MYTHSFORKIDS.COM GEORGIA ZIKA. Web Thesis Report Major Project - MEDS1147. MA Web Design and Content Planning. University of Greenwich

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1 MYTHSFORKIDS.COM GEORGIA ZIKA Web Thesis Report 2018 Major Project - MEDS1147 MA Web Design and Content Planning University of Greenwich

2 Contents Contents... 2 Introduction... 5 Twitter Description...5 Summary...5 Concept... 6 Motivation...6 Elevator Pitch...6 Problem...6 Value Proposition...7 Unique Selling Point...7 Manifesto...7 Cultural Context... 7 Greek Mythology...7 Greek Mythology Today...8 Archaeological Sites...8 Business Context... 9 Popularity...9 Competitors...10 SWOT Analysis...12 Target audience Users...12 User Personas...13 Sitemap Content

3 Text...15 Images...16 Illustrations...16 Tone of Voice...16 Accessibility Front-end Development CSS Strategy...17 Use of JavaScript...17 SVGs...17 Choice of CMS Domain names Hosting platforms Delight research Mood board...19 Colour palette...20 Typography...21 Logo...23 Illustrations...24 Layout...24 Schedule Prototype Content collection WordPress development Illustrations and Content Illustrations...30 Plugins

4 Launch Site performance & optimization Site analysis Accessibility...35 Marketing and experience...36 Google Analytics Social media...38 Audience, Geography and Technology...39 Final changes Future plans Learning outcomes Bibliography Online tools

5 Introduction Twitter Description A website for children to learn about the Greek gods and goddesses from ancient Greece and explore their places nowadays. (121 characters) Summary The main goal of my project is to engage children to learn about this great part of Greek history named as Greek mythology with a further goal to make users get interested in Greek mythology as so to travel and explore Greece. In order to achieve this, the content of the site is adjusted on children s interests. Simple text and illustrated images are my basic principles. Besides the educational part, the site provides information about archaeological sites that are related to the relative article. Users are able to discover the present places where the relative myth took place. In this way, children have a complete image linking the past with the present. 5

6 Concept Motivation Greek mythology is a very familiar topic for me as I have origins from Cyprus and Greece. I have been interested in it since my young age when I first started learning Greek mythology in Primary School. I am a person who is being attracted by whatever has to do with fantasy from movies to books and I can say that ancient Greeks were creative minds. Greek mythology was something that I found very interesting because Greek myths are short fictional stories with vivid lifelike narrations. I love the fact that there is a big number of gods and goddesses with specific occupation and power. For instance, Athena is the goddess of wisdom and Poseidon the god of the sea. Moreover, as I have already mentioned in the twitter description above, my site will provide information about relative archaeological places in present places. Greece is my second home and I have been lucky to explore a big part of the mainland including visiting many museums and archaeological places. I would like to urge people to visit this beautiful country in order to learn about Greek culture and history. Elevator Pitch The aim of my site is to engage children to learn about Greek mythology in a playful and attractive way. In order to achieve this, the site will be developed by a simple and clear content in combination with illustrated images. Except the educational part, the site will provide information about archaeological places that will be related to the article. Users will be able to discover the places where the stories of the myths took place and explore how they look today. Problem After a quick research on similar content sites, I found out that most of them are not so welldesigned, in result to be difficult to navigate through them. For instance, in most cases, the context is provided in long lists or the images are few or minimal. The same problem exists for sites that are assumed to be kid-friendly, but they are even worse. Moreover, I discovered that there are not any websites that link the past with the present something that I want to display in my project. In summary, the main problem is that most of these sites are not user-friendly and none of them give information about the present archaeological places. 6

