Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Research R
eport
-‐
Make Up Me
–
www.makeupme.info
1.
140 characters:
Make Up Me is a makeup and
hair
social site
, raising support & awareness for
women with cancer
through beauty and fundraising
2.
Elevator Pitch:
M
ake Up Me is a
social site
and hub
for those that love hair and makeup
,
it
focuses
on how to achieve great beauty looks and also raises
awareness
and donations
for
two
charitable hair
and make up sites, “Look Good Feel Better” and “
The Little Princess Trus
t
”
.
It
not only facilitates the
needs of women that want
to
learn tips and techniques for themselves
it
encompasses
those with
specific needs and
raises awareness that
for some people hair and make up is a need not a
want.
Make Up Me encourages support th
rough
social sharing
,
fundraising and donation for women with
cancer
and medical hair loss
.
The sites content and advice are produced with well being in mind in
hope to attain support from influential women wanting to give back to a good cause.
USP
:
I w
ill differ from other
sites,
as as well as being a
site
-‐
promoting
product, I will educate and
encourage my clients to give back to a charitable cause. I will allow clients to be aware
that make up
and hair isn’t always
a luxury
but in some cases
is a need
that can really help someone less fortunate.
My site will be different as it will be interactive with its content enabling people to post personal
images and content, socialize and share information publicly or privately. All which will be relevant to
a ca
use, which relates to their interest of hair and make up.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
3.
Make Up Me
The Make Up Me website
will be aimed at
la
dies that love hair and make up. They will be able to
share
look
s, tips, techniques and product recommendations
.
They will also be able t
o organize
campaigns and fundraising teams and events to raise money through hair and make up for two
reputable charities “Look good Feel Better” and “
The Little Princess Trust
”.
The site will be for volunteers, patients, ladies that love hair and make
up, sponsors, brands and
charities.
V
olunteers
will be able to join teams or events
wanting to raise money and awareness for
cancer patients
and patients
seeking more information about what events/fundraising is going on in
their area
can find this through
the site
.
Patients will be able to find their local “
Look Good Feel
Better” classes and
use social networking to socialize with others in similar situations to themselves.
A charitable idea for a Hair and makeup site is ap
pealing
as many people want to gi
ve back to a good
cause but don’t always know how to or where to start. Many women just see hair and make up as
vanity and aren’t aware that some people really need it for courage, for confidence and to help them
feel better whilst going through medical pr
oblems.
Many
patients going through cancer
aren’t
aware
of
the
support around them
, the charities that can help them, or events that are near them
.
I want to use my site to bring valuable and informative content together and use beauty, hair and
makeup as
therapy. For many people going through medical illness day in and day out their illness is a
prominent part of their day, to have a place where they can come
to source
information, raise money
and support others and gain tips and techniques for themselves
I believe really can help with therapy.
The site can also unite people and create more awareness and support via social networks letting
people know that these charities exist and they can help change someone’s life with a little bit of
make up.
I will st
art my website by starting a simple
social network
and
use digital marketing to
gain
followers.
One idea
for my site
is to have p
atients as guest bloggers and have personal product
reviews, which
will attract clients seeking information about products to t
he site.
My Social Network
s
main purp
ose will
be:
–
1.
To create groups and teams
2.
To fundraise
3.
To enable people to find events going on in local areas
4.
To share looks and techniques
5.
To share product reviews (affiliate marketing)
6.
To share news
7.
To create awaren
ess for Look Good Feel Better (LGFB) and My New Hair (MNH)
8.
Gamification
9.
Competitions
10.
Sponsorship
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
4.
The Beauty Industry
Women and men have been using cosmetics for centuries to enhance their appearance. Every day
they are used to cover imperfections, enha
nce or change features, to make people look and feel
better, for vanity, media and medical reasons. There will always be a demand for cosmetics as
alth
ough they are not a necessity, personal appearance dictates a lot in today’s society
.
When it comes to
a woman's beauty, it seems that the classic English rose is now not quite as natural
as she once was. With ever more women turning to their trusty make
-‐
up bag, latest research from
MINTEL
finds the value of the British cosmetics market blossoming. While co
nsumers have no control
over what happens with national economics, they can control their personal appearance and it seems
that today, this is exactly what they are doing.
According to
Mintel
’s
research in
to colour cosmetics,
make
-‐
up displays just how rece
ssion
-‐
proof the sector is, with UK retail sales of colour cosmetics
putti
ng on a good performance in 2012
, with mark
et value up by over 8% from 2011
(when the
market was valued at £1.28 billion) shoring up sales of a stunning £1.38 billion.
Not everyone k
nows how to use cosmetics or has the confidence to use them. Some people will just
use them for special occasions or events. They will
always
be used in media, advertising and
promotion.
Department stores, You
Tube and print magazines
all assist and aid wom
en on how to do
their make up and hair
and therefore are my competitors
.
Hairdressers
and
beauty salons
offer
services that the client can go to for their hair and make up. There are
mobile beauticians
and
make
up artists
that also offer services of a simi
lar nature for both real people and businesses.
Magazines
and
print
media also discuss reviews of products but are generally done by professionals.
Adding value to my
blog posts,
social media and reviews
from real people, real patients I believe
will
encou
rage m
ore repeat traffic to my website
as the user can be more interactive
and can relate to
the content
. The client can also see details of what the business has been up to via the news
feed/blog and can interact and comment. Product recommendations and r
eviews can later on be
used for affiliate marketing.
