The MTV website provides an online resource centre for its viewers. Packed to the brim with useful content and latest celebrity news the website, which offers a high level of interactivity, will come under the spotlight through our website analysis.

The home page has a black background, which seems rather appropriate for the audience as it gives a feeling of power and a website that means business. Although the colour black is still dominant in the child pages, other colours such as white and blue also come in play.

For a site that needs to cater to the tastes of a diverse audience, it succeeds in keeping the pages fairly well organized. Large banners dominate, but although a flash movie is the first thing the user sees, the website design has been done in such a way that the images and multimedia work well with the text to form harmony.

The main navigation menu is on top of the page and contains categories such as Music, News, Gallery, What’s on, Videos, Message Boards, Competitions, and Shop. The mentioned categories are repeated lower down the page, but with abstracts and pictures to provide a glimpse of what you can expect in any of the categories. This is excellent for a quick overview and of course also aids in SEO as the main keywords are again repeated.

An advertisement that strikes the visitor immediately because of the size is the BOOM ad which invites those interested in film making to do more than just share their passion for the creative arts with the world. They are invited to learn everything there is to short film making. This is the kind of interactivity that lets users come back for more and certainly also constitutes excellent Internet marketing through the viral channel.

Still on navigation, although the website has an overwhelming black colour, the contrast between background and text ensures easy reading, although the text size may be a little too small for those needing reading glasses at certain areas of the MTV website. Users should set their screen resolution high to prevent having to do side scrolling.

There is no sign of a site map link at the main page. The sponsors are clear and the overall theme is carried throughout the website. Although the site map would have been helpful for finding your way through the huge MTV website, the website design does however, include several search facilities and the main menu system navigates easy enough.

A terms and conditions page exists and fortunately users have the opportunity to contact the sponsors as a contact option is displayed at the bottom of the page. You can either send an email or call them. There is no map though.

All the images either have complete descriptions or ALT tags. A fair warning to users though, you will need an audio player and a plugin such as shockwave to get the best experience. There is assistance regarding plugins, but not that obvious. Flash plays a major role in the MTV website and fortunately for the site, Google now also offers the universal search function which means even with the amount of videos present, the site can still perform well in the search results.

In addition to the search facility users also have the option to search for videos. Interactivity is promoted through the online shopping facility where t-shirts and downloads can be purchased. Although a dial-up user will most certainly wait a long time for the pages to download, broadband users will agree that the MTV website loads fast.

Another aspect worth mentioning is the forum where opinions are shared and lively discussions take place. Latest news snippets regarding the entertainment world available in the News section keep users up to date with what is happening in celebrity world while a few fun online games help to keep boredom at bay while users wait for their favourite programs to start. The Shows section is the place to look for news regarding schedules and don’t forget the online charts to see who is at the top. The website design has been done very well and with Internet marketing strategies in mind as users can comment on and share about everything with friends and contacts, thus doing their part in promoting the MTV website.

The site also offers users freebies in return for their information. This is definitely an excellent way of building the email list right from the homepage. Well done. In terms of search engine optimisation the website analysis shows that the MTV website boasts a Google Page Rank of 6. The 1040 incoming links from Google and 97 300 from AltaVista are definitely contributing factors. Other factors such as the use of the Title tag, a Meta tag that includes a description and relevant keywords such as celebrity, TV, MTV and more also contribute to the high rank. A few additional SEO steps such as articles, more content, and a site map can also help to improve the ranking. The domain was registered in 1996 which in the eyes of search engines means that it is mature and thus has some credibility. All your MTV fans out there don’t miss the online resource where loads of prizes, freebies, and gossip can be found.