7 Value Proposition The site will be an educational-based site which will provide information about Greek mythology, such as a description of gods and goddesses and myths of heroes, legends and other mythical creatures. The site will be kids-friendly designed with simple language code and playful illustrations. The distinctive feature of the site will be the useful information given for archaeological sites all over Greece so that children will have a complete image of ancient Greece. > Simple code language > Illustrations in order to be a kid-friendly website > Information about today s archaeological sites in Greece Unique Selling Point > The site will provide simple and clear content > The site will consist of illustrated images > The site will be designed for children > Past and present will be linked Manifesto The main goal of my project is to engage children to learn about this great part of Greek history named as Greek Mythology with a further goal to make users get to be interested in travelling and exploring places in Greece linked to these great myths of the past. In order to achieve this, the content of the site will be adjusted on children s interests. Simple text and illustrated images will be my basic principles. Finally, the website will inform users about archaeological places in Greece, something that does not exist in other sites. Cultural Context Greek Mythology Greek mythology was a part of the religion in ancient Greece filled with gods, heroes, monsters, and creatures deriving from an unknown world. The word myth comes from the Greek word mythos (< μύθος) which means a tale, a speech, something new and created. Ancient Greeks used to invent myths to explain any natural event that they could not understand (Greek Myths & Greek Mythology, 2010). 7

8 For the same reason, people in ancient Greece created the Olympian gods. Twelve gods with human characteristics who lived on the top of the highest mountain in Greece, Olympus, each of one entitled with a unique power (Pallardy, 2017). However, the council of the twelve Olympians differs depending on who tells the story. For instance, nobody knows for sure if the twelfth god is Hades or Hephaestus. Also, Hestia, goddess of home and family, used to be one of them but she changed seats with Dionysus, god of wine because she got tired of the constant fighting of the other gods. In conclusion, the Olympian gods are, actually, fourteen: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Hermes, Artemis, Apollo, Demeter, Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hestia, Hephaestus, Hades (Greek Gods & Goddesses, 2010). Greek Mythology Today Greek mythology is all over around us from companies names and planets to city names and medical terms. The famous sportswear company Nike (= goddess of victory) or the high-selling e-commerce site Amazon (amazons = a tribe of warrior women) are two significant examples (Staff, 2013). Moreover, names from Greek mythology can be found in medicine, like aphrodisiacs which comes from Aphrodite, goddess of love (Pontikis, 1999). Furthermore, Greek myths caught the interest of many film producers in Hollywood because of their rich imagination and creativity in fictional stories. In result, nowadays there are a lot of movies based on Greek mythology. Some remarkable movies are: Clash of Titans (2010), Immortals (2011), Hercules (2014), Troy (2004), Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2010), Hercules (1997) (Karas & Megas, 2017) (Maidy, 2014). Archaeological Sites Greece is a country with a long history which left a rich heritage behind. Ancient temples, theatres, and stadiums can be discovered all over the country where people are given the opportunity to learn about Greek history (Discover Greece, 2014). In addition to the previous, ancient Greeks used to build temples, structures for religious purposes where people went there to praise a deity. Each temple was dedicated to a different god. For example, Parthenon, the most significant and popular temple nowadays, was dedicated to Athena, the goddess of the city (Beard, 2010). Other considerable sites are the following: Olympia, Mycenae, Delphi, Knossos (Discover Greece, 2014). 8

9 Business Context Popularity My first step was to search some keywords in Google Trends in order to find out how popular are these kinds of sites. Here are my results: Figure 1: Google Trends Comparison of search terms in 2017 The above graph shows data for three different search terms: Greek mythology, Greek myths and Greek mythology for kids in the last twelve months of The key phrase Greek mythology which is represented by the blue line has been searched much more often in contrast to the other two. Greek mythology for kids is a search term that interests my project, but it is in low level in the chart. Figure 2: Google Trends Comparison of search terms between

10 In the second chart, there is a comparison between Greek gods and Greek mythology from 2009 to Both search terms reach a peak in April 2010 and combining with the research from the Cultural Context above, the peak was reached in the month when Clash of the Titans was released and two months after Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Box Office Mojo, n.d.). In conclusion, it would be helpful for the site to emerge and be popular if there were remarkable recommendations of famous movies that are based on Greek mythology. Competitors Next step was to search for cognate sites to find their strengths and limitations so that creating a better aspect on what my priorities will be for my project. Greek Mythology Figure 3: Greekmythology.com > Strengths: rich content, information for most of the characters who appear in Greek mythology > Limitations: long lists in all pages, not user-friendly design, lack of hierarchy 10