Competition
There are few
businesses that are the same as mine
and therefore competition varies from the
different aspects of the Make Up Me site.
The industry for hair and make up in the UK is crowed
and competitive, populated with thousand of
independent beauty salons and mobile therapists the number of designer salons is increasing, with
large companies such as Elizabeth Arden and Clarins providing treatments in a variety of venues,
including departm
ent stores. Additionally, hundreds of leisure service providers, such as hotels, spars
and health clubs offer beauty services to their customers. It is impossible to quantify this
competition
.
This competition will not effect my business directly as I beli
eve later down the line I can
create some strong partnerships with existing business to aid those clients who may not be able to go
out to these companies, may want in home help or to simply learn how to do things for themselves.
As the
competition grows s
o does the ease of access to information
online
, which I feel, will be of
benefit to me when it comes to sharing content, information and campaigns
.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Some of my competitors include:
Temptalia
–
A make up review site that gives tips and advice
Make up alley
–
A m
ake up review site
Divine Caroline
–
A lifestyle website
Max factor
–
A make up compan
y
Trevor Sorbie
–
A
hairdressing academy
Just Giving
–
A fundraising and giving site
Women’s
magazines
such as LOOK,
Hair Magazines, InStyle
and many others.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Temptalia Stats
–
source Alexa.com
Temptalia is a global reference and
resource for beauty enthusias
ts featuring
in
-‐
depth reviews, photos, swatches,
tutorials, and beauty tips, along with
popular features
through its blog posts. It
earns revenue through Affiliate
marketing with its use of banners and
advertisements on all of its pages.
Although the conte
nt is of value it is
slightly
diluted somewhat by the
numerous plugins and advertisements
throughout its pages. It
’
s informative
content
and
useful if you are someone
wanting to know what’s in trend or how to
achieve a look.
This is something I would
like
to achieve through the development
of my site.
Temptalia is competition to me
as it does two things I will be doing on the
Make Up Me site the reviews and the tips
and techniques, it has a heavy amount of
content and is updated regularly.
Temptalia
has
a
Global Ranking of
17516 and has a ranking of
7350 in
the United States alone.
The sites main visitors tend to be
men and women predominantly
browsing from College.
45.2 %
of visitors come from
United States with a minimal
amount
of
4%
from the UK.
The
site has a good bounce rate with at least 50% of their visitors continuing further into the site,
with an average of 3 page views per person. The site keeps clients engaged and looking further into
content with an average of 3 minutes per visit.
15.10%
of
Temptalias
traffic 2012
-‐
2013 comes from search engines with
the top keywords being
.
I can try to
use
some of the successful keywords
in my blog posts to optimize them for
search.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Make Up Alley Stats
–
source Alexa.com
Make Up Alley is a make up re
view site. It is
a successful site mainly used i
n the United States. It
reviews products by testing and racking
them;
it allows you to
interact
by
start
ing
an
account
and
add
ing
your o
w
n views and reviews of products.
Make Up Alley is a competitor to me as
it does its
reviews very successfully keeping user engagement and return traffic. It also uses social media very
well
with 62000 likes on Facebook!
Although
Make up Alley
are a competitor I can still learn a lot
from the way they keep their site active
an
d their users engaged
.
Make Up Alley has a Global Ranking
of 8700 and a ranking of
3603 in the United States alone.
The sites
main visitors
tend to be men and women
48.7%
of them from the United
States
areas, predominantly browsing from school.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
The site has
a good bounce rate with at least
50% of their visitors continuing further into
the site,
with an average of 5
page views per person. The site keeps clients
engaged,
as the average amount
of time spent on the site is 4: 03 minutes per visit.
With a page load time of
0.846 Seconds, 80% of
sites are slower.
The sites content proves to be engaging and of interest to its users. I would benefit from studying
their site to work out their successes
.
32.3%
of Make Up Alleys traffic 2012
-‐
2013 comes f
rom search engines with the top keywords being:
The sites top keywords prove it is a successful site as its top keywords are its actual name not just
products people are looking for.
This would be something I would like to work towards as an
indicatio
n that my site has become successful.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
D
ivinecaroline.com
–
source Alexa.com
Div
in
e Caroline is a
very mixed
site that
promotes
and discusses
various
different things which include
both
fashion and make up trends and keeps
it’s users up to date o
n what’s hot and
what’s not
in various sectors
such as
Life and entertainment
. This site also
receives revenue from affiliate
marketing and advertisement.
This site
also has a section promoting Charity
minded cosmetic products. I can use this
page to my ad
vantage to learn more
about products that have a percentage
of their profit go to charity.
Divine Caroline ha
s a Global
Ranking of 22, 979 and a ranking
of
8378 in the United States
alone.
The sites main visitors tend to be
females attending college or
g
raduates browsing from school.
52.1%
browsing from USA and
just
4%
from the UK.
The site has a higher bounce rate and a
lower average of
fewer than
2 page
views per person. The site doesn’t seem
to keep clients engaged as much as
some of the previous s
ites looked at, as
the average amount of time spent on
the site is just under 2 minutes,
I believe
this is due to the variety of subjects
promoted on the site.
The site has a
page load time of
5.811 Seconds
-‐
v
ery
slow
95% of sites are faster.
However t
he site currently has
3,253
linking in to the site.
