After visiting several online news websites the following is my findings regarding the different layouts of this websites.
Although all the websites do have a drop down menu, this menus come in different styles, In the mail and guardian, http://www.mg.co.za I found that they have a wide category of drop down menus as well there lead story is usually printed in red, the website itself has a lot of visuals, and there is abundant use of colour, there is an investigative page as well, that offers readers more details about some of the investigative stories they been working on. There page layout is filled with adverts from various companies. Overall the page is easy on the eye and attracts the reader’s immediate attention as well as its motto is captivating as it sells to the reader.
At http://www.sabc.co.za/news, here I found blue to be the dominant colour, although red and black were also used frequently, the focus was more on south African oriented stories, here there was very little advertisement, although the websites had links to its TV as well as radio stations, the layout in general was well presented.
http://www.timeslive.co.za is artistically presented, with lots of advertisement, it offers the readers an opportunity to subscribe to the newspaper, allows for readers to becomes fans on facebook has an editor’s choice space , column for most popular stories for the day, there are plenty of photos and even more stories, as well as videos , has cartoons and links to its other news network, the site also gives more information about the team that works here, its partner sites, print services among other services that it offers .
“We almost never make it up, promise”, this is http://www.dailymaverick.co.za motto. This site in my opinion is rather dull, very little colour is used, except for its photos; this site is more of a black and white affair. There is very little advertisement, and just like with most sites the top stories of the day get the most attention. On the other hand the page layout id different whereby they place one story after another and one gets to see the contributors and read more about them.
http://ewn.co.za I felt the font used was very small, there were very few photos to accompany the stories covered, very little information is given meaning that the reader has to click on the stories to read more, there is a multi media gallery which is impressive.
http://www.iol.co.za/, orange is a the dominant colour, the front page contains only headlines to the most breaking stories, one had to click on the different links to read further , the page has a list of the top stories, there is an editor’s choice column and there is a little tagline with the companies details.
http://www.citizen.co.za/citizen/content/en/citizen/home, red is the dominant colour used, the font used is quite big and easy on the eye, there are plenty of photos used and there are some stories in Afrikaans, something I found different from the other blogs that I visited.
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