11 Greek Gods & Goddesses Figure 4: Greekgodsandgoddesses.net > Strengths: easy navigation, appropriate colour scheme, and strong contrast > Limitations: lack of pictures Greek Myths for Kids Figure 5: Greekmyths4kids.com > Strengths: online games for children > Limitations: not attractive for children, lack of images or illustrations, strict structure, and design In conclusion, the main problem of the cognate websites is about design. Overall, the content is usually strong but there is no creativity in terms of design. Moreover, none of the sites that I visited links to archaeological sites which is something that might be an advantage for my project. 11

12 SWOT Analysis Strengths > Simple design > Clear content > Illustrated images > Kid-friendly > Educational website > Present places linked to myths and gods Weaknesses > New website, not popular yet > Greek mythology for kids is not trendy in Google Trends Opportunities > Learn about Greek mythology and Greek history in general > Visit and explore Greece Threats > Children will not be interested in Greek mythology Target audience Users As I have already mentioned above in the Twitter description, my site will target children. In detail, the target audience will cover a range of 9-13 years old. My first thought was to address children between 6-15 years old. However, this would not work properly for my site because of the big difference in learning development between a 6-year-old child who is now starting to learn how to read and a 15-year-old child who is able to read more advanced texts. Due to this, the target audience will range between 9 and 13-year-old children. Also, teachers will find the website useful for their educational purposes. 12

13 What is more, although the site will target on pupils, whoever is interested in Greek mythology can visit the site in order to find useful information for personal use. User Personas Helen Figure 6: User Personas Helen This week, Helen learnt about the life of ancient Greeks in her History class. Her homework is to choose one Olympian god or goddess and write an essay of 200 words about it. Liam Figure 7: User Personas - Liam Liam, after watching both movies of Percy Jackson, got interested in the Greek mythology and he now wants to learn more about it. 13

14 Jennifer Figure 8: User Personas - Jennifer Jennifer got a book as a birthday present which is about mythical heroes and fictional creatures. She was always interested in reading fantasy books and now she wants to find more information about anything mythical. Sitemap Figure 9: First sitemap 14

15 Figure 10: Final Sitemap Sitemap as it is designed on Figure 9 was the first idea of how the website would be demonstrated. In the navigation menu, there would be six pages: Home, Gods & Goddesses, Legends & Heroes, Myths, Quiz, Archaeological Sites. However, the sitemap on Figure 10 is the final sitemap for Myths for Kids consisting of five main pages that appear on the navigation bar menu (Home, Olympian gods, Myths, Quiz, and Archaeological sites), three secondary pages that appear on the footer menu (Contact Us, Sitemap, and Credits) and the 404-error page. Content The content of the website is filled with text, images and illustrations. Text The text content will be provided from books, e-books and websites with authentic content. However, the final texts will have some alterations so that the syntax and vocabulary of language will be appropriate for children, because my aim is to provide a simple and clear way of reading for them. 15

16 Images Images are intended to cover the Archaeological Sites page. Firstly, I will try to find free images, otherwise, I will ask for permits and copyrights. Illustrations Illustrations cover a big part of the website as they are one of the most important aspects of my main aim. In contrast to text and images, the illustrations will be designed by me in SVG form. Tone of Voice > Informal > Playful > Friendly > Informative > Educational Accessibility > Responsive design > Clear page structure > Clear page design and layout > Clear page navigation > Internal links > Alt tags > Sitemap In terms of web accessibility, every site should follow some standards as well as my site. First of all, responsive design is a fundamental aspect nowadays. The site will be developed as mobile-first design so people will be able to view the website from all kind of devices irrespective of width size. Secondly, page structure will be clear so that users will have an easy navigation through the site. In order to achieve this, design and layout should be clear as well without too many and unnecessary elements. Moreover, there will be internal links through all pages so that users will keep navigating and exploring the site. Another important aspect of accessibility is that all images will have an alt tag. Lastly, the site will provide a sitemap, not only for better organization but also for better crawling of the site by spiders. 16

