Information Architecture

I compared hp.com and sony.com. HP used "C" navigation setup: with information vertical on the left hand side, a top bar, and a bottom bar. Sony used a hamburger navigation setup (which is not the right term, but was the only thing I could come up with to describe it): there is a top bar, a bottom bar, and picture links in the middle.

HP used three major categories for the top bar: products and services, explore and create, and support and drivers. The vertical information changed with the top bar tabs when the mouse hovered over the top bar categories. Vertical links had to do with topics on the top bar, such as products and services there were laptops and printers listed vertically. The bottom had company information, resources, and customer support. The middle section of the "C," had advertisements: sale information, memory upgrade, 20" monitors, etc.

Sony has seven categories on their top bar: register, shop, electronics, PlayStation, online games, music and movies, and service and support. The top bar used floating menus when the mouse hovered over the categories. Under the top bar is an advertisement for Sony's new VAIO colored laptops. Under the advertisement is four categories: see, hear, play, and shop. The see category is movies, hear is music, play is video games, and shop is all Sony products. As you can see, those categories are repeats of what is on the top bar, but another place for consumers to find that information. Index site, FAQ, terms/privacy, investor relations, and corporate information is located on the bottom bar.

These two computer websites have basically the same information, so consumers can find whatever they are looking for. HP has an easier time displaying all their information because they have less products. They have printers, computers, accessories, and some software. Sony has a lot more information to disperse. They have movies, music, gaming systems, video games, computers, cameras, accessories, and so forth. I think both these websites have easy navigation and if you need to find something it is under the category names that make the most sense.

Midterm Questions

1. Marc Andressen, an undergraduate student at UIUC, developed a windows system browser called:
a) Internet Explorer
b) Netscape
c) Mosaic
d) Firefox

2. Placing advertisements on page that have relation to the content of the page is ___________ targeting.
a) Demographic
b) Contextual
c) Daypart
d) Affinity

3. Out of all the online search engines, _________ is the only search engine that is gaining users instead of loosing them.
a) MSN/Windows Live
b) Yahoo
c) AOL
d) Google

4. Which of the following best describs click fraud?
a) When someone buys an online advertisement with over drawn credit card
b) Computer bots that imitates users and clicks on advertisements to raise prices
c) Network fetches a fresh copy of data for each request
d) When a user clicks an advertisement on accident

5. CPM stands for:
a) Cost per thousand
b) Cost per million
c) Cost per hundred
d) Cost per billion

Click metrics... useful or not

What I got from the Advertising Age article is that click metrics do not prove if an online advertisement influences people's purchases or not. Many people do not click online advertisements. Just seeing an advertisement multiple times online could influence a purchase. ComScore found that online advertisements can increase 17% of retail store purchases and increase 40% of marketer's website visits. Also, advertisements through searches can influence a person's purchase. Steve Kerho found that online-display advertisments can affect conversions and search, and found that search ad's click-through rate increase 25%-30%.

In relation to my own browsing, click metrics would not be helpful. I do not click on display-online advertisements ever. Frankly, I do not really even pay attention to advertisements on websites. Most of the advertisements online are junk advertisements, such as shoot the monkey and win a free iPod. I usually know exactly what I'm searching for online. I'm not much of an online browser. I just go to the websites I check daily or purchase a product I planned ahead of time to buy.

I'm not sure which metrics are a better alternative. I'm not really sold that online display advertisements are really effective. Though, my opinion is biased because I don't look at advertisements online. If I had to choose, I would use advertisement impressions because a lot of people see advertisements online, but do not click on them. However, click throughs can be additional metrics used to measure advertisement effectiveness.

A Website Critique

I chose to compare Southern Illinois University Carbondale(SIUC) School of Journalism and Medill at Northwestern University (NWU).

Aesthetics
SIUC - The colors are all different shades of blue. It has a three column format navigation. You have to scroll down to see the entire page. This website has a very proffesional look, but I think medical when I see it.

NWU - Black and white are the main colors. They highlighted the website with neon colors. There is a flash picture slideshow of students and programs at NWU. It is a C format navigation. You can see the whole page without having to scroll down. Aesthetically it looks very modern and has an Apple iPod feel to it.

Navigation (Easy of use)
SIUC - I would say on a rating of 1 to 10 the website has about a 6 rating. The problem is there is so much text on the page it takes a while to riffle through it. Having to scrool down to find things also make the site complex.

NWU - It has pretty simplistic navigation. There isn't too much text. I would give this navigation a 9 rating.

Information quality and extent
SIUC - It has a lot of information, but finding it can be an issue. The main five topics are About, Academics, Jobs, News and People at top. Although, there is a lot more categories sporadically in the three columns.

