20

Communication Theory Assignment

Fatema Alminoo

F a t e m a A l m i n o o 2 0 1 2 0 0 7 2 4

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Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ANALYSIS OF ONE OF THE WEBSITE HOMEPAGES

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE - MARSHALL MCLUHAN

ANALYSIS OF SEEF MALL WEBSITE HOMEPAGE

THE CLARITY OF THE MESSAGE

APPROPRIATENESS OF THE CALLS TO ACTION

EASE OF COMPLETING TASKS/FINDING INFORMATION

RELEVANCE OF INFORMATION TO THE MEDIUM USED

ILLUSTRATION AND EXPLANATION OF THE SHANNON AND WEAVER MODEL OF

COMMUNICATION

ILLUSTRATION OF THE SHANNON AND WEAVER MODEL

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE MODEL

IDENTIFYING ALL THE ELEMENTS OF THE MODEL

INFORMATION SOURCE

MESSAGE & RECEIVED MESSAGE

ENCODER

CHANNEL

10

DECODER

10

NOISE

10

DESTINATION

10

SIGNAL

10

APPLYING THE SHANNON AND WEAVER MODEL TO SEEF MALL WEBSITE

11

INFORMATION SOURCE

11

MESSAGE & RECEIVED MESSAGE

11

ENCODER

12

CHANNEL

13

DECODER

14

NOISE

14

DESTINATION

15

SIGNAL

15

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION/NOISE

16

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION DEFINITION

16

WHY IT IS NECESSARY FOR WEBSITE DESIGNERS TO BE AWARE OF POTENTIAL NOISE

16

1. COLORS

17

2. CONTENT

17

3. SPACE

18

4. TYPOGRAPHY

18

WHY IT IS NECESSARY FOR COMPANIES TO BE AWARE OF POTENTIAL NOISE

19

TWO SOURCES OF NOISE & EXPLANATION OF HOW THEY AFFECT THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION
AND HOW THEY COULD BE REDUCED

20

ORGANIZING THE WEBSITE

20

LANGUAGE

21

COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND REFERENCING

23

APPENDIXES

27

Analysis of one of the website homepages

The medium is the message - Marshall McLuhan
For centuries, people have been communicating verbally by only using their voice, body,
and sign language that were very significant but very basic. Thereafter, people invented
the written languages to make it easier to communicate between each other.
Afterward, the basic media came to people, which made a huge difference in the
communication world. McLuhan believed that this new predicament belongs to what he
called The Global Village. As he also believed, that the message isnt the most
important part in the communication technique those days, because it is always the
medium that changes how people get the message once they receive it.
In my opinion, the medium effects and always changes how the message is delivered to
the target audiences which means that people should focus and study the medium
more than the message itself. As McLuhan mentioned in his famous book
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man that by the affect of media only, many
societies have changed as it has become one of the most important parts of the recent
civilizations. Moreover, as he stated in his book (page two) that the medium itself shapes
and changes how the message looks like when it reaches people because in my point of
view, each medium has its own rules and target audiences which consequently affects
how the message should be shaped and created to correctly reach the target audiences.
In relation to web communication nowadays, Alex Kuskis keeps recommending to read
the fourth chapter of McLuhans book which includes a theory that compares between
peoples reflection on the water and the way they see their versions in the new media
(devices). To make it clearer, the new smart phones and tablets and the new trend
selfie to prove that they are vigilant and always use any medium they have to
deliver a message in the way the medium determines. Because the selfie would not
be found if there were no tablets and phones, and especially a front camera! Moreover,
with the new social media and websites, people can easily attend any event in the world
without even physically attend it with their friends and family. Which shows that the

