Week 2 readings

Writing for a Web Audience: I found this information to be very interesting and true. I am always scanning articles like they suggested and found that I don't tend to pay much attention to graphics and am usually more concerned with interesting headlines. After reading that, I scrolled back up to see if I had even looked at the graphics on their website and realized I didn't notice them at all. I thought it was interesting how they created their website. Since it offers advice and studies about how to maintain the interest of web audiences, they would have to create their site in a way that keeps the viewer's interest so that they are not contradicting all that they write about. The website was easy to read, not distracting, and I didn't find myself skimming it much, which is surprising for me. I think the large font and attractive colors also helped because when websites are just white backgrounds with tiny black text, I give up much easier. I also thought it was important when they pointed out how you must build up trust with your users by being grammatically correct at all times. I completely agree with this because if I were to ever come across a professional website with misspellings, I would not be trusting of them at all. The inverted pyramid concept that they brought up was important and something that I learned in a journalism class in high school. I thought this was important because it ensures that websites and articles are catered to the busy reader.

Self Publishing is the New Blogging: This article was interesting to me because I studied the concept of self publishing a lot last semester in WRA 202. Self publishing is on the rise and doesn't require editors, distributing, marketing or much experience. Since this was written from a web design information blog, that has been around since 1995, it proves its point that anyone who chooses to publish to the web becomes an author. Also, the use of tags at the bottom of the article show how easy it is to access this post from other posts written about similar topics.

Understanding Your Web Audience: This article showed me how important it is to develop a target audience and write for them. These are the people that will use this information and spread it to their world. It is important to understand the demographics of your audience and what characteristics make up a group like that. By doing so, you can explore your audience's environment and cater your webpage to their browsers, experience level, and comfort with the web.