Allnurses is a private nursing website that was started in 1994 by Brian Short who was a nursing student at the time but is now the company C.E.O. Its URL is http://allnurses.com/. As a result of a shortage of nursing-related resources, Allnurses was established to fill this gap. It is a very successful website in the nursing industry (Mills, 2014). It thus started as a basic website using a single page with eight links, promoting membership with a deep focus on the nursing community. The site currently attracts more than 4 million monthly visitors who engage in specialty forums, in-depth discussions and also collect articles. It has more than 1,000,000 registered members. The site has continued to be a vibrant as well as an active portal for practicing nurses and student nurses all over the globe. It is a forum website whereby users get registered and are allowed to create new topics regarding nursing and then participate in conversations to the topics (Mills, 2014).
The users have the option of creating new usernames if they want to maintain anonymity, but they can also use their real names in creating the accounts. Forum topics and discussions are open to public access. As such, they are indexed by search engines and anybody can view them whether they are registered to the website or not. The website offers nurses with a valuable support network as well as platform for idea sharing. The nurses can thus exchange industry as well as information and advice that are related to their career. Job postings are also available at the site. The website receives more than three million new visitors on a monthly basis and has a total of over 900,000 registered members, having a Facebook Fan-page with more than 340 likes (Schmidt, n.d). This website is attractive for various reasons. The first one being that it is ranked as number one among the 20 most popular nursing websites by Alexa, a service owned by Amazon. The other reason is that it has so many registered users who share important information through discussion forums that are related to my field of study which is nursing. As such, there is so much that can be gained from the site. It also represents the website with the greatest nursing membership in the world. This website presents a discussion platform for nurses offering an arena through which knowledge can be furthered concerning the profession. Various topics concerning nursing get created by the users, providing one with the opportunity to get much valuable information regarding this area, which is my field of study (Mills, 2014).
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The purpose of the website
This is a social-networking site attracting 3 million monthly visitors (Grayson, 2012). The population that is being targeted is the nursing community, including students and practitioners alike. The purpose of the website is to enhance nursing research in order to develop theory in nursing, improve the quality of patient care, help retention of nurses as well as develop nursing researchers. This is achieved through the various topics of discussion that the site users create, allowing them to engage in different discussion through which new ideas are posted. As such, both users, as well as non-users, get to learn a lot of information from such discussions. This provides a rich source of knowledge that offers research materials on the relevant research topics (Mills, 2014).
The target audience for Allnurses includes both active as well as student nurses. It aims to engage highly skilled students and practicing nurses who will be able to present relevant nursing topics allowing for discussions so that people in this profession can be able to share knowledge on this field of study. Student nurses are expected to raise issues that they are not very clear with while practicing nurses are expected to present more practical aspects of the profession. An engagement between the two levels is expected to result into a rich source of knowledge not only for nurses but for the general public as well. The site is very effective in engaging its audience. Through the social media, the site is able to reach a great number of audiences. Its facebook audience totals up to 1.1 million users. To demonstrate how effective this site is, other institutions like the Brookline College use it as an advertiser. This is due to the site’s large and highly engaged audience (Allnurses, 2017).
Design & Navigation
The first impression that one gets while visiting the website for the first time is that of simplicity. There are not many decorations and at a glance, you are able to see the available links that can be accessed as they are located at the top of the page. Even for a person who is not accustomed to visiting websites, its links are very easy to access since they are represented by simple descriptions like home, product, nurse recruitment and so forth. A visitor would easily know where to find what they are looking for without much analysis of the web page. The site uses two primary colors which are black and yellow. These colors do not seem very appealing as they appear dull. The layout, however, is appealing. A look at the page indicates moving pictures concerned with the nursing profession, giving one a general outlook of the subjects of discussion within the site.