medium they use determines the way they communicate. Nevertheless, these kinds of
media change and diminish the way families communicate with each other comparing
to the past when they only had physical and oral communication ways. Additionally, to
be specific about the new social media, each one has its own way to communicate
which simply changes the way people decide to send a message. For example, people
used to send basic written letters to invite their friends to a party, nowadays they
basically send SMS or whatsapp messages, which are written. And also they use
instagram or Facebook to send the same invitation but as an image, which shows how
the medium affects the way the message is sent. Likewise, when a company is starting a
new marketing campaign, they tend to design or to choose the marketing method
depending on the medium they will be using to deliver it.
Currently, people live in a huge and complicated world of information that makes the
communication between all people around the world much easier than before. Devices
(Media) as well are so widespread between people, which obviously makes sending any
message via any medium much simpler. For example, the new iPhone 6 plus (which is a
medium) has gradually insanely spread among people in less than two months (which is

short comparing with years ago). This shows how important the medium is nowadays!
Besides, In 1999, McLuhan mentioned in one of his lectures at Fordham University that
the gap between generations is neither religious nor ideological anymore since young
kids and teenagers spend their times watching television and listening to radio (as his
time) which is basically certainly different than the way their parents spent their free

time. This causes a technological gap between them as a result too and also proves that
the medium itself affects all the society not only its own target audience. Because the
TV and radio didnt only affect the kids who were watching them but even affected the
parents who were not able to properly communicate with their kids.
Furthermore, as Todd Kappelman mentioned in his article, the quote also means that
the medium extends and changes. For instance, the voice or the mouth medium has
changed or extended to the mobile phone or Radio. Also, the medium constantly makes
obsolete because the TV made sign language (smoke signs or carrier pigeons) needless and

useless. With the radio and television we have simultaneous access to events on the
entire planet. However, television culture diminishes, or amputates, many of the close
ties of family life based on oral communication.

Analysis of Seef Mall website homepage

First of all, lets begin by explaining what Seef Mall website is for and who are its target
audience to define if the homepage achieves the websites goals properly or not. Seef
Mall is the second largest mall in Bahrain that contains many shops and places of
entertainment for the family. It actually targets teenagers who are as mentioned in the
Trends in Retail and Shopping Centres article around 40% more interested in entertainment

and shopping malls than any other type of people. And also the dual-earner married
couples that always want to be stylish and chic. This shows that briefly the website
targets people aged 16 to 35, both genders.

The clarity of the message
The homepage is normally the main entry of any website in the world which has the first
most significant impression. The headline and specifically the logo [appendix.2] of the Seef
mall homepage is fluff and cannot simply show what this website offers. As mentioned
by Jessica Meher1 that the headline of the homepage must show what is the website
about in less than 3 seconds which is actually impossible in the seef mall homepage.
Secondly, the website has no sub-heading or a brief description of what the website
offers which makes the visitor confused again. Thirdly, as proved by the 3M Corporation
and Zabisco that the brain transmit almost 90% of the materials he receives as visuals
that are proved to be processed 60 thousand times faster than text inside the humans
brain. Seef mall takes an advantage of it by using many visuals and images to present
their methods.

1

Jessica Meher is Head of Enterprise Marketing at HubSpot. Jessica's ebooks have received more than 315,000 downloads and her

Appropriateness of the calls to action

Theres only one (call-to-action) button on the homepage, which is the search button
[appendix.1]

. Although it is so important and useful but having only one button is less than

the usual requirement number of the CTA buttons on any successful homepage. As
Jessica Meher stated in one of her articles that a homepage should have at least two to
three CTA buttons above the fold to drive easy and effective conversions. Moreover, as
said by Jessica Meher, one of the most important things is having a CTA button at the
bottom of the homepage to catch the visitors eyes before leaving the homepage, which
seef mall website already has it as a click here for map button. [appendix.3]

Ease of completing tasks/finding information
Seef Mall homepage provides a well-defined and quick navigation bar on the top
[appendix.4]

that contains the most required and central pages of the site. As mentioned by

Jessica Meher that a clear and simple navigation bar decreases the bounce rates which
seef mall homepage already has it. Also, it is consistent, as it does not change its place
from page to another because as proved by Stoney deGeyter2 that people lose the way
on a site that has an inconsistently and movable navigation bar. Moreover, it clearly
shows the latest events and offers, which is a good point to keep visitors updated all the
time.

