Design and Rationale

Client Outline and Business Requirments

My client is a small, online based music blog business called RADIOACTIVE VOX. They operate out of a small building in Richmond, producing online content about music; this includes music related news, new music, throwback music, recommendations and reviews. Radioactive Vox seek to be viewed as an alternative music brand to their audience, mainly focusing their content on rock, pop and punk music. They are in need of a website to debut their content to the public, and also to engage with their target audience in a meaningful way.

Radioactive Vox’s target audience is primarily young adults 18-24 year olds, English speaking and regardless of gender. The business is targeting a young adult demographic to reinforce the idea that the business is a ‘hip’, trendy, cool and young music blog. Even though most of the business’s activity happens in Australia, Radioactive Vox are wanting to extend their reach with an online blog to connect with global audiences, to produce and share content with.

Even though the business’s target audience are young adults, this is not exclusive to teens or full grown adults. However, with a young adult demographic, Radioactive Vox’s website needs to be compatible with different types of technology. For example, a viewer must have easy navigation of the website, whether they are viewing from a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone device.

It is estimated that the blog website would be mostly viewed on desktop and mobile devices. Radioactive Vox intend to use their social media instagram account @radioactivevoxmusicblog to generate views and audience interactivity to the website. Another aspect that Radioactive Vox would like to include in the design are links to their Spotify account; as the use of playlists and music recommendations are heavily used throughout the posted content.

Key Goals & Key Performance Indicators

1. To build greater relationships with the target audience through the business’s website.
   • This goal can be achieved by Radioactive Vox engaging with their audience via website comments or social media posts. Businesses need support from their audiences to become and remain successful.
2. To increase the awareness and generate traffic to Radioactive Vox’s website.
   
   • This goal can be achieved with advertisement of the business through social media platforms, engagement with the audience through comments or website views, and self-promotional advertisements of the business.
3. To build brand awareness and reputation of the business in the music business market.
   • This goal can be achieved by producing meaningful content that is greater than, but comparable to competitors. For audiences to become loyal to the business and trust in the content that Radioactive Vox produces. This can also be measured by feedback about the business via their website.
4. To increase potential opportunities for the business to grow.
   • This goal can be achieved by working with sponsors who contact the business through website inquiries, to have a large enough presence to book artists for live music sets and interviews. Radioactive Vox are a start up business, but want to ensure that their business plan can grow, to keep up with the current music business market.

Competitor and Market Research

• Triple J – Radio station online website
• Nova 100 – Radio station online website
• Fox 101.9 – Radio station online website
• LNWY – Laneway online music blog
• Best Before – online music blog
• Ripe Music – online music blog

Before crafting a website for Radioactive Vox, their potential competitors needed to be researched, in order to find out why they are so successful? What promotions do they advertise? What types of content do they deliver? and which formats do they deliver content in? eg. photo, video, live radio or podcasts.

While researching competitors, it was evident that across all of the radio station websites and blog channels, that news, interviews and recommendations were the most important features in terms of content. The layout and design of the blogs were simple, used negative space and visually colourful with images related to music artists. Something that is notable in LNWY’s music blog was the emphasis on ‘read, watch, listen’; that the music blog produces written content, has visual video content and content relating to listening to music or referring their audience to music.

• Google Trends

Google Trends was also used as a form of research to see the popularity of music genres in Australia and Worldwide. This is generalised information that is only estimated and not accurate, but it is a good guide for the types of music genres that Radioactive Vox should focus their content production on.

The Australian and worldwide Google Trends graphs show that Radioactive Vox should focus their content primarily on pop and rock music, and rarely on punk rock music. The graphs show that rock music is approx. 90% most popular among searches regarding the music genre in Australia and worldwide, pop music was close behind with approx. 60% popularity, and punk rock is less than 20% popular. For Radioactive Vox to be successful in producing popular content, they need to focus on creating reviews, recommendations, news and other articles revolving around rock and pop music.

Site Map

• RECENTHOMEPAGE: includes all recent articles published to website
• NEWS PAGE: music news articles
• FRESH FINDS PAGE:
  • HOT HITS TAG: about new music release recommendations, link to HOT HITS spotify playlist
  • TRENDY THROWBACKS TAG: old school music release recommendations, link to TRENDY THROWBACKS spotify playlists
• PEOPLE’S CHOICE PAGE:
  • BATTLE OF THE BANDS TAG: two bands/ artists face off by public vote via Instagram
  • RECOMMENDED BY YOU TAG: music songs and albums recommended by target audience, requested through website or social media inquiry
• RAD REVIEWS PAGE: music reviews about songs, albums and artists. This also includes ranked music eg. top 3 best songs from (artist).
• ABOUT US PAGE: background information about Radioactive Vox’s goals and intentions
• CONTACT US PAGE: inquiry form
  • INSTAGRAM LINK CUSTOM LINK: direct link to business instagram account
  • SPOTIFY LINK CUSTOM LINK: direct link to business’s spotify account playlists

Site Deliverable (CMS Authoring)

