever popular Google search engine I came up with the following explanation of this color: “White is associated with hospitals, doctors, and sterility, so you can use white to suggest safety when promoting medical products.”

The main text font seems to be modern in appearance, though I wasn’t able to identify many serifs, indicating perhaps a less common font (it looks like Lucida Sans Unicode, but I can’t be certain). I also wasn’t able to pick up on any sounds from the website, though with the disorganized layout additional distractions is the last thing they need.

The majority of the shapes used are softened, with corners and tabs rounded off into blunt curves.

Near the top of the page I noticed two styles of bullet points; one being a list explaining the process of donating to a particular cause, and this list is numbered “1., 2., 3.”in what seems to be the main font type used by the company. Next to that list is the second bullet point I noticed, this one being a single white arrow set in a small, pink circle, and I will admit I found this random bullet point to be cute and quirky.

The site, although not a typical company website, is clean and modern in appearance (the overload of pink notwithstanding; I for one outgrew the love of such a color around the age of six). Although in my humble opinion it would be much more effective (not to mention less frustrating and distracting) to have all the company’s available products listed together in a designated area. This would make the information listed much easier to read, as well as eliminating the need for potential customers to search for scattered products.

I also think they would benefit a lot from starting a male line of products to compliment the woman’s products they have already. This could draw in a new target audience of males also suffering from breast cancer, or perhaps just wishing to support friends or family members that are inflicted with this serious disease.