JTV is short for Jewelry Television. This website sells all types of jewelry and loose gems. It also sells tools for jewelry making, and jewelry cleansing. JTV uses this website to advertise thousands of their products; such as rings, watches, earrings, necklaces, pendants, bracelets, anklets, chains, and precious stones. I would categorize this website as E-Commerce. They post photographs of the actual product on their website in order for customer to see how the product looks like. They even let the customer see the product up close. Once you point to the middle of the picture, it will automatically show you an enlargement of the picture. Like for example, you want to buy a diamond ring, you won’t be able to tell the quality of the diamond if you don’t see it up close. Jewelry Television also uses texts and videos of their products so that customers can get a clear representation of the merchandise.
Ziprealty is another E-commerce type of website. It is a real estate agency, which lists all the homes for sale within the United States. It uses texts, maps, satellite pictures, and videos. They use text to list all of the homes for sale; like the address, and descriptions of the home; how many bedrooms, and bathrooms, or how big the lot is, what kind of countertop does the kitchen have, etcetera… The maps are used to locate the position of the house, and satellite to see how the house looks like from top and bird’s eye view. The website also uses the maps to reveal how many schools are near the area. It even gives the viewer a hyperlink to the school website, so viewer can check the standing of the school. The video is used to give a virtual tour of the home that is for sale. This website facilitates selling houses because of its features. First, you need to type in what city you want to buy a house, and then you can choose your price range and the square footage.
http://games.yahoo.com/free-games/text-twist-2-quick-play
This type of website is under Entertainment but some of its pages fall under Information Delivery, since it teaches you how to play the game. This website uses background music, animated and sound effects to make it enjoyable for the customer. It also uses texts, animation, and other graphics. The website is intended for everyone, but depends on the difficulty of the game.
The multimedia used in the three websites makes the website more effective and useful. For the E-commerce websites, multimedia is very beneficial not only for the company but also for the customer because it enables both parties to deal with each other without difficulty. Since the customers can see what the product looks like through photographs, they can decide right away whether they like it or not. And as for entertainment, I think without the use of multimedia, this type of website will be dull and uninteresting to the customer’s point of view.