The concept of genre in websites

Genre is a way of categorising a text through style and form. It is vital to be able to categorise texts in this way - both for production and analysis. Most students associate genre with film, and indeed this is where categories can be most easily identified.
I would argue that while genre is more commonly applied to discussions of film, the concept can actually be applied to any media text as a way of explaining categories and paradigms. I am going to use it here to discuss my website which I produced for the AS portfolio.
It would be easy to make note of superficial similarities or differences in websites to make them fit into a specific genre. To do this is what Rick Altman (1995) calls the semantic approach - (although he was writing about films).
Instead Altman encourages a syntactic approach which is to ask - why? So I will explain the purpose of the similarities.
Industry websites have certain genres because each industry sector has a different function and so their websites must serve a different purpose. While most websites do function as a marketing tool it would be wrong to assume that this was their only function.
At marketingcharts.com there is a chart titled, ‘Top 10 Site Genres’ (March 2010) and the list includes Finance, Sports & Recreation, Home and Garden and Entertainment. Email is the top site genre closely followed by General Community.
So the marketing industry is already categorising sites, presumably because it helps them sell advertising space on these sites.
Genre has also been a key marketing tool for film promoters because they can connect films with big advertisers and with audiences
Campaign websites are easily identifiable by their paradigms. They all share a common theme which is to help others. The iconography they use must persuade the audience that the campaign is worthwhile and motivate them to get involved. To make this easy for the audience, they share a certain structure.
My website theme was recognisable as belonging to the campaign genre because of the mission statement. It was to get people aware of the dogs that need help, and to encourage them to donate to the charity to help the dogs to live a happy life and even adopt a dog into a caring family.
The iconography made the site recognisable as belonging to the campaign genre because the images were of the dogs looking happy and of them looking cute to persuade the audience to donate. For example my home page featured a range of images of dogs looking happy, cute and friendly, communicating the idea that the campaign has made a difference to many dogs lives.
In addition to the images audiences can see persuasive language and key verbs such as ‘donate’ ‘help’ ‘support’ which are all expected in this genre.
The structure of my website is recognisable because it has a ‘safe’ three-column structure and has all the links a campaign site needs to promote and to enable the audience to get involved or donate. The navigation bar has a donate, get involved and an information button which reads, ‘Paws 4 Thought’.
Audiences like site genres because it helps them navigate sites quickly. They expect a site in a particular genre to contain certain and recognisable paradigms. For young people, the assessment of the site may also be based on how inventively the genre paradigms are used.
If you look at campaign sites aimed at teenagers there is sometimes evidence of innovation in the design but the theme, structure and iconography still make them instantly recognisable as a campaign site. Talk to Frank for example uses more flash and has an interesting way of accessing the information from the main image, but the conventional structure is still evident.
The concept of genre is therefore applicable to websites and it is already extremely important to both the Institutions their audiences. Both are given a sense of safety by genre. The institutions have financial safety knowing they are investing money on a format that already works. For site visitors, the safety is of having their expectations of the navigation experience met by the site they choose to visit.