17 Front-end Development > HTML5 > CSS > JavaScript > SVGs CSS Strategy My CSS strategy will be based on two main methodologies, BEM and Atomic Design. Organizing your CSS styles is very important, especially when the code comes to larger and more complex projects. This affects not only how long will the code be but, also, how fast the site will load. In order to have a well-structured CSS code, I will follow the BEM strategy which is a CSS class naming methodology. Moreover, except for the BEM strategy, I want my project to be structured and designed under the principles of Atomic Design. My aim is to read and understand how the Atomic Design works and then adapt its principles to my project. Use of JavaScript Anything that is more interactive and dynamic is more interesting than something static, especially when it comes to children. We all know that children adore games and challenges, they love anything that they can interact with. Because of that, I would like to add at least one quiz where users will have the opportunity to answer questions about Greek mythology. In this way, they will challenge themselves to find the correct answer by looking for it on the site. Due to this, users will gain knowledge about Greek Mythology in a quicker and more playful way. Another quiz that I would like to include to my website is a personality quiz where users will have the opportunity to find out which Greek god they are after answering some questions about their personality. However, quizzes are not a core requirement but a supportive feature that I think will give a boost to my site and make the users be interested in learning Greek mythology in an effortless way. SVGs My illustrations will be exported as SVGs and then I will use them in my code as inline SVGs <svg>. This will allow more predictable results and control than using <img>. Before I input the SVGs into the code, I have to optimize them by using the online SVG optimizer tool by 17

18 Peter Collingridge. Moreover, my SVGs should be accessible and responsive. For the terms of accessibility, I will read Léonie s Watson tips. Choice of CMS For my project, I chose to work with a Content Management System. This is because I would like to work with something that I didn t have the chance to learn so far. Thus, this will enrich my knowledge, my skills and my development field in general. The CMS that I will work with is WordPress. I chose WordPress for the following reasons: > WordPress is the most popular CMS so far and this leads to more job opportunities > Since it is the most popular, the support through the web is bigger and more detailed > WordPress is an open source with no cost > My website is based on providing a good quality and strong content for children, so I look for a simple-structured CMS which will let me focus more on creating the content and input this content in an easy manner Domain names In order to find the best domain name for my website, I first had some ideas and then I checked their availability through domainr.com. Here is my list: > learngreekmyths.com > grmythology.com > mythologynow.com > mythologygr.com > Greekmythologykids.com > grmyths.com > Greekmythskids.com My final decision was Greekmythskids.com because it includes both of my major targets, Greek mythology, and kids. However, after the presentation of Firmness and with the help of my tutors and my classmates, I concluded to mythsforkids.com. 18

19 Hosting platforms On the way to find the best hosting platform, I was looking for two main things, cheap platforms, and platforms which include SSL certificate. After making my research on different hosting platforms to see what the offers are, I chose that I will go with the 1&1 hosting platform. Figure 11: Hosting platforms comparison Delight research Mood board Before any design project, I always do my research where I try to find anything relevant to my current project. In this case, I searched for images relevant to Greek mythology, the Olympian gods, and anything that has to do with the mythical world of ancient Greece. My next step was the creation of a mood board. The mood board would transform all my research into a better and more organized visual and aesthetic look. In this way, it would provide me with a first design guideline and give me some first design ideas, as a mood board is like a reflection of a project. On this mood board, I added all the images that I had collected from the web. Then, I created a colour palette from the colours of the images. The colour palette gave me the possibility to choose nice and appropriate colour combinations for my project. 19

20 Colour palette Figure 12: Mood board After extracting some colours from the mood board, I created some colour palettes based on the mood board s colours. However, I did not want to restrict myself only on these palettes. So, in order to widen my options, I used an online tool which auto-generates colours schemes: coolors.co. I tried to find schemes which were consisted of colours similar to those that I had on the mood board. Figure 13: Colour palette (Moodboard) 20

