Website Comparisons

Website Comparisons

I am going to compare the 4 newspaper websites to talk about what they share in similarities and what makes them different from each other, all the websites have different layouts and designs as well as content that is featured.

Sky News & Daily Mirror

I am comparing these two newspaper websites sky news and the Daily Mail (Mirror Online), these two compared to each other have some differences and a few similarities. The Mirror on-line layout has more detail on the homepage while Sky news has a very clean simple layout design, the top bars both share similar content and tabs such as the story categories which are all in the same order while the mirror online top bar has more going on. Sky news has a grey, red and blue colour scheme while the mirror online has black, red and white and red is more eye catching giving it the advantage for the reader to spot the headlines highlighted in red.

On the homepage the mirror online has a feature bar full of featured top stories while the Sky news doe not, this makes the more popular stories to be read more and be more noticed by the reader. The website designs layout are both totally different as sky news is more simple and has less stories on show making it easy to scroll through the site without being distracted by the multiple stories on the page, the mirror online has a lot more on display which makes it hard for the reader to choose a story and this impress the reader to easily go through the site.The Mirrors page is a bit longer than the Sky news as it has more stories condensed into the page, featured and most read articles are featured both top and bottom of the page to make them more easily spotted by the reader. The two sites also do not share the exact same articles and his gives them more diversity in their content, the articles are featured from around the world including news stories that are not typically featured.

Sky news focus's mainly on world news such as crimes and politics in the UK and the US, the audience for this newspaper website would mainly be older audiences from adults to elder's, the audience is different to the Daily Mirror mainly because the daily Mail has more entertainment for content thus bringing in the younger audiences such as teens and young adults. Sky news also has a TV channel which in turn gives it a better wider audience as Sky news is watched worldwide by a variety of different age groups, but it is still not as popular as the Daily Mirror as its likely viewers would prefer to watch the newspapers TV channel instead of reading it online.

Website Research

Research

I have done researched into existing online newspaper websites and analysed the details as well of design into the newspaper website, the main websites I did Research on was The Daily Mail, Sky News, Daily Mirror and The Guardian. These newspapers are all very popular and well know by the public, these sites are used regularly everyday by millions of people worldwide giving it a wide very wide audience.
These sites all have different amount of content regarding newspaper stories, some of the sites will have only a few big news stories on the home page while others have huge amounts to choose from.

The Daily Mirror

The first newspaper website I researched was The Daily Mirror or Mirror online, this newspaper has relatively simple layout with most of what you see on the home page being mainly dominated by different newspaper stories, the top bar has a range of topics from big news stories to the strange giving the audience more variety of stories to choose from and even some that they may not find in the newspaper. The colour scheme used is very simple only being black, white and red, the red helps draw attention popping out to the reader, main big stories will be likely highlighted to gain the readers attention.

Sky News

Sky news was the next website I did research into, this website has a more simpler layout design that to the other newspaper websites. The top banner has a few tabs leading to the other news stories and a additional search bar which can be helpful tot the reader if they want to find a specific article, the stories are more organised on the page with a bit more less than the other websites this makes it easier to navigate through to find the story the reader wants. On the right hand side there is a video bar with news stories that contain video clips which organises the stories with video away from the none video stories, which is alas another helpful doting feature to the site.  The home page does not feature as much stories as the other newspaper websites, it has about 3 categories with UK, politics and entertainment with the top red stories at the bottom. 

The Daily Mail

The Daily Mail was the third newspaper website I researched into and this one was the most popular UK newspaper out of all of them. The site had a lot more content such as lots of articles which dominated the home page, the amount of articles made it very hard to pick and choose a story and with the amount on offer it took too long to find the right one. The layout was all round messy and very unorganised, as well as the design for the colour scheme was simple which included blue, white and black font. As most of the newspaper stick to only 3 colours to keep it simple and not too extravagant and distracting to the reader. As the paper is the most popular it would of course have more news stories on the page to keep on top above the other newspapers, even having stories that are less known and not as big as the other big headlines for lighter reads.
It has a lot of entertainment news too which is one of the most popular stories people like to read, like the other websites the weather and strange news is put at the end of the top bar as they are not as popular with the readers.

The Guardian

The Guardian was the last newspaper website I researched and is one of the most popular UK newspaper's, first look into the newspaper it is a lot more different than the other online newspaper websites. The home page layout is more professional and clean with a good amount of stories and text, as well as the design layout is very simple with a  colour scheme of blue and white which unlike the other newspapers it has 2 colours for its design.  It has multiple sections for different article genres, like strange news, highlights, weather, technology etc and a simple top bar with the sections linking to the pages. Like the other sites it has a helpful search bar to find specific articles which may not feature on the home page at first look, also the most popular types of stories such as UK, politics and technology are one of the first categories top feature on the top bar meaning they are more popular to the readers