Textual Analysis – Bullet For My Valentine Website

The Website I chose to analyse was the Bullet For My Valentine as we are planning to do a song by them for our music video and thought it was important to look at their style and see what elements from it we can use in our own website page.

http://www.bulletformyvalentine.com/uk

When you reach the home page of this site it is immediately made clear that this is a Bullet For My Valentine website as their name is in bold at the top of the page in their signature style/font. Directly underneath this in a smaller font is the name of their most recent album (Fever) and the background for all the pages on the website is actually the album cover of Fever.


However and extra feature that this website has is the ability for the view to change the theme and background of the website by selecting a different skin from the drop down menu in the top left. The different skins available are the other albums from Bullet For My Valentine along with a couple of variations of the same skin like different colours. Although this is not a defining feature of the website, it does make it unique and also involves the user more by allowing them to change to the skin to their preferred one.

On the homepage there are a list of links on the top left of the page which navigate you to different areas of the website. These links are actually repeated again at the bottom of the page to allow the user to navigate away from the homepage (or back to) without scrolling all the way back up the page. Also these links are not bold or in a large font but they are still easily noticeable, they don’t draw attention from the key items on the page but at the same time are easy to find. It is important that when designing our own website that the page links can be found and navigated around easily.

The homepage also has modulus containing partial content from the other pages such as the latest news that only displays the three most recent news articles, however if you go to the actual news page it has all of the articles. The website also has a log in and community feature so that users can sign in and make posts or comment on others posts within the website. One the homepage, a recent activity module shows the three most recent posts.



Other page that can be accessed from the homepage is that of the band’s biography and also band photo’s. These are important for the promotion of the band and for the views of the website, the fans. It also allows users to comment on each photo, sharing their opinion with other peers. I think for our website it is important to include a band photo’s page show we can showcase the look of our band and to help appeal to the target audience.

Another feature on the website which is repeated on nearly every page is a list of upcoming tour dates. This is important for users, as they will want to know when and where they can go see the band. Even though for our website the tour dates will be “fake” I think it is still important to include them as they are a convention of band websites and help to make it look more professional.

Other part of the website that is key is the access to the band’s created media, either by the embedded video on the homepage or the integrated mp3 player. As well as these there is a link to a “media” page where a selection of music videos and other footage of the band can be viewed. For our website I believe it is important to have the embedded video as one of the most stand out modules on the homepage as it will be showcasing our final music video.

The homepage also has adverts and links for the band’s album as well as other merchandise. This is a less important feature to include in our own website however I think including it will add to the overall presentation of the website and thus make it look more professional.

Overall this I think this website is good because it is laid out equally, with easy accessibility to other pages and easy viewing of the band’s photos or videos, as well as a lot of interactivity available from the user such as logging in and post comments on photos, videos, topic threads and news. As well as this users can actually sign in with their Facebook or Twitter accounts and like or follow the band on these sites.