21 Typography Figure 14: Colour palettes (coolors.co) Typography plays an important role in the overall look of a web design project. It transforms a text into a mood. It is a significant part of the context development because web design is 95% typography according to Oliver Reichenstein (Reichenstein, 2006). With my young audience in mind, I had to find a typeface that will suit best on the whole project theme. To reach the best results, I first navigated through other popular sites which target to the same audience with mine. The examples of the sites are in the list below: 21

22 Figure 15: starfall.com Figure 16: kids.nationalgeographic.com Figure 17: nasa.gov/kidsclub/index.html 22

23 I reached the conclusion that most of them use typefaces with a round shape and above all with no serifs. In all of my projects, I choose to work with Google fonts. Google fonts have some strong advantages in web design in contrast to other platforms. They are free to use, no licenses are required and most importantly google fonts are displayed in all different operating systems and mobile devices thanks to Google s fast Content Delivery Network (CDN) (Alberon, 2015). Logo Figure 18: Typefaces collection A logo is the identity of a company which plays a significant role in the communication structure since it acts as a bridge between the public and a company. A successful logo should be part of people s mind (Adîr, et al., 2012). For the design of my project s logo, I used the typefaces and the colour schemes that I had gathered so far. I wanted it to be a playful logo with round shapes as the audience in my project are mainly children. I, also, wanted to include a pattern or a symbol which would remind ancient Greece. Here are the first samples of my logo: Figure 19: Logos 23

24 Illustrations A big and important part of my design work was to create a series of illustrations which will represent the Olympian gods. I would need fourteen different illustrated designs. The first thing I had in mind was that the illustrations should follow the same design pattern. Secondly, my illustrations would be designed in a simple and round form. Sketches were my first step in the creation of the illustrations. Next, with the help of the software Adobe Illustrator, I designed the first illustration. Creating one of the main illustrations would give me the possibility to visualize the whole design theme from a better and clearer sight. Figure 20: Sketch (Aphrodite) Figure 10: First illustration (Aphrodite) Figure 21: First illustration (Aphrodite) Layout Last part of my design process was to put everything together. So, I came up with two different layouts. However, regarding the typefaces, I had to rethink my choices because the website might be translated into the Greek language. Thus, it would be best recommended to find a typeface which would include both Latin and Greek letters. Hopefully, Comfortaa solved my problem because it is not only offered free by Google fonts but also meets my design requirements. After the presentation for the Delight part of Major Project, my professors made some recommendations on these layouts. One of them was that all the headings should use the same typeface and then make changes on the colour and size of the fonts in order to have a correct, visual hierarchy. Thus, it was something that I had to consider on my next steps during the implementation. 24

25 Figure 20: Layout 01 Figure 21: Layout 02 25

26 Schedule After spending months developing the theoretical part of how my website will look and work, it was time for the real developing part. To begin with, I created a time-schedule in order to be better organized of how I will go through my project during the next five months. I divided the project into the most important parts as it is shown below: Figure 22: Schedule Prototype Before starting any development move, I created a prototype to help me have a better visual sight of how the site would look. By creating a prototype, I would be provided with some advantages such as testing theories and ideas regarding my layout so far and most importantly receiving feedback. The prototype was developed with the use of HTML5 and CSS so that to be even closer to the real data and be available online on my coursework site. I also changed my logo design, as you can see below after I concluded to the final domain name of the site: mythsforkids.com. 26

27 Figure 23: Prototype - Aphrodite page 27

28 Figure 24: Prototype - Oracle Dodona page 28

29 Content collection The content was meant to be the fundamental part of my website. The first thing to do was to find and collect content in order to see how large would the amount of information be and how I could organize it better into the site. My main sources for the page of Olympian gods were an online website, and also an e-book, Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E.M.Berens. My aim was to have two different sources so that I could double check the information. After collecting some first amount of content, I had to adapt it in a simpler and more attractive way of writing in order to gain children s interest. Some tips that I followed were to make my texts more alive by adding adjectives, using dialogues where that was possible and try to avoid passive voice (admin, 2008). WordPress development My website would be developed by WordPress as I have mentioned in the section of Firmness. The CMS of WordPress was familiar to me. However, creating my own theme was something brand new and a key challenge for me. I had to start from scratch. Fortunately, I found some strong resources which helped me go through this challenge. One of the resources was the book WordPress 3.7 Complete, especially Chapter 7 where it describes how to develop your own theme. In order to have a better comprehensive approach of how WordPress works, I consulted the Support page of wherever I faced a problem, as well as the I need to mention at this point that during the whole process of development I was working locally through MAMP. As soon as I figured out how to link my major WordPress files together (functions.php, index.php, header.php, footer.php, and style.css), I started working on my site s interface. During this process, I improved my first interface design by changing some colours and fonts and by adding a Greek pattern to look more attractive. I used the content that I had already collected before to help me with the structure of the main pages look. However, I had not found all my content so I had to return to this point again. 29