NWU - There is a lot of information and it easy to find. The categories are Home, About Medill, Admissions, Journalism, Integrated Marketing Communication, Students, Student Work, Alumni, Faculty, Employment, Thought Leaders, Medill It, Medill Merchandise, Midell Cherubs, Northwestern University, and Qatar Campus. All the categories can basically be found in the left column.

Overall Verdict
SIUC - The site should be more simplistic, especially when it comes to navigation. Plus, there is far too much text on each page you visit, it's information overload. The colors also should relate more to their target audience, which are current students and prospective studnets. I feel that it gives off a medical look, when it is suppose to give off a journalism and advertising vibe.

NWU - I feel like it is directed perfectly to journalism and advertising students. The only suggestion I have is to have the site have more correlation to Northwestern. Maybe they should use more purple, since that is the school's color. Other than that, I really like this website.

Web addresses:
http://journal.siu.edu/
http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/

How does Google work?

Before I researched how Google works I thought I would give it a guess. My guess is that when you type in a keyword, the system searches for the most popular sites related to that keyword. Also, if a website pays for a premium spot, then it will come up as the number one or two spot. Advertisements related to the topic's keyword comes up on the right side.

A website called www.switchit.com says that Google uses PageRank to rank the pages that you searched. PageRank uses a ranking from 0-10 and then ranks your results by that. PageRank seems very plausable to me. Google actually has a page that describes how Google works, but when I went their website it was just a joke. The web address is http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html and it says Google trains pigeons to rank the websites. I thougt that was pretty clever.

Facebook Demographics

Five important points about the demographics of Facebook are:
1) There are more females on Facebook
2) A majority of Facebook users are 18-24
3) College students are the largest users, but many of the users' school status is unknown
4)There are more liberals using Facebook, but that data was no longer collected after October 2007
5) From 2007 to 2009, the unknowns of gender and age has lessened. About 98% of Facebook users' age and gender is known.

Knowing if one gender uses a social media more than the other is important to know because you can better target consumers with products that pertain to their gender. Knowing a majority of users are ages 18-24 and the second largest age group is 25-34 is also important. That means most of the users are in college or freshly graduated. This group is more mature, interested in technology, drink alcohol, etc. Advertisements are different for this age range. Also, Facebook having more knowledge of age and gender for a majority of their users is a great way to target advertising. Knowing specific age and gender will allow advertiser to send specific advertisements. For example: a female that is 25 years old can be targeted with Coach purse advertisements. Obviously advertising to a female that is 16 years old would be fruitless for Coach, because most 18 year old females could not afford a Coach purse. It would also not be resourceful to advertise to a male for a Coach purse because they are not the target audience.

In October 2007, a majority of users identified themself as liberals. Though, knowing users' political ideology is not the important information. The importance of this is after October 2007, that information was removed from the data. Maybe knowing users political stance does not have great impact on product use. On the other hand, knowing peoples' political stance helps figure out how to advertise social issues, such as promoting environmental issues.

Finally, most of Facebook user's are college students, but 57.6% of Facebook users education status is unknown. This large chunk of unknown users makes it hard to target consumers. People with college education tend to be reached in different form than people with only high school or less education. It is well known that educated people read more, and the reading materials educated people read is different than uneducated people. For Facebook, this issue of unknown education status may not be that important since most of the advertising is material things, but future advertisement adventures could be hurt by this.

At the bottom line, knowing the demographics and the changes within the demographics will influence how and who advertises on Facebook.

T-Mobile Dance Commercial

This was a gorilla advertisement done by T-Mobile Service. T-Mobile gathered some dancers and choreographed a dance in London, England. On January 15, 2009, the group of dancers begin dancing in the middle of the Liverpool Street Station. The music selection was from music all across generations. At the end of the video, you see people talking on cellphones and taking pictures with cellphones. The last words were "Life's for Sharing."

I believe it was very effective. As soon as it happened, it was posted on youtube. It was posted on advertising news websites and blogs. Many of my friends and family sent it in an e-mail. Also, it was all over the London news that day. It has a very good message and a vibe that leaves you smiling after you watch it. The gorilla advertisement definitely grabed attention and many people will remember it was T-Mobile.

LOLCAT

At first I had no idea what an LOLCAT was. I was telling my friend about what my first assignment for JRNL 307 was and she laughed. She knew exactly what an LOLCAT is. An LOLCAT is picture of a person's cat with a humorous caption attached. These pictures are all over the web. People must really love their cats and/or just funny pictures of cats.

To be honest I do not really like cats. Apparently cats do not really like me because every one of my friends cats have bit me or hissed at me. But some of the pictures are pretty funny. The LOLCAT I created is on the left. I just googled cat and photoshoped some words on to it. I do not really think I'm funny person, but I hope the LOLCAT is a little bit.