25.20%
of
Divine Carolines
traffic 2012
-‐
2013 comes from search engines
their keywords being the
company name and odd keywords form different subjects such as “leadership in business”.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Max
-‐
Factor Stat
s
–
source Alexa.com
Max
-‐
factor is a
world
-‐
renowned
brand with a very
focused website. The focus of their site is to promote
and sell their products along with
giving tips and
techniques demonstrating
step
-‐
by
-‐
step
guide to how
to achieve a look. It does
this very successfully
.
Max
-‐
Factor
has a Global Ranking of
897,285
or
124, 631
in the United
Kingdom
alone.
The Max
-‐
Factor site visitors tend to be
predominantly female, college and graduate
le
vel browsing from home of work
40.5%
from the UK.
The
site has a very low bounce rate along with a good
average for page views. The time average time the
user is engaged for is roughly 3 minutes, again a good
average time.
The site has 191 links coming into it
giving it a boost for is high search ranking.
33
.3%
of
Max
-‐
Factors
traffic 2012
-‐
2013 comes from
search engines with the top keywords being:
A Max factor is
a very successful brand therefore their
top keywords are their name as visitors search for
their products. I can use this to my advantage by try
ing
to use some of these keywords within my blog posts to
optimize my blog for SEO.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Trevor Sorbie
–
source Alexa.com
Trevor Sorbie is a celebrity Hairstylist
and big name
and influencer
within
the hairdressing community
in the UK
.
Trevor Sorbie is a
big influencer and
support to the charity My New Hair, a
charity, which
supports women with
medical hair loss.
His part in the
charity is to get salons involved and
letting patients know which salons are
involved in the charity where that can
get complimen
tary hair services. He
also trains hairstylists specifically to
support this cause. The pag
e
s found for
My New Hair appear to be inactive and
have not been updated for a few years
now. There is not a lot of promotion
for this cause.
Trevor Sorbie
has a Gl
obal
Ranking of 1537, 294
and a
ranking
of
56
, 056 in the United
Kingdom alone.
The Trevor Sorbie site visitors
tend to be men and women,
browsing from home of work
100%
from the UK.
The site has a very low bounce rate along with a good average for
page views. The time average time
the
user is engaged for is roughly 2 and a half
minutes.
41.7%
of
Trevor Sorbies
traffic
2012
-‐
2013 comes from search
engines with the top keywords
being:
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Just Giving
–
source Alexa.com
Just giving is a fundr
aising and giving site with 13 million people and counting supporting the causes
they care about. It’s a site, which enables you to sign up and start a campaign to raise money for the
cause you care about. Just giving are a competitor to me as they are hig
hly successful and know in
the giving community and a place most people would go to start their campaigns. Although Just
Giving are a competitor in this sense they are impartial to any particular field of giving where as Make
Up me has a specific direction
and specific clientele. I can learn for just giving and try to implement
some of the things that make them so successful.
Just Giving
has a Global Ranking of
9,967
and a ranking of
340
in the United Kingdom alone.
The
Just Giving
site visitors
are both
male and female of all levels of education.
Just Giving users are 70.9% UK visitor and just 6.9% from the USA
The site has an average bounce rate and an average of nearly 3 pages per person, the site tends to
keep its users engaged for up to an averag
e of 3 minutes.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Only 9.70
%
of
Just
Giving’s
traffic 2012
-‐
2013 comes
from search engines with
the top keywords being:
You can tell by the sites top Keywords that the site has attained a successful following
by its main
keywords being the site name.
I can implement the keyword “online charity donations” into my site
as a keyword as this is also relevant to my site.
Print and Editorial
Print magazines are competitors to my site as they also produce interesting and informative content
to their us
ers. The content I compete with in this form of competition would be current trends in
fashion make up and hair, tips and techniques and celebrity endorsement. These magazines are
purchased
with the intent to keep up to date and learn more
therefore
their
content is very relevant
and engaging for the user wanting to learn more about trends within the beauty industry.
These magazines have 100s and 1000s of subscribers and return clients who purchase them.
Although these magazines are competitors with their
similar content later on I may be able to create
some partnerships to gain support for our charitable website.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Business
The business of my website will
be to
support and raise donations for two charitable causes, Look
Good Feel Better and My New Hair
and to provide users with tips and techniques and up to date
relevant information via the Make Up Me blog
.
The interactive and social media element of my site
will
not invo
lve creating a revenue stream, i
t will be a section where clients can interactive wi
th each
other and share reviews on
products and service,
fundraising and get
involved in raising awareness
and supporting campaigns for those who would benefit
.
How will I promote my site?
I will promote my site using my
existing clients
and
existing
social media
networks
I will use
Facebook
Campaigns to get people involved in doing something creative with hair or
make
up to raise money and awareness and direct them to my site to get involved through
the social media section of my site
.
I will also do
some
fundraising
of my own such as “
The Colour Run
” to raise money and
awareness of my site
I will use
SEO
throughout my site
I will contact business’ I know within the hair and make up industry such as
w
ig companies
and
make up brands
and ask for support
I will ask the
local hospitals
and
councils
for advertising space
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Revenue Source
My source of revenue
once I have built traffic on my website will
come from
Affi
liate marketing
,
from
products
recommend or review
ed
within my Blog and from businesses invo
lved within my target
market who also offer affiliate campaigns
.
Affiliate companies
that I can approach include
:
Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future, Click bank, Trade Doubler, Affiliate link, Skim links
Later down the line I may sell
advertising space
for beautician
s
and hair and make up artists to list
themselves.