Relevance of information to the medium used
The website homepage must focus on the target audiences interests and present them
as visuals, short text contents and CTA buttons. The simpler and more organized the
content of the website the more successful it is. The content of Seef mall website are
not fully relevance to the website medium. Because it is obvious from the homepage,
that the content are not well organized and the text is not brief. To be more specific, the
text content of the Events & Offers section [appendix.5] is too long to be placed in a

2

Stoney deGeyter is the President of Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping
businesses grow since 1998.

homepage, which makes the page looks so busy and messy. Moreover, the images in
the homepage should be in the same size to make it look more organized, but in Seef
mall website, the images are not in the same size nor have the same color scheme as
the website. [Appendix.6]

Illustration and explanation of the Shannon and Weaver Model

of Communication
Illustration of the Shannon and Weaver Model

Background and purpose of the model

Shannon and Weaver's model is a straightforwardly understood method and created to
be used with almost all sorts of communication. It specifically aims to improve the
actual communication between the information source (sender) and their destination.
Correspondingly, in the foundation stages the model was created to deal with the
technical communication in the basic phones. Afterward companies applied it in almost

all fields of Communication. As a result, it now simplifies the stages of communication to

make it easier for all people to understand it or analyse it. Consequently, Shannon and
Weaver's model is currently appealing to numerous academic fields. It additionally leads
to more new and developed models and studies.

Identifying all the elements of the Model

Information source
It is the sender or the creator of the message and also the first stage where the message
gets created. For example, its the person who is writing a letter or even the process of
thinking about what to write. So its basically the basis of the information or message in
any communication.

Message & received message
The content of the message is the idea that was sent from the information source to the
destination. This message gets converted two times, from a written or spoken message
to signals or symbols, and again from symbols and signs to the same message.
Moreover, the message always changes to what the channel determines as said by
McLuhan the medium is the message. E.g. its the letter that was written by the
information source (sender).

Encoder
The stage where the message is converted or changed into signals, symbols, waves or
Binary data depending on the channel (medium) that is used in the communication. For
example, its when the unspoken words in the sender (information source)s mind get
converted to written words.

Channel
It is the kind of media that contributes in transferring the message from the information
source to the destination, like mobile phones, radio, TVs. Its also as said by McLuhan
the most important part of the communication that normally determines the way the
message gets shaped or converted in the encoding stage.

Decoder
It is the stage of converting signals back into messages. It is basically the opposite
process of encoding the message in the beginning. Like, converting the written words to
something the readers eyes and brain can understand.

Noise
The messages are transferred from encoder to decoder through channel. Throughout
the process of transferring the messages from the information resource and the
destination, it might be distracted by any kind of noise which naturally disturbs the
communication stream or possibly the message may not correctly reach the destination
as it was sent from the information source.

Destination
Its where the message was aimed to reach, who is the receiver at the same time. Its
basically the end of any communication in the world where the readers brain
understands or gets the message correctly in case there was no noise in the process.

Signal
Its the parameter that includes the information that was changed and converted in the
encoder stage. It is commonly the transition of signals, symbols, waves or Binary data
depending on the kind of the media (channel).

Applying the Shannon and Weaver Model to seef mall website

Information source
Firstly, it is the head and leaders of Seef mall who directly get benefits of having a
successful website, and also because they put the rules of the mall itself not only the
website so they are absolutely responsible of creating the basis and foundation of the
message which is the most important part of the message. Secondly, the designers of
the website are more important and responsible of the website than the developers,
because as mentioned by Maria Ribas that the visitors stay 10 seconds only once they
open the homepage, and then it determines whether they will go through all the
website or leave. This was explained and proved by Derek Halpern that around 94% of
the reasons of rejecting any website or leaving it is due to design complaints.
Additionally, as said by Joseph Putnam3 that the websites design commonly changes
positively or negatively the first impression visitors have of the business. If the design of
it was messy or horrible that has unattractive colours, it will undoubtedly negatively
affects the first impression of the visitor and make him leave. Briefly, designers are the
second most important information source in the website because they contribute in
delivering an attractive and pretty message.
Furthermore, the developers of the website come next because they develop the main
buttons (CTA) and most important action options of it, which are counted as a message
also. Lastly, the writer of the website contributes in publishing interesting stuff
(messages) to target the audiences.

