In the third peer review, I will discuss the marketability of Kiranpreet Gill’s website https://kiranpreetgill.com/blog/. Kiranpreet’s website is composed of information related to the rapper Kendrick Lamar. Influenced by her two brothers, Kiranpreet has been listening to rap music since childhood and was immediately drawn to Lamar’s music upon first hearing it. She wanted to make him the theme of her website content. Kiranpreet’s website has a strong artistic style, and its vibrant colors immediately caught my eye. Hollingsworth (2021) mentioned in their article the importance of web traffic for a website. Search engines can significantly boost brand visibility, and understanding the high-frequency search terms used by the audience in this type of content is very helpful. The title of the website is Kendrick Lamar’s name, which greatly increases the chances of users who also like this rapper discovering the website through search engines. On the “Influence” page of the website, Kiranpreet focuses on introducing Lamar’s unique style and his personal clothing brand pgLang. This is very user-friendly for the audience—Lamar’s fans, especially those who are just getting to know Lamar. Through this website, they can effectively learn more about Lamar. The website showcases several representative products, including the pgLang Light Phone. Kiranpreet also added a promotional video from YouTube and evaluations from Business Insider on this page. This allows users to understand pgLang’s products from different formats and perspectives. Moreover, such official resources also help to build the credibility of the website among the target audience. Kiranpreet also included a link to pgLang’s official website on this page, allowing users to quickly purchase or further explore the products after learning about them. As Hollingsworth (2021) mentioned, the importance of establishing the credibility and authority of the website is well demonstrated here.
Kiranpreet also did her own social media promotion on the website. In the “upcoming announcements” section, Kiranpreet encourages users to follow her on Twitter to get more related information. The poster states “content added every week” and “free charge to stay updated on your favorite artist”. Consistently updated content is very attractive to interested groups. At the same time, this effectively increases user engagement and conversion rates (Hollingsworth, 2021). Users can not only obtain information on the website but also effectively receive content on other platforms. Platforms like Twitter are very mainstream, with a large user base, and promoting websites on such platforms can have a good effect. Furthermore, Twitter has functions such as comments, likes, etc., which greatly enhance interactivity. All these lay a good foundation for brand promotion.
I believe that optimizing the independence of content and the user experience mentioned by Hollingsworth (2021) can further enhance the website. In the middle of the homepage, there is an animated CD. Initially, I thought it was a decorative animation until I tried clicking on it and found it linked to another page. Because there is not much introduction to this animation on the homepage, while other elements such as “lyric analysis,” “Influence,” “Process Posts,” etc., all have titles. This can easily mislead users into thinking it’s just decoration. Adding a small title to indicate the content therein can better guide users to browse the website. I also noticed that the lyric sharing on the website is presented in the form of images. I think it would be better to present it in text form to maintain consistency across the page. Because the width of the borders of images and videos is different, it may cause some parts of the overall interface to look empty while others appear crowded. Presenting in text form also allows users to better copy the lyrics for searches, etc.
The articles of each type on Kiranpreet’s website are placed on the same page without independent links. This means users cannot view one article individually. For example, when a user wants to view the latest article in the Process post, they need to click into the Process post page and scroll all the way down to see the latest content. Additionally, each issue of content on one page is not prominently distinguished. Although the titles of each issue have color differences, the font sizes are almost the same. It is difficult to quickly locate where the beginning and end of an article are when browsing quickly.
Not every page on the website has a navigation bar, which means users cannot quickly navigate to the page they want. Some pages have a homepage button and links to other pages. Some do not have these options and can only go back to the previous page by clicking the browser’s “go back” button. Some pages open directly in a new tab. If the navigation mode of all pages could be unified, it would greatly improve the user experience and efficiency.
Kiranpreet’s website provides her audience with comprehensive content related to Kendrick Lamar, from music style to personal brand to lyric analysis. As a fan of Lamar, after browsing through this website, they can obtain a lot of high-quality information. I look forward to Kiranpreet expanding more interesting content on her website!
References
Hollingsworth, S. (2018, April 13). 12 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO. Search Engine Journal; Search Engine Journal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close