This independent study involved reviewing the visual and internal metrics of website’s belonging to celebrity billionaire business entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump. The goal was to attempt to find ways to improve on their performance standards.
The Oprah.com website was chosen because it is extremely popular. As a result, studying it’s Digital Highway DNA could yield valuable lessons. At the same time, attempting to find a ways to improve on it’s Best Practice standards would be challenging.
The study concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s use of Content Rich text and user interactivity is very progressive. However, it also revealed that based on a Website Optimization Speed test, it can take up to 103 seconds for the Oprah.com® home page to download when using a basic 56K dial up service. A similar test revealed that it can take up to 201 seconds to download ‘oprah.com/topics/health’ under the same circumstances.
It’s believed this result can be contributed to the Oprah.com website’s inclusion of advanced flash graphics which consume a lot of bandwidth. The study revealed that many of these advanced flash graphics appear to be contained in the advertisements on her site. These forms of advertisements can make the website difficult to download for a fair portion of the Oprahdotcom website’s potential visitors.
In conclusion the analysis showed that Oprah Winfrey excels at Branding and her use of innovative ideas are industry leading. However, the demographics of the above mentioned users include a wide range of incomes, ages, and geographical locations. And according to studies, the number of people using basic dial up has increased due to the recession. Therefore, making the site difficult for a particular group of visitors to download could lessen it’s potential market share and over all reach.