Message & received message
The main message of seef mall website is targeting people to physically visit the mall to
gain more benefits from them. As seef malls slogan4 shows that they are the main place

3

Joseph Putnam is a blogger and writer in KISSmetrics, CrazyEgg, SlideShare, Wibiya, Conduit, and
Rejoiner.
4
Home for Bahrain Shopping.

of shopping in Bahrain, so it means that the message focuses on the shopping side of
the mall more than the entertainment part. Moreover, the message of the website is to
keep customers updated of the last offers and events they have in the mall as clearly
shown on the homepage. Most importantly, the malls message also is targeting
businessmen and companies to take part of the mall and have more customers.
Moreover, the message can be also to the competitors of Seef mall like City Centre,
Country mall, Bahrain mall websites, that Seef mall can provide a better shopping
atmosphere than theirs.
Conclusively, the messages the visitors should receive in the end are the feeling of the
desire of physically going to seef mall and also that it is the home of shopping as their
slogan says. It has to be the message of having well knowledge of the latest offers and
events. Besides, the companies and businessmen should get the message of being the
most successful mall in the area.

Encoder
To begin with, before talking about encoding the message, lets talk about how it has
been encoded in the first place. The message is both written and visual because as
McLuhan said that it is determined by the medium, which is the website-internet.
First of all, the images are originally visual gathering of pixels, and in this stage as
explained by Nathon Dalton5 the image gets converted by encoding it into a base64
string and then the data URI provides access as a gate to the data that has been
encoded earlier. Secondly, the text all over the website which is a written language that
human beings only understand but the medium which is the PC, internet and browsers
do not understand them. Therefor they get encoded to information output and it is an
extremely difficult and complicated language that the computer only understands. This
process firstly starts in the HTML language inside the web browser then in the central
processing unit of the PC. To be more specific, colouring the text or organising the
layout of the website all get encoded by the CSS language so the browser can correctly

5
Nathon Dalton is a software developer, expert in: Microsoft .NET languages, Visual Basic, Visual C# and also SQL.

apply it. Last but not least, all the websites gets converted into many web languages so
the web browser and the PC understands it, which are HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and Java
script. Briefly, the encoder who is responsible for almost all the stages is the programs
that are used to develop the website, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, adobe Photoshop,
MAMPetc, and also the most important one which is the web browser, like Safari,
Chrome or Internet explorer.
In addition, regardless of all the complicated process of encoding the message, the first
and most important encoding tool is the hand of the writer, designer and developer
when they started converting the idea message to a physical content.
Channel
The main channel or medium here is the Website, but before analysing it lets analyse
one of the most important stages of the channel process which is the Internet itself.
The internet connection is an international organization of connected systems that use a
standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to get many devices around the world
connected at the same time as if they are in a Global Village as said by McLuhan.
Moreover, because as proved by the famous internet live stats website that almost
40% of people around the world has an Internet connection currently which makes the
Internet a very affective tool in the web communication technology. It basically forces
the content (message) to be converted to signals to be able to move in the cables to
reach any destination around the earth.
The second medium or channel is the PC, mobile phone, or the tablet that is used to
view the website. It does not determine the way the message is written as much as the
website does but it changes the size or the shape of the website as it is called
responsive websites strategy in the web development world that changes the website
size depending on the size of the screen without affecting the content.
The web browsers (websites) are the third and main channels that fully determine how
the message should be shaped and look like. Deciding to deliver a message via websites
(web browsers) forces the sender to shape it as the web world decides, it means that
the message should be visuals and text contents.

Decoder
In the beginning, its the opposite of the encoding process, which is firstly converting the
signal from the Internet cables to the binary data, then to the web languages, which are
HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. All the previous process is to lastly convert the
languages to the human being languages in the web browser to make it easier for them
to understand. Its in the end the web browser that reads all the programming
languages and converts all over again.
In the end of the process, its the eyes of the users when they read the content, or look
at the website. To be more precise, it is when the light waves that are reflected from the
screen enter the eyes cornea until the eyes optic nerve converts and guides them to
the brain, which is the destination.

