Blog Assignment 7

Website choice:
www.cardomain.com

Effectiveness
The site overall is quite effective. If you are looking at the website from a user standpoint you are using this website to browse different vehicle related topics including car sales, parts, blogs, pictures, and shows. The website aims towards advertising many of these cars and parts. They do a pretty good job having a wide variety of elements. They advertise while having sales and have room for fans to post their car pics and blogs. This allows for a community of vehicle fans of all types to join the website and promote sales and site support.

Usability
When first loading the site you can see that it has all the elements laid out on the front page. This includes sample cars of the week, blogs, car company's, sales, and various clips. A user can easily click on one of these to access that part of the website. There is a search bar and pictures to help guide the user. I think, however,this is the weakest element of the website because the website can get jumbled with lag and it frustrates the user.

Persuasiveness
The website offers a good source of information and links to the users. The website's only persuasiveness seems to be the advertising of company's and parts that definitely effects user's choices. When browsing the website, constantly linked with advertisements, the user takes a notice to them and it increases sales.

Evaluation
If I were to evaluate this website and write to the webmaster my suggestions I think I would highlight my main problems I have when browsing the website and certain revisions that I think would improve the site in a positive manner. I would first address the webmaster and praise him on the creation of the website. I would not want to come off in the wrong way but I would want to get my points across. My main points in the letter/email/call to him would include:
1)advertisement management
2)color scheme
3)link organization

My discussion would talk about these three elements and why I have problems with them. 1)When accessing the website the first thing many people notice is that you may get bombarded with advertisements. This not only lags the website, but discourages the user. When browsing the website the advertisements do not let up. I believe a revision or redistribution of the advertisements should be employed to reduce the lag and be more user friendly.
2)Next I would take note that the website fails to have clean organization of car parts and other links. Many users would appreciate a color scheme that would relate different parts/links to help a user guide their way through the website or search for certain items. Many car mechanics and car fans employ the color scheme technique so the webmaster should understand what I am talking about.
3)In conjunction with the color scheme should come changes with the links. I think the front page should be a little more organized with its links and maybe take out the car company links on the front page. Taking out that first huge link box would save room and let the user see more links (including maybe an advertisement! yay) If the webmaster took more time to compact the pictures and links it would be more efficient.