Research for Web Pages

For my research, I investigated three websites and for consistency I decided to explore the websites from the same artists as the music videos. With the three all being pop artists, it felt appropriate.

Taylor Swift's Website: taylorswift.com

Taylor Swift’s website, taylorswift.com has a distinct layout, it scrolls along one long page, having all the features of it on one page. There are few links at the header of the page, these are for Events, Video, Merchandise and Newsletter. These are all featured for promotion reasons and remain on a position in the page you cannot escape, as they remain on the header which follows as you scroll.

Through scrolling, you go past a stream/download link to her latest album, then purchase of special edition versions of the album, then vinyl purchase, then music video links, then merchandise, events and finally, newsletter sign up.

By having all necessary features of the site be on one singular page you can scroll, it makes the site efficient and clean, allowing ease when finding any element of the site necessary. By having it all on one page to scroll through, the site is very user friendly, and this encourages users of the site to engage more heavily with it.

It follows a colour scheme of primarily pinks or pastel colours which are used to appeal to her ‘feminine’ persona for her latest album. This could also be accommodation for her fanbase which features a heavily female demographic, and stereotypically the use of the pinks and pastels are reflective of that.

Taylor Swift’s website also constantly updates and maintains its image and is relevant to Taylor Swift’s branding, having included merchandising tabs and ways to view her music video, as well as making it as appealing as possible to users.

Ed Sheeran's Website: edsheeran.com

Ed Sheeran’s website, edsheeran.com presents a simplistic, minimal design. The website primarily consists of solid white colours, contrasted by solid black text. Unlike Taylor Swift’s website, Ed Sheeran’s contains all content in the centre of the site, with the white background taking up roughly half of all space on the site.

The colour scheme and design are difficult to link to any branding, as there isn’t actively any branding for his latest album that’s blatant. Demographically, Ed Sheeran appeals mostly to female youth, of about 15-25, similar to Taylor Swift, yet does not follow the same strategies to make his website as attractive. Instead, Ed’s site thrives off of the simplistic design, rather than trying to ‘overcrowd’ or have colours that may be considered overwhelming, by having an easy to consume website, it makes it more attractive to a viewer.

The main homepage features his latest music video, as well as elements to promote events, his social media, news and merchandise, to support the general brand. Rather than containing all elements on one page, like Taylor Swift’s site, Ed Sheeran’s site has a header which each contains a link to an aspect someone might need; News, Tour, Music + Videos, Photos, Links, Store and Follow.

The branding is heavily used on the site, as the homepage contains various elements of merchandising, including clothing and a figurine of him. By maintaining the brand image of Ed Sheeran, he is able to thrive as an artist, and the website supports this.

Gotye's Website: gotye.com

Gotye.com is the website for the artist Gotye and follows both similar and dissimilar elements to website conventions as before.

The similar aspects relate to Ed Sheeran’s site, which has a base homepage and then links at the header for further exploration of elements on the site. It also contains extremely minimalist colours and design, featuring nothing on the homepage other than an intentionally poorly drawn man, which is hyperlinked to a YouTube video of a music video. Due to Gotye’s difference in genre and popularity compared with Taylor and Ed, there is much less effort made to engage reader, instead, Gotye offers a more abstract style of indie music and music video, and thus the website is also far more abstract in comparison.

The text is in a custom font which is used to appear like handwriting, making it feel more independent and personal, as opposed to the extreme branding that the other two websites focus on so heavily.

It’s also wise to assume that this website is no longer in use, as the hyperlink goes to a video from 2007. However, it still remains relevant in general band branding and can serve to show the difference in decisions for design and layout between over a decade of creation between the others.