Noise
Many noises may occur in the channel (medium) and basically affects the process of the
communication. First of all, as proved by Olsy Sorokina that around 38% of people
nowadays use their mobile phones to access websites, thats why the Seef mall website
[appendix.7]

may faces many issues while accessing it via a tablet or mobile phone because

it is obviously not mobile-friendly, which is considered as a noise. Additionally,

According to IAB.net, 40% of all page views every-year are on mobile phones and
tablets. So it is a huge number that actually affects the website viewers. Furthermore, as
proved by Jakob Nielsen that people have the time to only read 28% of the content in
only four seconds which is almost impossible in Seef Mall website that has many texts
on the homepage only which makes visitor get bored and leave the website.
Moreover, according to tiger color, using more than three colours in a website makes
it look busy and messy. In Seef mall website, there are more than six colours which
naturally affects the first impression of the visitors and makes them confused.
Furthermore, as said by Ron Wright that visitors are not as interested in what the
company does as much as who they are, which is typically found in the about us page
that does not exist in the seef mall website. Some of the similar information might be

found in two pages called visit us and contact us [appendix.8, 9] which is a serious noise
because they are missing an important part of what the user visits the website for and
would not find time to look through all the pages to find it.
Destination
The destination is basically the target audience of the website, but to be more specific it
is their brain which is the first stage of reaching the target destination. The brain of any
human being is a complicated organ that is responsible for converting everything the
eye reads or sees to signals that are understandable by the brain only. The information
source can decide whether the message reaches the destination or not if the visitors, or
their brains especially fully get the message that was created in the first stages of the
process.
Additionally, the evidences of correctly reaching the destination of the seef mall website
can be seen in two aspects, firstly from the growth of the viewers number (traffic) who
are the target audiences of the website or even those who accidently views it. It can be
shown also from the timing the visitor spends surfing the website and going through all
its pages. Secondly, it is the physically growth in the number of customers in the seef
mall itself.

Signal
The signal is the information output, which is the highly complex language that the
computer or tablet only reads. Its also the HTML language, CSS, PHP, MySQL and Java
script that the web browser converts in order to make them understandable for human
beings. Moreover, its the signal that moves through the Internet cables to transfer data
from the website server to the visitors PC. In case the other medium was a PC not
tablets or mobile phones, the electricity that runs the PC or charge the devices can be
counted as signals as well.

Barriers to Communication/Noise
Barriers to Communication Definition
Barriers to communication are everything that distracts passing messages from the
sender to the receiver that mostly leads to misunderstandings and confusions in both
sides of the process. It basically any difficulty that results in ending the communication
at all or just being as a traffic light that stops the process for a while because of any kind
of noise. In fact, there are many examples of the web communication barriers. Here are
some of them:
-

Language (culture): viewing a website with a language that the visitor does not
understand can be a very serious barrier, because the visitor would not stay a
minute in a website he does not understand its content. Moreover, if the
language was so complicated, the visitor might not fully get it especially if it was
his second language.

Internet connection: it is the most important thing of finishing the process of the
communication in the web, because it is impossible to browse any website if the
Internet connection has been disconnected. Secondly, the heavenliness of the
website affects the speed of the Internet. To be more specific, having heavy
photos and plugins in the website typically makes the Internet slower which
causes leaving the visitor.