30 Illustrations and Content Although in my time schedule the collection of content and the design of illustrations had to be done by the end of May, I found it more effective to split this part into two different time periods. Thus, after doing some progress with the development part of the project, I returned to finish the design of all my illustrations and the collection of content which included writing texts and searching for relating images. The whole process was done by the middle of August. Illustrations The main idea behind the illustrations was to have a repetition such as the round shapes. All fourteen Olympian gods and goddesses are presented by standing behind a cloud and a background whose colour is different to each god. Moreover, each of them is accompanied by its own symbol. For instance, Hermes symbol is a caduceus while Artemis is a bow and arrows. Figure 25: Illustration of Hermes Figure 26: Illustration of Artemis All my illustrations had been exported as SVGs which afterward were optimized to reduce space. For the optimization, I used the online tool by Peter Collingridge, Then, I added the following code snippet into the functions.php file in order to allow the import of SVG files in WordPress: 30

31 function add_file_types_to_uploads($file_types){ $new_filetypes = array(); $new_filetypes['svg'] = 'image/svg+xml'; $file_types = array_merge($file_types, $new_filetypes ); return $file_types; } add_action('upload_mimes', 'add_file_types_to_uploads'); Lastly, I downloaded the SVG Support plugin because without it, WordPress did not display the image of the SVG in the media library. Plugins During my development process, I used some plugins in order to make my website more user-friendly and more attractive. For my project I used the following plugins: > WP Forms > Yost SEO > MonsterInsights > Envira Gallery > WP Quiz > SVG Support > WP Super Cache Launch Based on my original schedule, the launch of my site should be in the last week of August. Thus, I had to have everything ready and check that everything worked. Before going public, I made some changes to improve both the graphic and developing part of the site. For instance, I redesigned the logo by adding a Greek temple to make it 31

32 more attractive to my audience. I, also, added a new section in the homepage where I created a list of movies which are based on Greek mythology. Lastly, I created an illustration for the 404.php page. Figure 27: Illustration for 404.php Site performance & optimization The first thing I did when I published the website was to test its performance and optimization because I was working locally and I could not know the real statics of speed. I used the PageSpeed Insights online tool, offered by Google, to check my site s performance. About the optimization on mobile devices, mythsforkids.com hit a medium grade of 64/100 while on desktop the grade was higher, 86/100. The optimizations that had already presented were the avoidance of landing page to redirect, the enabling of compression, the minifying of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, and the prioritization of visible content. The suggestions for both screens are seen in the screenshots below: 32

33 Figure 28: PageSpeed Insights - Optimization Suggestions However, PageSpeed Insights could not calculate the page speed. Thus, I used another online tool, the Pingdom. The statics were very satisfying as the site hit the high grade of 91/100 for its performance. Figure 29: Pingdom - Summary of performance test Figure 30: Pingdom - Performance insights 33

34 Site analysis After checking my site s speed performance, I had to check the other elements of the site such as accessibility, SEO, content, and design. For this step, I used two different online tools, the Site Analyzer and the Nibbler. On Site Analyzer, the general analysis score was 72/100 which is a medium score. The major problem was the content whose score was only 44.4/100. The warnings of Site Analyzer were that the ratio text was very low and the keywords density was not enough. Design and performance hit a satisfying grade while SEO and accessibility hit a valid score of 78/100 as the date of the screenshot are shown below: Figure 31: Site Analyzer - Page analysis score In Nibbler, the general score was 7.2/10 which is pretty close to the Site Analyzer s score as the subsections, too. 34