“
Affiliate marketing
is a type of
performance
-‐
based marketing
in which a business rewards one or
more
affiliates
for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The
industry has four core players: the
merchant
(a
lso known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the
network
(that
contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher
(also known as 'the affiliate'), and
the customer. Affiliate marketing overlaps with other
Internet
marketing
methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular
advertising
methods. Those
methods include
organic
search engine optimization
(SEO), paid
search engine marketing
(PPC
-‐
Pay
Per Click),
e
-‐
mail marketing
,
content marketing
and in
some sense
display advertising
.
”
-‐
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing
Beauty affiliates include:
Sephora:
Seph
ora is a French brand and chain of cosmetics
stores around the world, founded in Paris in
1970. Featuring more than 100 brands, along
with its own private label, Sephora offers beauty
products including makeup, skincare, body,
fragrance, color, and
hair ca
re
.
The body shop:
The Body Shop International PLC, known as The
Body Shop, has 2,400 stores in 61 countries.
Ulta Beauty
Offers products from the most popular
cosmetics, fragrance, skincare,
and hair
care and
appliance items from brands like bareMinerals,
Smashbox, Estee Lauder, Revlon, L'Oreal and
many others.
Perfect Locks
Perfect Locks, LLC is a leading retailer of premium
virgin Indian hair, providing authentic human hair
extensions to loyal customers, fantastic salons, and
the best hair stylists around the world.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Existing
co
mpanies, which use affiliate marketing successfully,
are:
Amazon.com
one of the most successful
and largest Affiliate marketing websites
Groupon
daily deals sit
e one of the most successful
in promoting daily deals via affiliation with
other companies and their products and services
All Kids
Children’s bedroom specialist
, a well designed site an
d business which promotes
outsourced products to achieve the looks on their site
OSOYOU
a successful fashion site promoting up to date trends.
Estimated Traffic and Revenue at Launch
At Launch I will not receive a
ny revenue. I will receive general traffi
c via promotion on social
media,
which currently has a following of 500+ on Facebook,
and 1300+ on twitter. I will receive a higher
flow of traffic once I promote my first
fundraising campaign
T
he Colour
R
un
.
For th
is I will
have a team of 5, I aim for this 5 (and hopefully more) to get 30 sponsors each and to
donate through my site. If
I am
successful
in my predictions
this will mean a
defini
te
stream of
additional traffic
, 5x 30, which would total to around
150 hit
s around this time
.
I will ask my team to
ask their sponsors to promote the site via social media, I hope that at least 1 third of these
secondary
promotions of the site will bring more visits to the site and
generate more traffic
.
I hope to
have
ar
ound 25
0 hits generated around The Colour Run
and additional
hits
through online marketing.
Revenue Stream
My site will
not likely be making revenue
until I receive a larger following and can then start affiliate
marketing. It will however
be receiving funds to
wards Look Good Feel Better
and
The Little Princess
Trust.
Eventually I will be receiving revenue from advertising and Affiliate marketing
,
which could be
anything from 5%
-‐
20% commission from products purchased found through
out
my site.
Determining the
Success of my business
I will determine the success of my business by the amount of increased traffic and revenue stream to
my business. How long people are staying on the site for and the use of the social network and
fundraising facilities.
As my site
is currently a portfolio site and service menu
,
it
has a high bounce
rate
and does not receive too much
repeat traffic. This is something I can judge against when looking
at the success of the new
site for Make Up Me
.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Commodity
The
content o
n the Make U
p Me
site
will be informative and useful in helping with
client needs.
Information about charities
and how you can support them and get involved
Blog posts on how to achieve beauty looks
and reviews on products
How to donate
What’s happening in social me
dia
About Make Up Me
The
benefits to my user will be learning more about
current trends and looks for themselves
as well
as
a charitable cause and how they can help.
The functionality and user experience will be to be able to browse via search box
or nav
igation
.
Read
information
specific to
users
wants and needs
and read up on further informa
tion about the charity
or service
,
clients can also
view the social networks fundraising activity. The site will use relevant
visual hierarchy and a grid s
ystem to ma
ke it
clear,
concise and easy to follow.
The charitable aspect of my business will always be visible as the client will always be able to
see and
access a donate button.
Audience Categories
My audience will mainly be women 16
-‐
45
looking
for how to achieve
a great beauty look
.
Volunteers and fundraisers
Women going through a medical circumstance such as cancer or medical hair loss
Client 1:
Browsers
-‐
wan
t to view the site and
gallery
might need a make up artist
(due to Make Up
Me’s previous business)
or be
a previous Make Up Me client.
This c
lient will w
ant eas
y visual
hierarchy, will be happy to browse and click through the site
and
will like the ability to go back to the
start and
search for information required.
Direct request clients
-‐
want simple and eas
y
navigation;
generally want
to be able to find a
contact
button
to speak to someone about their personal request
or information required
Direct request, open to browse
-‐
client has come to the site for a purpose, finds their purpose but
could be enticed by
further information, offers or attractive content.
Client wants easy visual
hierarchy and navigation.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Summary of Research Findings for Online Giving
In 2011, online giving was up 13% on a year
-‐
over
-‐
year basis when large International Affairs
organisa
tions are removed from the analysis. 54% of the organisations in the analysis experienced
results at or above this growth rate. Large organisations grew by 8.6% and medium organisations
grew 13.1% in 2011. Smaller nonprofits grew 12.8% compared to the same
time period in 2010.
End of Year Online Giving
-‐
The Best time to Campaign?
End
-‐
of
-‐
year giving continues to account for most of all online donations. 34.8% of online giving
happened in October, November, and December of 2011. December represented 20.3% o
f online
giving in 2011 and was up on a year
-‐
over
-‐
year basis.
