Asian Lite Website
The site that I am going to critique is Asian Lite, a Tabloid targeting Asian community in Britain. Published from Manchester, the magazine is edited by Mr. Anazudheen Aziz. It covers news, fashion, sports, business and entertainment.
First impression
The first impression of the website is the colour red is used at various places in bold coupled with big pictures that distract the attention of the reader from news content. Although there is little content on the front page, one has to scroll down to figure out what news to pick from. There little care taken of news but adverts are given more emphasis.
The page also has a ‘video of the week’ right in the centre, but what is the video about, is unknown as there is no information regarding it, therefore making the reader not interested in it.
As the newspaper is fairly new, the editors have given more importance on advertising themselves by writing how they are UK’s best quality newspaper for Brit Asians, a permanent scroller keeps appearing on top of the page, saying the same thing.
On the left corner there is a long list of categories that one may be interested in which is a plus but again news is definitely not given weightage on clicking the link for information mere headlines appear regarding the category, on further reading stories turn out to be month old.
Writing
The writing style of the stories is fairly understandable but the font used for the story is extremely small. It makes it impossible to follow the news for too long. The news story has no pictures to support the story, the content for one story is very long, and there are no links in the story to be followed later, by the reader for more information.
There are no subheadings and therefore it is too long and boring to keep reading 500 odd words without any breaks, it is definitely not web friendly. The first page is full of distracting advertisements; Sahara care in the middle, Asian Lite subscription, and Health Insurance Shop advert at the end is the biggest ad and is present in all the pages opened. The writing does not follow Jacob Neilson’s F plan and is an extremely long essay type article.
Content
There are no links on the articles posted in the website; the only video available on the site is also a promotion of an electric departmental store owned by a ‘Brit Asian’. Before which a LICI UK advert is long enough to bore out the reader.
The unique selling point of this website is that it popularises the Asians living in the UK. Giving them social status and recognition in the community. Bollywood news can also be one of its key points as Asians are extremely interested in what’s happening in the country. Therefore film reviews are first few links on the website.
Navigation
The navigation is kept only on the left hand corner and on the top of the page. The left hand corner list of categories is just too long and difficult to sieve through, it should have been better to have a drop down menu for some of the categories. On navigating from the weather page on the site surprisingly one is led to the weather page of BBC weather, which will make the reader definitely leave the current website and continue reading news on the BBC.
Minerva 