The Websites

Seen as though my last few posts were quite text heavy you'll be happy to know this one has a few pictures.

I decided to compare the websites to see how accessible they were, whether any of the links led to dead ends and whether you could find all the information needed.

We'll start with Ben Howard's website.

When you log onto Ben Howard's website (http://www.benhowardmusic.co.uk/) you're greeted with a simple  web page that has an equally as simple navigation bar at the top, I found no dead links, if you click on store it takes you to an external site where you can buy merchandise from which is quite useful as it means you can stay on the original website and shop on-line for his merchandise. I feel this website is really easy to use and navigate.

The National Wedding Show 

The National Wedding Show's website is very easy to navigate, the navigation bar also has separate sections within it which makes it easy to find what you want. However the home page does have a lot of 'stuff' going on so it can get quite confusing, it's filled with adverts for magazines, hotels and wedding blogs, all of which are necessary for a bride but perhaps they don't necessarily need to be on the home page.

It's difficult to compare both websites as one is not specifically for the event (Ben Howard's) whereas The National Wedding Show's website is all about making you buy the tickets. When you click on 'Buy Tickets' both websites link you to an external ticket seller, pretty standard for any website.

The obvious differences between the adverts is that The National Wedding Show is created mainly for women, it uses pinks, white and pale blues, colours that are usually associated with femininity. The background is also very soft and swirly, it is clear the website has been designed for a majority women audience. In great contrast is Ben Howard'd website which mainly uses grey and black, Usually I would think this would cause a more masculine feel to the website but I feel the soft grey creates an almost unisex feel to the website, it doesn't look girly but also doesn't feel to manly. (Not the technical terms :p )

I managed to sign up to both of the events, I got an automatic confirmation email through from Ben Howard's website straight away. I found that the Wedding Show wasn't so simple, It took 3 attempts for me to successfully sign up as it kept automatically redirecting me to the homepage, eventually I received a confirmation email. (I'll talk about emails I've received in a later post, also not forgetting the dreaded Google alerts)

I'd say that The National Wedding Show's website was better for advertising the event as it constantly had a side bar with a link to buy tickets and the VIP ticket offer so whatever page you were on, you couldn't escape it. Whereas Ben Howard's page is more promotion him and his music, then you have to know he's on tour to bother looking at the 'Live' link on the navigation bar to get dates and tickets.

I do however have one final rant about The National Wedding Show website, the fact that every time you click on the homepage a loud video starts playing automatically and you have to try and scroll down the page to find it and stop it, but then again maybe its just me that finds it annoying.

xoxo