January had a significant decrease in the percentage of online fundraising occurring during the
month, dropping from 14.6% in 2010 to 5% in 2011
.
Organisations can apply to YouTube's Nonprofit
s program, which lets users click to donate after
watching a video. Movember's own social network MoSpace lets Mo Bros and Sisters donate money,
track money by groups, and share giving with their friends.
An app is in the works too.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Ideas for the appear
ance of the Make Up Me site
My site will have a lot of
content, which
I will try to minimize, keep simple, clear and concise.
I may
use double tab navigation to separate the two types of information,
its relevance and hierarchy. This
type of navigation
interests me
as it’s visual and clear, my clients can choose exactly what they want
to see and what they don’t want to see. Another option I am interested in looking into is the fly out
menu. This would keep the navigation looking clean and simple but when
opened will
give any extra
information needed.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Minesweeping is another type of navigation that I am interested in looking into as it’s attractive and
stimulates the user. As I have a lot of images and photos of my work this is something I feel would
wo
rk well in attracting clients visually to different parts of the site.
A simple search bar to type in
keywords and navigate to
particular pages will be an
additional tool for navigation.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
A gallery will be a key aspect
of my site t
o
display some of
Ma
ke Up Me’s previous
work. It will need to enable
users to see work quickly
and visually without being
too image heavy otherwise
this will cause
the
reader to
loose interest.
Testimonials I
think give the reader trust in
a product and is something I
will co
nsider using on the
about page.
Keeping the
client up to date with whats
new and general news is also
a key element of my site so
they can see whats going on
and where they can join in.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
The Look Good feel
better site demonstrates
some of these
functional
ities such as the
drop down navigation,
gallery via a slide show
and News and updates at
the side of the page.
Look
Good Feel Better site has
a number of keywords I
can also incorporate on
my site, and a number of
aspects such as “sign up
for our newslette
r “
which I can add to the
site at a later date once I
have more activity and
engagement on the site.
It is easy to use and the
information is accessible and informative.
Below on the My New Hair website, they also use a range of tools I can look into ado
pting such as the
simple search, the
large button which takes you to further informat
ion regarding fund raising. Don
ate
online which takes you to a specific page just for donations.
The information on the sidebar easy easy
to use and displayed clearly for
the user to find the next stage in their journey.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Firmness
The technology behind my website will be an effective content management system (CMS), coding in
HTML
for structure
, CSS
for styling
and php
for content and keeping the site up to date and fluid.
I will
use
some J
Query
to give the site more visual
affects
and make it more dynamic. I
will
be
f
ollowing
web standard procedures and
have
correct semantic mark up.
For a CMS system I will consider using:
Wordpress
-‐
Free Php based
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Joomla
-‐
free Ph
p
-‐
based
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Drupal
-‐
Php
-‐
based
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Text Pattern
-‐
Php based
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
For my
Social
Media
site, I will consider using:
Content
Management
System that
allows you to
create a social
network
,
http://www.social
engine.com/
Free open
source social
netwo
rking
engine
http://elgg.org/
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
The structure
of my site will be very visual using lots of images of hair and make up to entice users to
click further into the site so they can learn how to achieve these looks. I will make my mission and my
message quite
clear on my homepage and give step
-‐
by
-‐
step instructions on how to use the site to
your advantage. The homepage of my site will be structured to give some information but not all so
that clients need to click through to continue to find out more. (For examp
le the way a newspaper
only gives you a headline but not the entire story, meaning you have to continue further into the
paper to continue reading the story). Each page of my site will then have a particular purpose
i.e.
, to
create campaigns, social media,
donate, about us etc.
Although I would like the site to have some
influences of editorial fashion and make up like some of my competitor sites I feel the site still needs
to have a more focused structure than many of these sites do. I have made this deci
sion as Make Up
Me although fashion and make up will be promoting a subject of serious nature a
s well as keeping on
trend. Secondly because I feel this will give my pages better SEO capabilities if they are more focused.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Delight
These considerations rela
te to the aesthetic design of the
Make Up Me
site: colour, line, font,
pattern, symbolism, associations etc. My design will be clear and concise, simplistic and relevant to
its content.
Font
.
I would like to use
lightweight
, easy to read typography in a s
ans serif font. I will look at
e
lements from print design such as editorial magazines as inspiration to make my content readable
,
useable, fashionable and
ascetically pleasing.
Colour.
My colors will be light in contrast to the current website
along with
the logo colour pink, I
would also like to inject a brighter colour into the site to keep an uplifted feel and break up the
softness of the lighter colours. As a reflection of an editorial magazine I will use
mainly,
whites, off
whites and greys, instead o
f blacks
-‐
most commonly used for portfolio sites.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
This is a page on the previous Make Up Me site using a sans serif font.
I would still like to use a sans
serif font to keep the typeface casual and light and a stronger sans serif font for the titles.
Fonts I will consider using are
Futura
for titles as it’s a strong
er
sans serif
f
ont, casual but more
dynamic.
For my body text I will look into softer fonts such as
Verdana
,
Helvetica
and
Lucida sans.
The reason Arial, Verdana and other older fonts alwa
ys display well is because they have been
meticulously hinted. Verdana has a reputation for being the most well hinted font of all time.
I feel these two fonts work well
together as a title font and body font as
they are easy to read at a glace and are
com
plimentary. Verdana is one of the
easiest rendered fonts also making it a
good choice for all different types of
media and devices that the site
maybe
viewed o
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Again
two
simple sans serif font easily readable clean, clear and concise this could also be o
f choice
for body text.
