BBC News Website Review - Case Study Example

Review of website (BBC NEWS) Now it is the era of communication, with the world shrinking in its size day by day with the communication technology growing larger and larger in its size. One of the important icon of communication technology is the internet that dominates in all spheres of life starting from simple communications till the auctioning of things worth millions. The e- commerce and information technology are the two main giants highly benefited from this massive growth. The main asset of any concern or organization to be successful in the portal is their website. As it is rightly said that face is the index of mind, it could be flowed down to say that the website is the face value of any organization. A survey reported by BBC news says that it takes only minutes for a customer to judge whether to proceed with that site or not, obviously it’s only the website that gives the first impression. Again there are great many websites, where some are static and some other are database driven that can update itself in wink of eye second. In this the site BBC News is selected (http://news.bbc.co.uk/) and the essay tries to move around and establish the purpose of site, the reason of why it is database driven, the links between database and narratives , the structure of navigation system , suitability of graphic design, and finally the recommendations for improvement. Purpose of the site: The BBC is one of a largest broadcasting corporation in the world functioning in the aim of enriching the people’s life with programs that inform, educate and entertain them. It is actually an public sector broadcaster established by Royal Charter funded by the license fee of UK household. Apart from the web site it owns 8 TV channels, 10 national radio stations and 40 local radio stations. The BBC was started as a broadcasting radio service, then expanded to TV network and then to net. The website contains comprehensive news site and archives and utilizes the GeoIP technology that carries advertisement outside Europe. It boast a traffic of 13.2 million people and been rated as 10th most popularly viewed English website. As a revolution they have introduced BBC beta that enables customer to customize the BBC services for their own. The main purpose of starting the website was that to provide a reliable, accurate, online source for information seeker and to be a challenging and involving partner for advanced users. BBC News - the database driven site: BBC news is a dynamic or database driven website. Static or non dynamic page is one that always remains the same and cannot be changed unless new page is uploaded, whereas dynamic page does the opposite that changes every time and is connected to the database. Thus here the information provided in the webpage changes automatically as the information changes i9n the database that it is connected with, without human intervention. This is very useful for BBC news as if it has to manually update the every minutes update it would take a load of people working for hours. This webpage connected to database allows every minute updates in news to be updated in their online portal also automatically as they update their database. So here the server automatically builds the page. Link between Database narratives in the site: The BBC news website has been widely appreciated by the customers for it’s very widely placed narratives and graphics on its webpage. The narratives are the description of things that is expressed in an ordered manner through a database. Creating a narrative work in news media could be understood as ‘the construction of an interface to a database .The user of the narrative is traversing a database, following links between its records as established by the database’s creator. Using this logic, an interactive narrative can be understood ‘as the sum of multiple trajectories through a database. Thus in news media, the database supports a variety of cultural forms that range from direct translation (i.e. a database remains a database) to a form whose logic is the opposite of the logic of the material form itself - narrative. More precisely, a database can support narrative, but there is nothing in the logic of the form itself that would foster the generation of narrative. In the computer age, the database becomes the centre of the creative process. ‘The new media object consists of one or more interfaces to a database of multimedia material Structure and navigation system of BBC News: The organization of the website is basically divided into geographical, topical, and task oriented, with a structure that is of top to down approach. On the analysis feature offered are choices between graphic and low graphic version, faster down load time, with an option for viewers to watch the video clips of world news. The visual though is not up to TV standard, but the audio is of excellent quality. The writings in the site are very clear and easy to navigate. As of navigation it provides two tools as global navigation and local navigation. The global navigator is positioned at the top of page of the main menu that uses 8 tab styles and has navigation links and hyper links. The local navigation is located at the left side of web page with 23 hypertext links. The site has an appreciable marketing technology with products and services including embedded email links, mobile alerts, news feed. The website also gives a faster download option through BBC news, the news in 2 minutes and news service. The website gives viewer option to listen, watch, choose real news and watch news analysis. They also provide subcategories of audio, video news, world service, radio and video. Suitability of graphics: The graphics generally is well appreciated by the user in BBC site. The site gives option between graphic and low graphic version for the viewer to choose of his taste. But the division of international – BBC news 24, BBC world, and BBC world brandings are conspicuous. Another feature is that the segregation of the sites is to its favor as it could be seen that sports is a separate section on left than the grouped under the news. It has a very prominent RSS feed tab with left hand navigation on the main homepage. It is a clear graphical presentation. But one drawback is that the famous blog option doesn’t has a specific navigation link and doesn’t have a news blog output that returns as error. Another feature is that the BBC doesn’t allow its viewers to directly comment on its news. Again it doesn’t have a vote on the front page and doesn’t have a help link available for the blog. Thus the user of a narrative is traversing a database, following links between its records as established by the database’s creator. An interactive narrative can be understood as the sum of multiple trajectories through a database. Recommendations: Though the BBC News is acknowledged to be the best site available to get up to date information’s about various events, still it has room for innovation and betterment. Till date it has been referred to by many persons who want to form a strong impression about any news. The website should be still faster in breaking the news first and should offer a detail analysis of the news for the viewers tuning in. More easier navigation tool should be given The website should appear less crowded. In conclusion it could be said that BBC News is a best and most viewed portal and this report would give a first hand report about its web service. References: 1. The BBC news, http://news.bbc.co.uk, accessed on 2008. 2. BBC website: About the BBC - Purpose and values. Retrieved on 2006-07-06. 3. BBC News Online (31 May 2007). BBC Salford move gets green light. Retrieved on 2007-05-31 4. Woolley, B. (1992) Virtual worlds: A journey in hype and hyperreality. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. 5. 24/7 TV news websites: Part 3 – BBC, Posted by Martin Belam on January 10, 2008, http://www.currybet.net/ Read More