Website analysis, Asos.com

The website which I chose to analyse is the fashion website www.asos.com. This website has different sections aimed at men and women, and each category the target audience can look at men’s clothing, women’s clothing, beauty, designer productions, children’s clothes and Asos outlet. The audience can therefore find what section they’d like to find their products in, and easily use the hyperlinks to find the products. Before, you start to look at the products there is a non-linear way to read the website, with the encouragement to read other parts of the website, including ‘Look of the Week’ and ‘Asos Today’ which shows you the latest celebrity fashion. Despite the fact that a linear process if used when looking for clothes online, (where the consumer has to click through pages of clothes) it could be argued that more power lies with the audience. The audience have the power to decide what product they want to search for, the colour, the size and the price, eliminating the futile products which otherwise would have been shown. As Lister says’ there is no attempt here to prescribe how or where such data flows’ (68), the audience have control over what products they look at, rather than being sent messages which they have no choice over. However, this argument is criticised because this website is made for commercial gain, and throughout the website the audience are encouraged to buy other items when they have chosen one by being shown products that will ‘complete the look’ and ‘what other customers brought’. So, the messages which are being given to the audience on this website are not completely avoidable, but because of the non-linear style of the website, the audience can have an element of control.

The celebrity culture is heavily focused on in this website. From the journal ‘Websites as visual and multimodal cultural expressions: opportunities and issues of online hybrid media research’ Paulwels described that websites ‘choice of colours, typography, music, shapes may convey a symbolic meaning’ (8) You can apply this theory to the ASOS website, because of the focus on celebrity fashion. The serif fonts which are used throughout the website are fashionable and ‘pretty’ which gives connotations to fashion, and the music which is played on the background of the catwalks are the latest hits, which gives connotations to celebrity. Pauwels also states that ‘as most websites have a multi-layered structure, one should also investigate whether the order, flow and hierarchal elements as they are organized reflect another type of hierarchy’ (8). The hierarchy that is shown on this website is the power that celebrities have in our culture. The audience are encouraged to buy the latest products which are replicas of what celebrities are wearing, by the website telling you ‘as seen on Nicole Richie etc’. This online culture however is only advancement of the celebrity obsessed culture which we see in real life and websites only allow us to feel as Senft would argue ‘closer to them’. (Lister, 2003:185). However, this could be criticised because this website does allow some freedom on opinions, compared to what a celebrity magazine does. In one of the links members of the public are able to comment on what they think of the outfit, which does show an element of Turkle’s idea of freedom and the idea of ‘produsage’ and the power the audience have in the ‘open architecture’ on the internet because of their ability to share their thoughts and opinions, but still these opinions are heavily moderated and only a select few are published which does criticise this.

The appeal for the user of the website is the fashion that it contains, and the reassurance that these clothes are fashionable because each item is compared to something that a celebrity would wear. This website represents the hierarchy of celebrities compared to other people in society; the celebrity is focused on in the western world. Therefore, this website isn’t a new type of online community; it is just advancement to some of the shared values which are already apparent in our everyday life. It shows the idea of socio-determinism and how the internet is shaped to our needs from the norms already apparent in society. The celebrity culture focus is an advancement of the focus which is shown in tabloids and magazines which focus on their lives and fashion. The appeal of this website is not only the focus on celebrity life, but the convenience of shopping online. The user can choose their product, see it displayed on a catwalk and decide on their delivery options all from their own home. The convenience of this online shop (especially this shop only being available online) means that the audience are being persuaded to do more of their offline jobs and hobbies, online.


Pauwels’ Journalhttp://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/27/4/604

Website usedwww.asos.com