The links make a lot of sense even for a non-user. For example, some of the basic links include products and Gallery (Schmidt, 2018). These are self-explanatory words and the user will easily know where to look for the relevant information that they are searching for. Furthermore, the user doesn’t have to click on the links to get more information. By simply pointing at a link, one is further provided with all the available options under the particular link. This helps the user to save time as it narrows down the search options. The navigation has a total of sixteen basic links. These links are not too many as they are all basic in enabling a user to go to the right page without much trouble. All the basic items are present on the navigation and there is nothing critical that is missing. Provision of a search function offers a design strategy that aids users in accessing content without having to necessarily understand or navigate through the web. This website has a search engine, thus enabling an easy access to relevant information.
Website Usability
The website is designed in a very simple way to enable an understanding of the navigator at a glance. Through the use of simple and general wordings such as products etc, it enables even a non-user to have a general perspective of what can be found under a particular link. The presence of the search engine also makes it even easier to find content as the user who is not sure of where to search for a particular content will still be able to find it easily by typing the information in the search function box. This makes it easier to search for information, which can be quickly found. The web is very much intuitive in a way that, one can easily understand what the links are about due to the simple words used. The words thus give a general picture of what to find under which link. As such, they automatically make the user to have an idea of what to expect, especially because once a link is pointed at, it provides a list of more options. The pictures that run horizontally from right to left also raise a user’s intuition as they show nurses under different health setups. They provide real pictures which take a user’s mind to the working environment. This greatly captures one’s intuition, making the user to get a general picture of what the website is all about (Allnurses.com, n.d.).
Summary
Allnurses.com was started in 1994 as a basic website to provide the so much needed nurse-related resources that were lacking at the time (Allnurses, 2017). Nurses all over the world can register for membership and engage in forum discussions and access nurse-related articles. This is a valuable site as despite it being ranked as the first one among the 20 most popular nursing websites, it is very resourceful in providing relevant articles and converging the nursing community for important forums and discussions. It is relevant to nursing as it revolves on issues that concern the nursing profession. It aims at promoting nursing research through the provision of nursing resources. It is very effective in engaging its audience as can be seen from the vast membership as well as significant monthly visits. The web design presents an impression of simplicity, making the user to feel at ease at their first visit. Its layout is also appealing from the way it showcases real pictures featuring the nursing profession in practice. The sixteen links on the navigator are not too few or too many as they are just the right number to provide the basic links for users. It also has a search function that enables the users to instantly access the content without much difficulty. The moving pictures, as well as simple wordings of the links, capture the user’s intuition making it easy for them to know in advance what to expect from the site in terms of resources.
Conclusion
This is indeed a very good website because it basically provides a lot of nursing-related resources which may otherwise be in shortage. As such, it provides a lot of research material to the nursing profession, contributing to improved quality of nursing services. It also brings together nurses all over the world who share relevant information through the social media regardless of their geographical locations. This enables knowledge transfer from one region of the word to another. This site is thus recommended to the nursing students and practitioners as well as patients. The nursing community and students will benefit through extensive learning of the different aspects of nursing. Patients, on the other hand, will benefit through a greater understanding of their ailments and find different ways of how to take care of themselves.
References
Allnurses.com. (n.d.). How do I submit an article? Retrieved from http://allnurses.com/articles-info.html
Allnurses.com. (2017). About Us: Who we are. Retrieved from http://advertise.allnurses.com/about-us/
Grayson, K. (2012, November 23). Allnurses.com creates a community-and cash for Brian Short. Minneapolis Business Journal . Retrieved from h ttps://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/print-e dition/2012/11/23/he-built-a-site-then-a-community.html
Mills, S. (2014, July 16). Allnurses.com launches redesigned job board. Madgex. Retrieved from https://www.madgex.com/blog/allnurses-com-launches-redesigned-job-board.
Schmidt, K. (2018). 20 0f the Most Popular Websites and Who Owns Them . Blue Pipes . Retrieved from http://blog.bluepipes.com/20-most-popular-nursing-websites-who-owns/