Why it is necessary for website designers to be aware of potential Noise

It is so essential for website designers to be mindful of any possible noise because as
proved in a research directed by Missouri University that a visitor takes a first

impression of the company in less than 0.2 second which shows that the website design
can easily make the customer buys or just make them look for other similar products in
another website. Therefore, the web designers should create a website design that has
no noise in order to make a better impression. Therefore, the website designers should
have a knowledge of the psychology of Web design before starting to design any
website, because basically when users browse the website, they get many different
negative or positive feelings about the website, especially the homepage of it. These
feelings should be taken in account to design a successful website. The web design
psychology decreases the noise of the website in order to avoid the negative
impressions in many aspects which will be divided to four sections below:

1. Colors
The sorts of colors the website designer uses undoubtedly affects the visitors first
impression. As proved by Amber Leigh Turner, cool colors like blue, green or purples,
mostly reflect a relaxing and calming feeling. But at the same time, it can reflect an
extremely emotionless and unfavorable feeling too. Also, warm colors such as yellow,
orange and red reflect a feeling of creativity but at the same time it can be used to give
undesirable feelings like annoyance and pressure. Finally, as explained earlier, the colors
the website designer uses can negatively occur a noise in the website which affects the
visitors and give them negative and unsatisfied feelings.

2. Content
A good and sample design affects how easy and fast the visitors find the information
they are looking for. To be more detailed, websites that have many content on the same
page make it very challenging to find the target information and this normally raised
pressure and unsatisfied feelings which can be counted as a very serious noise that
causes visitors leaving the website. Said differently, in order to avoid or reduce the noise

by the web designers, they should keep the content of the website organized and not
hard to find or read.

3. Space
How the website designer avoids the noise by organizing the white space between the
content can affectedly change the first impression of the visitor. As said by Amber
Turner that well organizing content is significance in the web design. To be more
detailed, white space is basically the parts where there is no text or image. It is
important because it makes the visitors eyes relaxed through the process of reading,
which reduces the psychological noise. The idea of simplicity is presently extremely
widespread in the Web design that can be obviously shown in one of the most famous
servers which is Squarespace.com. Briefly, having white spaces in the website gives the
visitor a chance to take a pause while reading which is only web designers
responsibility.

4. Typography
Conclusively, typography creates lots of feelings and thoughts in the users mind, which
affects the psychological side of the websites noise. For instance, The New York Times
online websites designer chose serif font to reflect the sense of importance and
awareness. As explained by Amber Turner, the designer wants to give the visitor the
feeling like if he is an expert because as proved that serif font is used to give a feeling
of cleverness and classy at the same time. Moreover, the technique the website
designer uses to present the text is significant as well. For example, spaces between the
letters, lines and paragraphs have to be taken into account by the designer too. Because
lacking of spaces between the paragraphs or letters make the content looks
overcrowded and hard to read which causes a psychological noise to the visitor and
makes him leave the website as a result.

Why it is necessary for companies to be aware of potential Noise

Most recently, a website is as important as the companys phone number because
generally the website is the major stage of the communication between the company
and their customers, so it needs to provide a good and professional information to keep
the customer satisfied. As known, a good website displays expertise and
professionalism. On the contrary, companies who have bad websites with many noises
cause mistrust and misunderstanding. As said by Keith Kakadia that the website is not
only a medium to represent the company but it is a kind of media that is widespread
among people nowadays that almost everyone can use. The company should take the
noise into account because their website is the only thing that represents them when
they are not open every day and hour and consumers currently make serious judgments
about the company from the website. Moreover, it is easy to compare between two
companies at the same time nowadays from their websites, which negatively or
positively affects the companys reputation if the competitors websites are better, that
also may cause losing many potential businesses.
Furthermore, according to eMarketer.com, 83% of customers report that their opinions
can be changed upon the online reviews they find on the companys website, also and
eighty percent of customers admit that bad comments on the companys website
distorted their buying choice. These stats show that many decisions are made online
which proves that the noise in the website can dramatically affect the companys
reputation.
Besides, according to BIA Kelsey, around fifty percent of business websites fail to fulfill
with simple usability tasks, and also as proved by Forrester, half of online sales
communication were ended because customers could not find the product, which
makes them lose their trust in the company.

