Sunday, January 28, 2007

Blog 2

Understanding a content fully

In order to understand cultural context to a full extent, one should acknowledge who, what, when, where, and why. However, with shopping sites, you do not need to acknowledge all of these in order to understand the content fully. It is necessary to acknowledge ‘who’ the shopping site is intended for. The Arden B shopping site is intended for young and middle-aged women. Customers’ trust plays a major role in how successful retailers become. Without these customers trust, their retail would not be very profitable and within time would come to a halt. The customers must be able to feel safe, that all the credit information will be kept confidential. In addition, they trust that their purchased items will come in a timely manner. Retailing through the internet allows retailer to reach a wide range of people all around the world. ‘What’ the site is will also be important to understand for it is a shopping site for people who want to shop around for clothes and accessories. It would be a useless site to go to if one is looking for a search engine to search for information. What the site’s purpose is holds very important value to the reader or audience. Sites such as MySpace, Google, Webmail, and Arden B all have different intentions and are all have very different layouts. MySpace is for journal logs and social clicks, Google is famous for their search engine, Webmail are used as a quick way to send and receive emails, and Arden B is used to shop. What they can provide ranges widely from things such as books, CD, clothes, cell phones, and anything else you can think of. You can basically buy anything online! ‘Where’ can be an important factor if you are searching Arden B store locations. As you can see on the bottom of the Arden B homepage, there is a link which you can click on to find all store location. ‘When’ and ‘why’ is not an important factor for the Arden B site.
As you can see understanding a website to the fullest can be very beneficial. When shopping online, it is important to stay away from retailing stores with bad reputation. It is important to understand how to order the color and size you want, it is important to understand how the purchasing process works, it is important to understand how the billing process works, it is important to understand how the shipping process works, and if shipments are late it is important to understand how to track your order. By understanding all of these processes, shopping online should be fairly easy.

Blog 1

Clothes are everyday essential. Most of us go shopping at least once ever couple of months. But if you are a girl like me, then you would go shopping at least once every two weeks. When we think about it going shopping, we usually think about the Mall, Walmart, Target, or whatever ‘rocks’ your style. How many of us however ever shops online. Recently, I have been shopping online a lot the past couple of weeks. I find it very easy and a lot less time consuming especially when you don’t have the time to go out and shop. Maybe it’s just because I am addicted to shopping. One of my favorite shopping sites is Arden B (click here to access). As you open this site up you see that the focal point is the picture that is locate right in the center of the page. This is the focal point because as you can see the picture is large with a beautiful stylish model in it. Your eyes are drawn toward her bright blue blouse, which is the webs’ designer intentions sense it’s a page advertising clothes. Not only is the picture large but it is also located right in the center of the page, making even more captivating to the eyes. What makes the picture even more appealing and eye-catching to the eye is the neural beige background color use on their homepage. The white colored font creates an illusion as though it was standing out from the background for the reader, making certain links easier to find—such as the link to tops, or bottoms, or dresses.
This website is a shopping site which represents our fast pace world where shopping is now becoming available online just away from a click of a finger. The convention of shopping at department stores is now moving along to the convention of shopping online. But there are differences that lie between the two. Shopping at department requires a lot more energy and a lot of wandering and walking, whereas shopping online requires one to only just sit and shop therefore not taking much energy at all. Although both have check-outs, their check-out process differs greatly. In department stores, you get to take the purchased clothes home immediately, whereas online you have to wait about a week to receive the purchased clothes. Another difference is that in department stores you can try on the clothes in fitting rooms, whereas online you can only see the clothes on models and won’t really know how well it would fit you until it arrives after it has already been purchased. In addition to differences, similarities also arise. In department stores, there are sections for men, women, shoes, accessories, etc. Online, you will also see similar sections which are represented by the tabs which can be seen on top of the page on Arden B’s homepage. So which method do people prefer shopping by? Hmmm, I guess that depends on how much time you have to shop around. I know time is very important for me.