UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

TMT 1013 WEB DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGIES

Title: Improvement of Sports TOTO Website URL: http://sportstoto.com/

GROUP MEMBERS

RUDY YULIUS BATA

19782

Faculty: FEB (Industrial Economics) April 2010

Introduction Web site is created by groups of people to sacrifice the needs of users. Web design is the process of creating visual elements and design layouts for a website. However, most of the sites make some mistake in designing a simple website, even ones created by experienced web designers. In this case, we are trying to redesign the existing website in order to make some improvement on the site. Basically, website design uses a verity of programs such as Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Macromedia Flash and so forth. For the purpose of redesign website, we choose the Sports TOTO website (http://sportstoto.com/) because the website shows some weaknesses in designing the website as shown on figure 1. Therefore, we will make some improvement on this website based on four concepts or aspects which are: a) Layout (Centered Orientation) b) Navigation Menu c) Logo d) Advertisement Figure 1: Original Website Design

Figure 2: The Process of Improvement on Website with Labels

Layout/Alignment Logo

Navigation

Advertisement

1. Layout (Centered Orientation) Generally, the huge majority of sites these days are positioned centrally within the browser window while relatively few are left-aligned. Centered oriented is good layout because the content sits in the center of the screen and straight front feel more simple and give audience or reader more confidence to website. It also gives a sense of simplicity and balance, which reflects the move towards clean. As we can see from the figure 2, this website using left-aligned where there is more empty space on the right side. The right side contains less information that expected to be there since the space given is huge. This alignment makes the designer not using the space given to enhance the purpose of this website. As a result, using the left-aligned having less information where the right side was left barely empty. Therefore, it is important for designer to use centered oriented than left-aligned in order to make the website more comfortable as well as build confidence to audience who read or see this website. Thus, we used centered orientation to improve this site as seen on figure 3.

2. Navigation Menu Navigation is one of the most significant influences on the usability of a site which allow designers an opportunity to get creative and add some interesting and attractive visual elements to a site. Without some sort of navigation, a site loses all sense of structure and organization. Navigation is a part of the page template that needs to be clearly identifiable as navigation, and should be easy to interpret, target and select. As we can see from figure 2, the style used for navigation on this website is in top side but the space between the items quite squeeze beside the items or texts were too small which make visitors difficult to read and click on it. This type of navigation is opposite with one of the principles of simplicity to clarify navigation which is making navigation items large and bold. Thus, we make some improvement on navigation which is put in a vertical bar on left side of the screen. Within this navigation bar, the site can give visitors immediate knowledge. Besides that, we also used large and bold on the texts which make navigation more comfortable and easy for visitors to read and click on it. The improvement on this navigation can be seen on figure 3.

3. Logo Usually, a good logo should be recognizable and distinctive as well as representing the brands personality and qualities on the first impression of viewing the site. In this case, the designer put logo in small size and not suitable place. In order to impress the logo, designer should put at the place which visitors can see on the first viewing the site. On the other words, it should be on the left side at the top one. It is normal of human behavior to start read and see containing of the site from left to right side. Therefore, in improving this site, we put the logo on the left side at the top one so visitors can easily recognize the brand of this site. This will make easier for visitors to identify the brands of this site.

4. Advertisement Most of sites had running advertisements into their website. This is one of the most successful methods of generating revenue on site. However, placing advertisement all over side on website with very little consideration to whether the ads is effective or not good idea can be terrifically waste the time and effort. The designer has to clearly understand the reason of placing advertisement in site. If the purpose of this site is making profit on advertisement then it should focus on it. Whereas, if the site focus more on the content of the site then advertisement is not important. In this site, designer put the ads on the left site where it will affect the visitors to read on the content of the site. As we had explained on logo section, it is normal of human behavior to start their reading from left to right side. Therefore, in advertisement part, we had changed the location for ads in this site which is we placed it on the right side. Within these changes, the purpose of this site will not affected by ads. Meanwhile, the site still can make profit from the ads because the ads still there but the location was changed from the left side to the right side. As a result, visitors can easily focus on contain of this site without confusing by the ads.

Conclusion The improvement on this site will encourage more visitors to read or view this site. Most of the changes on this site were based on the basic of simple web design. In addition, the more simple design of site will create more effectiveness and attracting more visitors to read or view the site. It is important thing to think back the purpose of creating site. Designer should acknowledge that creating website is not for them but it is obviously for the users because users will use the site more often and the effectiveness of the site will decided by the users. Furthermore, the result of the redesign on Sports TOTO website as shown on figure 3 will brings more efficiency and effectiveness for the users to visit this site.

Figure 3: New Website Design

Reference http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/ http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/navigation.html http://www.addme.com/internet-marketing-articles/promotional-resources/websitepromotion/where-do-i-put-my-banner-ads.htm