Web Site Evaluation of 9anime by Fabian Doris
(Validator)

1 – Social Media Marketing

9anime is not like most organizations where they have accounts on multiple social media social media platforms. However, on the platforms that it does use, it does it does not do a good job. On its official twitter account, 9anime has 13 thousand followers. This follower count is low in comparison to other popular anime streaming services. From my observation, this may be due to a couple of reasons. One of which is the nature of the site. 9anime allows its users to watch anime online for free, illegally. There are other paid streaming services such as Crunchyroll and Funimation, that have partnerships with the studios who release the anime. The twitter accounts for these paid streaming services have a much bigger audience. Crunchyroll has 886 thousand followers and Funimation has 789 thousand followers. I thought that anime may be a niche market so I looked other examples of this across other industries. ShowBox, an illegal video streaming service, has just over 3 thousand followers on twitter, while Netflix has over 6 million followers. In both cases, the illegal service has less followers than the paid services even though they may have a wider variety of shows to choose from. Another reason 9anime may have significantly less followers on twitter is because of the type of posts they make. All of 9anime’s tweets are to let their audience know about updates on their website. There is nothing wrong with this, but their tweets are all either still images or just words. Whereas, the tweets by Crunchyroll vary. They range from pictures to videos to gifs to trending memes. And finally another reason 9anime may have a significantly less following compared to its competition is because of the frequency of their tweets. 9anime tweets 2 or 3 times a month, while Crunchyroll tweets multiple times a day. If 9anime wants to have a following like Crunchyroll, tweeting more frequently and diversifying the types of tweets they make could help.

2 – Visual Appeal

While 9anime might not be doing well with its social media marketing, its website is very appealing visually. The structure is set so that the content is all in the center of the page. You don’t have to scan the whole screen to find what you are looking for. And this structure is consistent. All the pages on the site look the same, for the most part. They each have the content in the center with ads on the sides. All of the pages also follow the same color theme. When you navigate from page to page, the colors are the same. The page also makes good use of pictures and graphics. Each thumbnail has a clear, high quality picture to accompany it. And finally, the site’s home page encourages exploration. Tabs with different genres and trending anime, a search bar that is easy to find, and a simple menu make it easy for someone who has never been on the site to navigate it.