Weaving a Virtual Web:
Practical Approaches to New Information Technologies

edited by
Sibylle Gruber
Urbana, IL: NCTE
1999
 

J.D. Applen's handout
 

Choose a web page and evaluate it in terms of what makes it an effective body of information. You might ask yourself, "Would I return to this webpage? If so, why would I?" If you do not want to bring yourself into it, then define the audience of the page. You may describe the content of the website, but what we are most interested in is how the content is expressed. Use Yeo’s criteria and the criteria of any of the other theorists in our reader. You do not have to describe everything in terms of Yeo’s analysis, just what stands out. If you have any additional criteria that you or your classmates have come up with, make sure that you use them too. 

Goals:
    1. As analysts, we will examine the devices a webmaster uses to make a website effective.
    2. As writers, we will produce a well-developed essay that analyzes and explicates a website’s rhetorical elements.
Method:
    1. What does the webmaster achieve? What does she make the audience feel? 
    2. Using the following questions, devise a theory that explains how the web designer accomplishes this task: 
    • How does she present the content of her webpage? 
    • If she were to change some of the stylistic strategies or techniques that she employs, yet retain the same essential content, in what ways would the site’s effectiveness change?
3. In your essay, focus on the relationship between the site’s effect and the audience. Back up each of your statements with an example from the webpage, and explain how the example illustrates your theory. 
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