Another Presentation, Another Project, More Competition

The past two weeks the group has been preparing for a formal presentation for a group project.

The group project is to design and create an events website for arts scene in hull. This website would have to list all the events in hull related to the arts scene. To come up with the idea for the project the group was split into two separate groups, the plums and peaches. The plums (of which I was a member) was tasked with coming up with the idea and providing the research to back it up. This would then be passed onto the peaches that would be responsible for creating a style board and once this was done it would be passed back to the plums to create the mood board.

My role within the plums group was to help come up with the idea and to research the current competition. This research was important as it would influence the final idea by looking at what trends competitors were in and what type of content they were uploading. In short by examining the competition it would help define our website from competitor websites.

The 5 main competitors online are:

1. What’s on in Hull
2. Hull Unleashed
3. Visit Hull and East Yorkshire
4. Skiddle
5. Brit Events

Looking at what’s on in Hull website first it was apparent that this was the City Council’s main event page as it was linked to the council website. This suggests that it is aimed at people who live locally to the area of Hull, but also because it lists all the events going on in Hull whether big or small. One feature that was very noticeable was that each event had its own google maps link at the bottom of the page allowing users to visually understand where the event is being held. This saves the user from using real life maps or having copy and paste the address into google maps itself.

Looking at the hull unleashed website it was apparent that the design of the site was confusing. There to many advertisements and the typography does not stand out. Analysing the content however it is noticeable that this site mainly focuses on the tourism sector of Hull as it lists bar’s, cafes, hotels, etc and lists very few events.

Visit hull and east Yorkshire website again was mainly aimed at the tourism sector in Hull. Events are listed on the site but these are also few in numbers excluding a lot of the events actually available in Hull. One lesson to be learned from the site itself was the use of iconic imagery in that the webpage had constantly changing imagery that was iconic to Hull (and the east Yorkshire). This should be included in the final idea.

Looking at skiddle and brit events webpage’s it was immediately apparent that these were national event websites where hull was only a sub page or venue. Also when going on the hull page the only events were either big music events, theatre, and comedy shows again excluding the large amounts of events in hull.

What is also apparent in all the competition is that they all focus on search engines or event categorization instead of simply displaying the content.