Two sources of Noise & Explanation of how they affect the process of
communication and how they could be reduced

Organizing the website
The first physical/external and psychological noise is how unorganized the content of
the seef mall website is, especially on the homepage. Owner and director of January
Creative in Nashville, Amber Leigh Turner stated in her last article that how the website
is organized determines how easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. As she
said, content of the website, especially the homepage have to be correctly modified and
well-structured in order to provide enough and necessary content without confusing
visitors with the disorderliness of the website. As it is obvious on the seef mall website,
the content is not well organized and makes people feel confused of where each part
starts and ends. This noise may lead to psychological noise while spending more
unreasonable time to find a small part of the content, which eventually causes visitor
leaving the website or having a bad impression of how professional the mall itself is.
Fixing this noise is easy and basically related more to the design part of the website, it is
by having white spaces which are sometimes called negative space. It is the slice of
the website inside the content that is untouched, blank or as quoted by Gisele Muller
the empty space in a page. It is also the blank area between visuals, posts, pictures,
paragraphs, borders and other features. Seef mall website can use it in order to change
its pages to something more organized and clearer to send their well-defined and
straight message. An instance of prefect use of the white space is Google. As it is
obvious, Googles home page is a complete whitespace so the user focuses on the most
significant part of the website which is the search. [Appendix.10]
Besides, the other part of this noise is putting the most important information in an
unnoticeable place, which makes customers confused about how correct and important
the information is. Organizing and putting the right information in their right places
make users able to easily and quickly catch the required content. In seef mall website,
they put the mall timing [appendix.11] which is one of the most significant info any visitor

would like to see, in the corner of the website using very tinny font size which reflects a
feeling of insignificance. According to a Psychology research done by Hyunjin Song and
Norbet Schwartz to test the how different kinds of fonts can affect the reader. People
who read an article written with simple and clear font took only around eight minutes to
finish it, but it took people who read the same article with different fancy and tinny
font, almost fifteen minutes to finish reading. This shows that using tinny and unclear
fonts may lead to make the process of understanding any content harder and slower.
Also, according to offer in Spector, they proved that one of the key causes of users
leaving a website is because of the font size. Tinny typography affects how hard and
difficult understanding and getting the right message behind the content. This applies to
the font Seef mall use to write important information like the mall timing that makes it
look like an unimportant content. This causes both physical/external and psychological
noise, because it affects how the user reads the content, and at the same time, it makes
him confused of whether these content is important as it sounds or not.
There are many possible ways to avoid this noise, the first solution is changing the font
size of the title only Mall Timing to make it look more important and catch visitors
eyes. Second solution is changing the place of the timing to another more obvious place
instead of placing it on the corner of the website. For example, putting the content on
the top of the website with changing the color of its background to make it the first
thing the visitor sees once he enters the website.

Language
The second language, psychological, attitude noise is the language of the website and
the lack of options. Seef mall website is written in English which is the second language
in Bahrain and have no other options like Arabic which is the first language. Seef mall
website does not success in making the content relevant to their target market which is
Bahrain and GCC countries. It can be relevant by choosing a language that gets along
with the culture of their target audience. A research done by Common Sense Advisory
Board proved that the website needs only twelve languages to reach eighty percent of

the whole world, so the websites like seef mall website that provide only one language
target fewer than twenty-five percent of the world. Not to mention that visitors who
have English as their second language cannot easily translate the website to their first
language every time they browse it to find something. Essentially, Eurobarometers
latest survey showed that around ninety of peoples choose to view websites that are
written in their first language. Which is not even ten percent of the target audience of
seef mall website who are Bahrainis with an Arabic first language.
In Seef mall websites case, many visitors might use Google Translate to translate the
content of the website to their first language which may probably cause abnormal or
basically false translations, this normally affects the message and might change its real
meaning. Moreover, its an attitude noise because it shows how the seef malls owners
do not care about their Arab customers but the non-Arab tourists, and this negatively
affects how the Arab customers feel toward the mall.
This noise can be solved by having many different options of the language that presents
the content of the website. Since as proved by w3techs, English is used by almost half of
websites, it can be still the main language of the website but with an Arabic option to
make it more understandable for the target audience. This contains changing the
navigation bar in order to make the website related to the Bahraini or Arab visitors. It
can be also translated by the name of the country instead of the language because the
exact same language can be different from a country to another.

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from

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