35 Figure 32: Nibbler - Analysis report Accessibility Headings were displayed in all pages, but some pages did not define them correctly. Eighteen (18) internal links had no text to describe their destination which is something that does not benefit screen readers and search engine spiders. However, the web addresses were well written, all the pages had defined titles appropriately as well as they all included a meta description, and all the images had an alt text. Moreover, the site appeared as a responsive site for viewing on all width screens. Figure 33: Nibbler - Accessibility score 35

36 Figure 34: Nibbler - Meta tags Figure 35: Nibbler - Responsive design Marketing and experience The site hit a low score of 4.0/10 in Marketing mainly because of the lack of social media links and social interest. Another factor of hitting such a low score was the fact that the domain name was registered in the past six months (28 April 2018) which is a short time period resulting the website to appear lower in search engine results. 36

37 The amount of content scored a high grade of 8.0/10 with an average number of words per page (348/1000). Lastly, regarding the server behaviour, the grade was 10/10 because of the 404 page and the compression of its files. Figure 37: Nibbler - Experience score Figure 36: Nibbler - Marketing score Figure 38: Nibbler - Amount of content 37

38 Google Analytics After making the site public, besides the general analysis, I had to also check the traffic of it. Therefore, I added my website to Google Analytics as soon as I launched it. However, after a few days, the traffic was minimal. My site was running without any social media profile which was the major factor of not engaging traffic. Thus, the solution was to create social media accounts. Social media During the last months of research, I did not add to my project any social media. The main justification was that my audience, children between nine and thirteen years old, do not have social accounts. Thus, I concluded that social media are not extremely necessary to my site. However, the first results of Google Analytics made me change my mind because of the minimal results. Social media are one of the major sources of earning traffic to the website. After all, I thought that through my site s social profiles, I could, also, reach new groups of users such as teachers, parents, illustrators and people in general who are interested in Greek mythology regardless the age. I created two accounts on two different social platforms, Facebook and Instagram, and linked them with my website. Based on Google Analytics, the traffic increased after engaging my first followers on both Facebook and Instagram. Moreover, although Instagram gained more followers than Facebook, most users who visited the site came through Facebook. Eventually, social media were a great power of reaching new users. Figure 39: Instagram account Figure 40: Facebook account 38

39 Audience, Geography and Technology Most of the users that visited mythsforkids.com were reaching the homepage of the site. Figure 14 below shows data about the pageviews from 29/08 until 17/09. Homepage reached the highest percentage (40.65%) with 60 pageviews. The principal reason for this was the fact that most users visited the site directly. Figure 41: Google Analytics Pageviews About Geography, the data shows that mythsforkids.com was visited by eight different countries in a worldwide ratio until 17/09. At the top of the list was Cyprus, my country, and in the second place the United States with 33.33% and 31.25%, accordingly. Figure 42: Google Analytics Geography 39

40 Information regarding the kind of browsers used to open the site is provided in the last two figures (Figure 16 & 17). As it is seen, mythsforkids.com has been visited by different browsers on all kind of devices (mobile, tablet and desktop). Figure 43: Google Analytics - Operating System Figure 44: Google Analytics Devices In general, based on all the above data, my website achieved to reach users worldwide in such a short period of time of twenty days. Now, my opinion is that I need to focus more on keeping updated both the social media profiles in order to increase more the traffic. 40

41 Final changes After finishing with my final presentation on October 2018, I received some great feedback from all of my tutors. Also, they advised me with some suggestions in order to create an even better website. Some of their suggestions were that the blue colour that I chose for my main navigation bar menu was too strict for my audience and my content in general, and it reminded more of a social media platform such as Facebook rather than a kid-friendly website. The logo would look better if I removed the orange colour from the word for and, also, if I made the height of letters at the same height of the columns of the temple. Moreover, in terms of reliability and trust, all of the social media profiles should have the same profile picture. That was said because I had a different profile picture on Facebook from Instagram. On the following figures appear the final changes of mythsforkids.com. Figure 45: First logo Figure 46: Final logo 41

