The Website
                                                  Rebekah Shultz Colby

Every day we use the web looking at websites that are trying to sell, inform, or persuade or, often, a mixture of all three. However, what makes a website effective or persuasive? What makes one easier to use and navigate than another? What makes one easier to read and another grab your attention more?

In this assignment, you will design a website. You can either use the topic you have been working on all quarter or an entirely new topic. You can pick a new audience or keep an old audience you either directed your editorial or letter to the editor to. Either way, your website should achieve a specific purpose and be targeted to a specific audience. Your website should inform your audience about your topic and, in some way, persuade them to change their minds and/or do something.

Like the other assignments, your website should be well researched and supported. However, because of the hypertextual, linking nature of the web and the limited amount of scrolling most computer users usually do per page, you will have to use space differently than you would in print. In addition, you will use graphics, pictures, and other strategies to grab your audiences attention, inform them of your issue, and persuade them to change their minds and/or spring into action. Like the other assignments, I will expect a works cited page in MLA style, although it does not necessarily have to appear as a formal part of your website.

Because you want to convey the most amount of information possible in a persuasive way within a website, keeping your audience and purpose in mind while you compose becomes especially important. In other words, how can you persuade your audience specifically of your position i.e. to change their minds, to try something new, to take action, etc? So, while you compose your website, keeping these questions in mind will be helpful:

1) What is the purpose of your website? What specifically do you want to persuade your audience of? Why?
2) Who is the audience for this website?
3) How can you use visuals to make your points both clearer and stronger for your audience? How can you best utilize your web space to inform and persuade your audience?
4) Thinking of the rhetorical features of effective websites we discussed in class, what are 3 or 4 specific rhetorical strategies you want to use to reach this audience? Why do you think these strategies will be effective?

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