Site structure with at least 5 categories/ pages

• see menu

incorporation of image assets with relevant attachment details

Customised functioning navigation that reflects site structure

• see site map for site structure

Re-purposed media assigned with relevant attachment details

• incorporation of external media such as YouTube videos or instagram posts, see ‘Justin Bieber announces music hiatus due to “Deep Rooted Issues”‘ , ‘Warning! This is not a Longshot’ or ‘Tame Impala drops a new single “Patience”‘

Media Gallery

• see pages Fresh Finds, People’s Choice, About Us or Contact Us

Pagination (Page Breaks)

• see ‘Ranking ALL of Linkin Park’s albums’ or ‘Justin Bieber announces music hiatus due to “Deep Rooted Issues”‘

WordPress widgets

• Footer one: instagram.
• Footer two: Social Icons- with links to Instagram and Spotify accounts.
• Footer three: search bar and a navigation menu.

Site Experience

(extended Features and Attributes)

Client and Brand Identity

To reinforce a brand identity for the client, Radioactive Vox, uses a simple logo design and site icon. The site icon design is of a black radioactive chemical warning sign in a triangular shape, on a bright yellow background. Even though the site logo design is small, it still contains the brand wording of ‘Radioactive Vox’, to distinguish it from a generic radioactive chemical symbol.

The client’s branding is also evident as the website feature image on every page. This logo is an extended version of the site icon. While still maintaining a black radioactive symbol on a bright yellow background, the feature image has two radioactive symbols, and in between them, written is the branding ‘Radioactive Vox – Music Blog’.

Additional client branding is also visible on ‘Hot Hits’, ‘Trendy Throwbacks’, ‘Battle of the Bands’ and ‘Recommended By You’ clickable Spotify playlists images on the pages Fresh Finds and People’s Choice. This branding is to reinforce the client’s identity on external links.

Website Design and Layout

The design and layout of the website is simple and aesthetically complimentary to the client’s brand. The website is consistent with the black and yellow radioactive warning symbol logo and site icon.

As the client is focusing on producing content in rock, pop and punk music genres, a grungy appearance would best suit the design, along with the black and yellow colour theme. Originally the posting area on the website was the same yellow as the header feature image with the client’s name. When curating and viewing posts during website construction, the bright yellow made the text difficult to read, this issue was easily solved by using an image from Unsplash that was a rough white wall with faded smudged black and yellow paint. This image was more eligible for website visitors to read the text in posts, because it is now viewed on a lighter background, this makes the website more enjoyable for the audience.

Call to Action

In order for the Radioactive Vox to successfully work on their goal of interacting with audiences and driving engagement, call to action buttons were used to encourage audience participation. Two call-to-actions were created for every blog post article as a gentle reminder to build that relationship of connectivity with the audience to the business.

DON’T FORGET to CHECK OUT our INSTAGRAM & SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS

This ‘Instagram & Spotify’ call to action is intended to prompt audiences to connect with the business via their other social media accounts. By linking other accounts to Radioactive Vox’s website, this increases the possible reach of audiences in Australia and globally.

CLICK HERE to cast your favourite BATTLE OF THE BANDS artist on our INSTAGRAM STORY

The second call to action is the ‘Battle of the Bands- artist vote’, this is designed to increase audience participation. Radioactive Vox is heavily focused on engaging with their audience. This call to action promotes people vote for their favourite artist that is in the battle of the bands, via instagram story polls.

The colour choice of the call to action buttons are not too bright and overwhelming for the website visitor. The orange and blue stand out from the white and yellow background, and also grabs the attention of someone scrolling on their device.

Cross Device Compatibility

Since Radioactive Vox’s website will be viewed across multiple devices, the layout and design would be easy to use on both small and large screens. The size simulations on WordPress were used to see what the site would look like on various devices.

After initial viewing of the website across multiple devices, some changes needed to happen, in order to provide the viewer an enjoyable experience. For instance, the header image of the two radioactive symbols and the ‘Radioactive Vox -Music Blog’ text had to be reduced in order to fit the business’s name on mobile devices.

Images, article descriptions and spotify links do fit nicely in all device layouts. However, some main headings do seem a bit large and overwhelming to the viewer, especially on smaller screens.

Ease of Navigation

In order to create a website that is easy and enjoyable to navigate, a simple WordPress theme (Argent) has been incorporated into the website. This theme is simple and modern, to suit the character of Radioactive Vox’s persona, it was decorated with an alternative aesthetic.

All pages can be accessed via the top menu, and also on the bottom of the website in the third footer used for navigation. If a website visitor had difficulty using the menu or finding an article, they can search for it in the search bar, and also in the third footer above the navigation menu at the bottom of the website.

To ensure accessibility, all media has been labelled and titled. External links also open up in new tabs as much as possible, so website visitors can view multiple pages at a time, and return to the Radioactive Vox website to continue browsing.

Content Generation

Copywriting for Recent, News, Fresh Finds, Hot Hits, Trendy Throwbacks, People’s Choice, Battle of the Bands, Recommended by You, Rad Reviews, About Us and Contact Us were all written by Jessica Johnson.

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