Peer Review: Tess Drives

website reviewed: http://tessdrives.com/ (Tess Drives)

Website Design & First Impressions:

Tess Drives is a website dedicated to discussing Tesla, as made abundantly clear from the tagline “Stay updated with weekly Tesla content“. Upon first glance, this website is enticing to the viewer through its minimal and modern design. The design of the website matches a modern tone that would keep the interest of its target audience, Tesla enthusiasts.

The organization of the site is extremely well done. All pages are responsive and have a clear purpose. In particular, I think that Shaylan did a great job of making a home page that presents all elements that make navigation clear to a first-time viewer, ie. the link to the about page, and recent posts. On the home page banner, there is a button labelled “discover” that links to a non-existent page that I would recommend getting rid of. Another thing that might be helpful is adding some kind of labelling or headers to the most recent posts displayed on the bottom of the home page, just as images are not enough to distinguish the content being conveyed in the posts. Similarly, would recommend changing the recent posts buttons from “click here” to “read more”, or something else that is more indicative that it is an article/ piece of writing.

The admin does a good job of introducing himself through an about page that explains the meaning of the website name and objective. This explanation paired with an image of the admin makes the website more personable. One thing I would recommend is adding either a name to be associated with the admin, just so viewers become more familiarized with the author.

Based on the dropdown menu, it is made clear to the audience that the content of Tess Drives is made up of a variety of platforms such as conventional blog posts, TikTok and YouTube videos. Something that was initially slightly confusing is that when on the posts page the video link is unresponsive. Unless the post is directly clicked then the viewer is not able to easily access the content. The video itself is well done and has a clear voice-over. The video also takes into account accessibility as it has closed captioning available.

Online Self

In terms of developing the online self, Tess Drives has a clear online identity and target audience. I think Shaylan does a strong job of incorporating a topic that he is passionate about into content that would resonate with a specific target audience. As previously mentioned, Tess Drives uses blog posts, YouTube and Tiktok as content platforms which strongly encourages engagement with an audience. As mentioned in the reading “Self-Representation in Social Media”, it is stated that the three affordances of social media are anonymity, persistence and visibility (Hollenbaugh, 2020). Through Shaylan’s usage of multiple media platforms, he is creating a stronger distribution and publicization of his website. This ultimately increases the chance of visibility amongst audiences that would want to engage with his website, overall helping him to create a stronger and more accessible form of online self. Also through his utilization of the YouTube platform, the content being uploaded is more personal as it is more indicative of his personality through his speech in videos and helps the viewer to put a voice to the face so to speak.

Overall, I think Tess Drives is a well-done website that is able to establish a strong connection to a specific demographic based on its content and creator. Shaylan’s website looks cool so far and I can’t wait to see more!

Referenced Readings

Self-Presentation in Social Media by Erin E. Hollenbaugh