References

Wysoki, A.F. (2004). The Multiple Media of Texts: How onscreen and paper texts incorporate words, images and other media. In C. Bazerman and P. Prior, (Eds.) What writing does and how it does: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practises, pp. 123-163, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Webby

The website that I am going to do my analysis on is http://www.nba.com/. This website caters to NBA fans and as there are 30 teams in 30 different area and sometimes have exhibition games with European teams. This website is very popular amongst NBA fans. This site however contains minimum advertising. The only adverts that are commonly shown are adverts about using the 'T-Mobile' network to view highlights or get updates on games. The only real piece of advertising would be the 'Gatorade' commercials and things presented by 'Starbucks'.

Upon entering the site you see a little advertising but mainly you see all the headlines and current events in the NBA in a quick slideshow. On the left hand side of the website you can see three tabs in a vertical formation with different designs and fonts on each tab. These tabs lead to the three main events currently going on in the NBA. 1. NBA home, 2. NBA Finals, 3. NBA draft. Once having clicked on one of these tabs you are taken to a different layer of the website. On these different layers there are many features but are all similarly structured. They each have a mini slideshow of the features available, such as: Highlights, inside stories, Breaking news, etc. These features sometimes relate only to one particular layer on the website. The Colours of the tabs differ, and they also differ in design. The home page tab has the NBA logo, where as the finals tab as the word 'FINALS' in a stylistic font with the Championship Cup and the Draft tab has the logo plus the word 'DRAFT' in a bold font.

As I mentioned before about the slideshow, each tab has there own slideshow of headlines which makes the website very informative to the NBA fans. This is very good as it adds to the purpose of this website, which is to give information to the fans that miss events on Sportscenter or ESPN, events such as games, trades and other important transactions within the NBA.

"A video sequence can thus be smoothly integrated into a scene, making it look as though parts of the screen ''come alive''."(Wysoki, 2004, page 136), this is the idea of what the slideshow follows. By having a slideshow for the headlines it makes the website seem more vibrant and eye-catching and less boring compared to other informative websites e.g. BBC.com. As basketball is a non-stop action sport, the feeling we get from viewing the slideshow and other types of media on the website sort of re-create the feeling of watching a game which is what makes the site so attractive to its fans.

Once you scroll down the page you get a horizontal scroll of videos to watch. These videos range from Top 10 plays to Highlights of a particular game. To the right of this scroll we see a list of the main articles which contain headlines in the NBA. Further down we see what the Stars of the NBA are doing and further down the NBA fans get to voice their opinions about what’s happening in the NBA by doing polls which differ every week. Finally at the bottom of the page, on the left hand side we see a photo gallery and in the middle we see a 'Follow the NBA' toolbar. On this toolbar, fans can join NBA groups on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. So as you can see from my description, NBA.com is a website that caters to their fan's needs and wants to inform them about what's happening in the NBA in other ways such as through social networks.

The layout of nba.com is much more different than that of wnba.com. The first thing that draws your attention on this website is the WNBA's logo with is "Expect Great" where as in the NBA website the first thing that draws your attention is the score board for the finals game. The layouts of these two sites do have some similarities such as the the video reel and the headline and current events list on the side but other than those two similarities the WNBA site is much more basic than that of the NBA website. As the WNBA is less popular than the NBA there is no advertising on their website, none at all. As these websites are sports websites, the opinions and commentating in the highlights are completely non-bias, which cater to every fans and doesn't offend them. Good points are even made about loosing teams to avoid offence.

In conclusion, looking back on the NBA website and reading through Wycoki, 2004, I was able to developed a more in depth understanding as to why I find NBA.com so attractive and what makes it so appealing. I also understood a deeper meaning to the features used on the website to enhance the basketball experience and how it caters to every fans needs as I know many people that are into the NBA, who support different teams and never get offended by the content displayed on the website. The website is a very technically based website but it is also extremely user friendly and at the same time, very attractive with impressive graphics and antinational features. The website engineers for nba.com have done a terrific job.