Colours
I will use
for my site
will be whites, pink and green
s such
as below
, I feel these are
complimentary and uplifting colours that st
i
ll continue to
reflect the old
Brand of
Make Up Me.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Visual Appearance
Ink is an example of
how I can display my images and also use them as navigation
influenced by
minesweeping as discussed early when looking at Commodity. I like the idea of having different
visuals to create a collage of information just through imagery. I like the effectiven
ess of this front
page, I also like the way it still displays navigation separately on the left hand side if you don’t want to
use the images to direct through the site.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
The Disney online website uses some cool interactive features which are engaging
and generally
quite fun. It uses a similar concept making visual imagery the main attraction to draw you further into
the site. Although targeted at a young audience and is therefore playful and silly the notion behind it
is still the same
-‐
to keep the us
er engaged and attracted visually. The use of hover to get more info
via tool tips are something I can consider and toy with on the Make Up Me site when implementing
my design.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Below
are further examples of other sites displaying their front
-‐
page info
rmation similarly to how I
intend to present Make Up Me
. The Red nose day fundraising example (on the left) allows you to click
through into further pages within the
site, which
is an element I would like to take onto my site. The
Beauty Call example demon
strates how my page can be displayed using Make U
p Me make up and
hair images to create a striking visual.
These billboards demonstrate in a
quirky way the concept of my design
as I feel my images could change and
be quite dynamic and memorable or
they
can be beauty hair and make up
images. The layout and feel appeals
to my visual display of information
connecting the user to the v
isual
information straight away,
make up
-‐
hair
–
cancer research
.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Idea for look and feel of Home Page
Things I will need
to ensure I research
thoroughly
are:
Find out more information on
laws and taxes for
fun
draising and raising funds for charity
Find out more about sponsors and how they can be associated
Look into relevant content for blog and news feeds
keeping in mind
that some readers will be
going through medical circumstances and may need to be warned of products they can and
can’t use.
Look more into what my competition are doing
Look into online payment system
Look into automated email responses
Research
further i
nto
Affiliates with relevant content
Choose an efficient CMS which allows you to build a Social network
Design a wireframe
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Make Up Me analysis Action plan
The Make Up Me site already has some followers but will be changing
to target a different audie
nce and gain more interaction. Once the site
is more active I will be able to determine what changes need to be
made and what works and what does not.
My social media accounts such as Facebook and Linked In both have
accessible data, which will enable me
to track and analyze interactions
and their success
Tweetreach
,
and
Bitly
that will enable me to monitor the success of my tweets and campaigns to try
and drive
traffic to
the site
and encourage engagement
.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
In order to keep track of the data on my website I
will need to use tools such as Google analytics
and
Webmaster tools
and
look at my website demographics, page hits, links into my site and monitor
how my campaigns
are driving traffic to my pages. K
eeping in mind my
mission and objectives,
development strategy, and Web marketing strategy
if I analyze and act on the engagement of my site
this will enable me to work on developing what works and change what doesn’t
.
I
nitially my website will not produce sales or revenue only engagement and donations therefore my
main focus on analysis will be to monitor engagement and community com
munication as well as
donations. T
his
should be put into numbers and projected into the f
uture development of my site.
My plan should include enough detail to track engagement month by month and continue to monitor
plan
-‐
vs.
-‐
actual analysis.
Each month I will need to review the impact,
flaws
and
successe
s, and pending issues and continue to
develop my site following on from this ana
lysis. Going forward my plan
-‐
vs.
-‐
actual analysis is critical
to the eventual results, and I should continue to build and develop the site as part of my
development plan.
As part of my research report I have look
ed into my business model and market and need to continue
to think about strategy and future development.
Plan
1.
Collect data
-‐
I will need to collect data using web analytics tools
2.
Analyze the Data
–
I need to be looking for trends in my Web traffic. The
following questions
can aid as a guide for things to look for:
Do most people visit at specific times?
Which pages are the most popular?
Do visitors browse more than one page before leaving?
What is the average length of time visitor’s stay?
Do visitor
s come from search engines?
What pages are primary exit pages for my site?
Who is linking to me?
3.
Translate Insights
-‐
Once I’ve completed an analysis on my site, I should develop a plan of
action for how to improve the site.
4.
Inspire Readers
-‐
Making ch
anges to the site should be a continual thing, and changes should
always be exciting for the readers.
5.
Collect my Data Again
-‐
Web analytics is an on
-‐
going process. Once a change has been made I
need to start tracking it again and evaluate Web analytics
mo
nth by month
.
6.
Marketing
-‐
After the 1
st
month I should expect to see some interaction via my social media
campaigns creating traffic and click throughs to my site. I should expect to see a few
interactions via users as the community starts to develop and pe
ople start to join and create
campaigns. This will be an ongoing development and a way to judge my analysis and success
rate.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Tools
Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you insight into your website’s traffic and marketing effectiveness through
u
ser session metrics, including boun
ce rate, keyword frequ
ency
etc
,
by generating insightful charts
and reports.
It produces quantitative data on
user behavior
that can be monitored to enable me
to
b
ase business
decisions and predict
future behavior using
historical data and statistical modeling
.
“…analytics tell us what is happening, not why. After detecting data patterns, we might
guess
what’s
going on with reasonable accuracy. But we can’t know for sure unless we conduct qualitative
analysis, such
as actual user testing, where we can ask people why they do what they do.”