42 Figure 47: First design of Navigation menu Figure 48: Final design of Navigation menu Figure 49: Facebook account Figure 50: Instagram account 42

43 Future plans After finishing my Master, I would like to expand the publicity of Myths for Kids. My first plan is to translate the site into Greek so that it could reach children whose Greek is their first language and may not speak English. In this way, I could have the chance to promote the site to the Primary schools of Cyprus and Greece. That would be an ideal future plan for my website as the course of Greek Mythology is first taught to the pupils at the age of nine years old. Furthermore, I would like to widen my followers list on social media by being more active. A thought that I have to bring more followers is to publish a new myth once a week on a specific day. This will keep the interest of my audience active. Lastly, it would be ideal to find a collaborator who is an expert in Greek Mythology or in Greek history, in general, to work together. In this way, my content would be even more valid. Learning outcomes At the beginning of my Master, I had a clear plan in my mind. I wanted to exceed my potential. In order to achieve this, I set some goals and challenges to myself and to my design and developing skills which would help me reach the desired outcome. This, also, happened when I started working on my Major Project. First, I learnt how to deal with Adobe Illustrator and how to create simple illustrations. I have never worked on Illustrator before which means that this year was my first year working on this software. From the beginning, when I said that my website would include illustrations designed by me, I knew it would be a challenge to myself. However, I did that because I wanted to learn more about Adobe Illustrator. Eventually, I had an even more desirable outcome when I finished with all the illustrations and, especially, after receiving such a great feedback from all of my tutors. In addition to learning Adobe Illustrator and creating illustrations, I also had the chance to learn how to manage with SVGs. That was because all my illustrations were imported as SVGs into the site. Thus, I learnt how to create, modify, optimize, and import SVGs into WordPress. The biggest outcome that I achieved was to learn to work in WordPress. As I set a goal to learn Illustrator so I did here to learn WordPress. During the implementation phase, I faced a lot of problems but I managed to understand and, eventually, create my own theme. 43

44 Learning how to develop my own WordPress theme from scratch was something that provided me with more knowledge and developing skills in result to feel more confident for my future in this technological industry. Lastly, I learnt the strong importance of social media for engaging audience. Creating profiles on Instagram and Facebook was not something that I planned. However, when I saw the big difference in the results on Google Analytics, I understood why people rely most of their advertising campaigns on social media. Since then, I started being more active on my social media accounts. In general, Myths for Kids was an undoubtedly rewarding experience. It raised both my design and developing skills and it provided me with a strong portfolio. I have overreached my goals and expectations and now I feel succeeded for myself. 44

45 Bibliography admin, Tips for Writing for Children. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 5 September 2018]. Adîr, G., Adîr, V. & Pascu, N. E., Logo design and the corporate identity. Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences, 51(0), pp Alberon, Advantages of Google Fonts. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 20 April 2018]. Beard, M., The Parthenon. London: Profile. Berens, E. M., Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome. s.l.:xist Publishing. Box Office Mojo, n.d. Clash of the Titans (2010). [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. Box Office Mojo, n.d. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. Discover Greece, Leading Archaeological Sites in Greece. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. Greek Gods & Goddesses, The Twelve Olympians. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 18 December 2017]. Greek Myths & Greek Mythology, Greek Mythology. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 18 December 2017]. Greek Myths & Greek Mythology, Greek Myths What are they?. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 18 December 2017]. 45

46 Karas, M. & Megas, C., Greek Mythology Movies. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. Król, K. & Silver, A. H., WordPress 3.7 Complete. 3rd ed. Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd. Maidy, A., Top 10 Movies Based On Greco-Roman Mythology. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. Pallardy, R., Greek Gods and Goddesses. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 18 December 2017]. Pontikis, N., Medical Terms from Mythology. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. Reichenstein, O., Web Design is 95% Typography. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 20 April 2018]. Staff, E., Companies Inspired by Greek Mythology and Their Logos. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 19 December 2017]. 46

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