For my third Monthly Review, I chose to compare http://www.manoloblahnik.com/ and http://www.zappos.com

The most prominent difference between the two is that Zappos is an actual shopping site, whereas Manolo is more of a showcase site for a designer – there is not a single actual photograph of a commercially available shoe on the latter. I took the following notes as I went through each site:

Manolo Blahnik

The site is overall more subdued – very minimal noise, very straightforward, no unnecessary content. The home page is very well-balanced between the large image on one side and the text on the other side. The color scheme holds the page together very well. Clickable links are not immediately obvious, but the section links change color from white to black when hovered over. The title is indicated as clickable only by the cursor change. Unconventional as far as visual design – very vintage, simple, artsy. It is very clear from first impression that the site is about the designer and his work more than it is about products or commerce. When going into subsections, the visual hierarchy develops well, as does the overall appearance. The navigation area stays constant – just the area where the image originally was changes when going into subsections. For example, upon clicking Collection and then This Season, the page becomes separated into the navigation area, an area of text, and an area which holds an image slideshow, all roughly equal.

Zappos

There is a bit too much happening on the home page – the customer reviews are unnecessary and could be in a smaller scrollable box to the side, and the bottom navigation is much too large and complex. The additional zappos.com sites list, the product showdown, the blogs logo, the “how do you like our website?” feedback request, and the subscription registration take up space in that lower bar unnecessarily, where most other sites with such a bar would only have contact info and some pretty basic text-based links to pages. Home page has a general 4-column or horizontal 4-section layout separated by thin horizontal line of content and is well-balanced, with the exception of the review section, which is uncomfortably left-heavy. I really believe there’s too much content on the home page, but the most important content (the content which the average visitor would be looking for) is in immediate view, and most of the extraneous content is farther down the page, where most visitors wouldn’t bother going once they’ve found what they are looking for.

I feel the same about the first subpage I clicked on, Women’s Shoes. The content in the main area seems mostly extraneous to me, but the recommendations section and ads for sales or specialized sections may serve others well. I chose to continue with the text-based navigation on the left side.

So, I clicked on Flats. At this level, I really like the way the page is laid out and the options presented for narrowing and sorting the content. You can narrow by size, width (important to me, because I wear Wides and it’s a paint to find any of them in physical stores, let alone online), styles, occasions, brands, colors, price ranges, materials, themes, patterns, and accents, then sort by new to old, popularity, name, low to high or high to low prices, and customer rating. I enjoy the breadcrumbing system, also, except for one thing. The breadcrumbing is in the form of the “your selections” section, and when you click on term, it removes it – you have to click on the next term over to go back to that page. For example, you have shoes, flats, ballerina, and pink chosen, in that order. To go back to just flats, you would click on ballerina, or to go back to all shoes, click on flats. I didn’t really see any other form of breadcrumbing, and that system doesn’t include a home or all link – to go back to browsing all items, you just remove the first selection (in our example, shoes).

Zappos was aesthetically pleasing and overall fairly easy to navigate, and it offered many ways to narrow and sort results – if anything, too many. The narrowing categories are minimizable, but default to all being expanded when you first come to the page – it would be simpler to navigate if you could see all the general categories (size, width, styles, occasions, brands, colors, price range, materials, themes, patterns, and accents) at first glance and then expand the ones you are interested in to see the options.