Louis Rosenfeld
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
What I need to look for:
Unique Visitors
–
A unique visitor is a host that has made at least one hit on one page of my website
during the time period selec
ted in my report. If a host makes several visits during the time period
defined, it is only counted once. I should
expect my unique visitor count to climb and fall in direct
correlation with my online marketing efforts as well as certain times such as week
ends or holidays
as
this will effect
website traffic in my industry.
Returning Visitors
–
A returning visitor is simply a host that has previously visited the website within
the selected time frame and has come back to any given page on the website. A hi
gh returning visitor
count is a great gauge of how resourceful and authoritative a website is.
Traffic Sources
–
Traffic sources will show me where my
websites
visitors are coming from. These
numbers will be broken down into direct traffic, referring sea
rch engines and referring websites.
These stats for traffic sources will be a direct reflection of my online marketing efforts. If I am
marketing successfully
and
implementing the most cost effective form of marketing, search engine
marketing, then the maj
ority of
traffic should be coming from referring search engines and other
websites as a result of link building efforts.
Bounce Rate
–
The bounce rate stat shows the percentage of visitors that leave the site after viewing
only the page on which they land
. The rate will tell me how often visitors are leaving my website after
viewing only one page.
If my website’s bounce rate is floating above 40
-‐
45%, then
I will need to analyse
deeper. Anything
above this number is starting to get a little too high and mig
ht be proof that
my
website is not
“sticky”
enough to keep visitors on
site.
Average Time on Site
–
T
his is the average amount of time visitors spend on
the
website upon
landing on it.
Top Content Pages
–
Shows
which pages on
the
website get visited the
most. This is one of the most
underrated and underused stats although it provides some of the most pertinent information about
where vis
itors are spending time on the
website.
This data can then be applied to other content pages that may not be receiving t
he attention
I
would
like to see from visitors.
Keywords
–
The keywords data in
the
analytics program displays the keywords and phrases that
visitors are using in the search engines to find and land on
the
website.
The K
eyword data provided by
the
analyti
cs program to find keywords that are driving traffic to
the
website
might include words
I have
not included in
my
search engine marketing campaigns
this will
enable me to add these to the site to better my SEO
.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Webmaster tools
Google Webmaster Too
ls will provide me with a detailed report about my pages visibility on Google.
It will give me Google's view of my site and diagnose problems, it will enable me to see how Google
crawls and indexes my site and show me specific problems there might be acc
essing it.
The tool enables me to view, classify, and download comprehensive data about internal and external
links to my site with new link reporting tools and which search queries drive traffic to the site, and
see exactly how users arrive there.
Webm
aster tools will help me share information about my site and its pages with Sitemaps: so
Google can see which
pages
are the most important and how often they change.
As well as data I also need to look into w
hat is my Return on Investment (ROI)
from my marketing
plan?
To calculate
ROI,
I can
use this simple formula:
ROI =
(Revenue from Marketing Campaign
–
Cost of Marketing Campaign)
Cost of Marketing Campaign
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Other tools available that might be useful include:
Google Website Opt
imizer
Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase
the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer
to test and optimize site content and design, you can
quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI
whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.
MINT
Mint is an extensible, self
-‐
hosted web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity.
Visits, refer
rers, popular pages, and searches can all be taken in at a glance on Mint’s flexible
dashboard.
KISS Insights
KISS Insights is a tool that allows designers to place a small survey bar across the bottom of th
eir
websites. Curious visitors can take a peek and are then presented with a simple survey in which they
can evaluate the experience design of your website.
Quantcast Planner
Quantcast Plann
er lets you search, rank, and sort millions of Web properties in real
-‐
time according to
the criteria that matter to you, including audience age, gender, ethnicity, income, education, and
geographic location as well as constraints such as property size, con
tent category, and ad acceptance.
They claim that once you identify your audience, you can “buy” that audience.
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
Workflow and Conclusion
After taking into consideration my research and findings, tools to aid me with my design and the
planning and impleme
ntation of the Make Up Me site, I started my developments by creating a
“design build time frame”. My design build time frame included:
The initial wire framing of the site
to plan content and placement of information
Research and build of my social netwo
rk
Building a community via my social network and starting personal campaigns to build
engagement and trust
Initial design using just HTML and CSS stylesheets hand coded
Implementation of design into my chosen CMS integrating funding and social plugins
Ma
rketing and digital connectivity between charities, clients, patients and volunteers
Testing and analysis of site
This plan soon
rapidly
diluted!
Due to various unforeseen circumstances my timeframe was halved and my ideas changed.
The initial
plan
at the
start of the course
for my site was to continue the original Make Up Me site
promoting
the business, its services and grow the business by sending out more assistants and
artists to
generate more revenue. The added value to the site was to be
adding the ch
arity and fundraising
ideas in
to my site to enable my clients
and new clientele visiting the site for services to get educated
whilst picking a service to pamper themselves.
The educational aspects were to introduce the
charities to the clients searching f
or services for themselves and notify them that some of the money
for their services would be going to aid theses charities. Clients would also be able to donate and
volunteer towards these charities and join my social site to share knowledge and join grou
ps to start
campaigns and raise money and awareness for the charities.
With the sudden change in my circumstances, I was unable to follow the initial plan through or the
business. This led me to change my plan still staying inline with the original plan
but with more
emphasis on the charities and none on the business. It originally took me some time to understand
what I wanted to achieve with my new con
cept and direction of the project, how I would utilize my
existing knowledge and work within the industr
y and raise awareness?
I originally started the project by trying to build my own social network as a starting point to raise
awareness, allow people to share content, join groups and campaigns and build discussions. This
page would then be integrated into
my site and linked through from content pages such as the blog.
This seemed like a good idea to get people involved engaged and kept up to date with news and
events. I
realis
ed when
conducting more research and
speaking to
people about the project and thi
s
initial strategy
,
that it actually wasn’t something that myself or clients would be interested in doing
and could potentially lead me to an increased amount of bounce rates. There are already numerous
successful social media platforms available, asking m
y clients and users to join another one and fill
out another form with all their contact details and data could be potentially quite damaging.
Social
Web Thesis Project 2013
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Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
sharing has never been easier with the adaptation of numerous platforms enabling us to instantly
share inf
ormative pages, likes and pins. I came to the understanding that I was ultimately trying to re
-‐
invent the wheel
. W
hereas using the
existing
well
-‐
established platforms which people are already
registered to and use frequently to share content
could be more
effective if I could successfully bring
all the information together in one area. Rather than competing with the 100’s of already existing
videos, pins, tutorials and blogs sharing tips, techniques and trends I would enable my site to be able
to share cont
ent and connect with existing content that’s already out there. I choose to do this via my
Care page to try and engage people by letting them see what I’m sharing but also allow the
m
to share
themselves.
I have chosen not to have a sign in or login section
until my brand builds trust and
engagement with its visitors, I believe this will give them more choice as to whether to stay on the
site or not and not be put off by having to fill in personal details, only when they choose to start a
campaign will they
need to fill out their details.
My design style changed. I originally did not have any text navigation and had an image hover
navigation which when hovered the image would enlarge with a line of text to tell you where the
image led to. When tested this did
not work well on some mobiles and confused some users. I then
made the decision to use both text based and image based navigation to enable better usability.
Problems I had within the build of the site
were
the implementation of my HTML and CSS design int
o
Wordpress. This proved (and still proves!) for me to be difficult
and took a lot longer than predicted
in my plan
. I found it very difficult to get my pages to look identical to my original
design
and
understand some of the habits of the CMS,
understand
linking images back to the root of the site
and
the behavior of plugins and widgets in combination with my own design and styling
.
Plugins! I have
used a number of different plugins to enable the funding and campaign build of my site to be active. I
have a
lso used a social boost plugin. These two aspects of my site are fundamentally the key to the
success of my business. The plugins are very useful and I toyed with various different ones but
eventually settled with the ones I choose for the ease of use, pos
itive reviews and their appearance
and the way I could adapt them to make them fit within my site. What I learnt
–
plugins cause
validation errors! My plugins cause invalid mark up and when attempted to change the mark up the
plugins cause errors and do no
t work. I made a choice as to keep the particular ones that I used for
the reasons above that they serve a great deal of purpose to the business of my site. Eventually I may
need to write my own plugins in order for them to validate.
The site build
-‐
the s
ites initial build and production were delayed due to unforeseen circumstances
taking over the initial planned time scale of the project. When the project plan was eventually
concluded and started as mentioned above
,
I changed the direction and though
t
pro
cesses of the
plan to benefit the project long term. Problems revealed during the project were/are understanding
the laws, legal obligations and tax (charity funds are still tax deductable
by UK law
)
liabilities and
accountables when running a “charity” or
“non for
-‐
profit” business. If and how I am allowed to earn
profit using a charity platform? How would earning an income from the site digitally (via affiliate
marketing) and rais
ing funds in the UK and abroad a
ffect tax deduction when I am in a
tax
-‐
free
c
ountry? These are a few
questions that
came about during the build of the project.
Although the site
is ready to take campaigns,
I have decided not to launch the site but keep it as a prototype until I
have a clearer understanding of
how the business can r
un legally
.
Until that time I will continue to
develop the site and get feed back by user testing it and build partnerships that may be interested in
sponsoring or contributing to the site in the future on
c
e development is complete.
Web Thesis Project 2013
-‐
Chivonne Williams Make
Up Me
From doing this project
I have learned a lot about user testing and feed back from the initial starting
of the project as a social site and being aware of different personas.
I have learnt about the
importance of social sharing in today’s society and building trust. If I were t
o start the project again
under different circumstances I would take my initial planned approach and project it out onto social
media first to receive client feedback, I would take more time in understanding the power of php and
how the different features
can make the site more interactive
and successful
. I would do A B testing
to see which pages appeal more and give a more successful interactive rate.
I would learn to build my
own plugins.
The future for my site will be:
T
o make it live
after learning mor
e about legalities
a
nd
direct
clients to it to start their
campaigns.
Find guest bloggers and volunteers willing to share
their knowledge, experiences and
reviews
to keep clients engaged with the sites
content
Once
traffic and engagement rises approach aff
iliates to
start affiliate marketing
Once trust and repeat traffic rises to build in a sign up database for weekly marketing material
via email
Continue to
monitor
and develop the site to make it successful
When
the
site becomes more popular create an app
to make finding campaigns and donating
even easier via your mobile phone.
In conclusion to the Make Up Me project so far I feel I have been successful in my mission to design a
site with a user message and implement pages that once active could build a suc
cessful and viable
business ethic if I continue to analyse and develop the site month by month to make it successful. I
have been unsuccessful in delivering a fully
-‐
fledged site within a scaled timeframe.
I have learnt a
great deal within this project and will continue to learn as it continues to develop.
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