While doing our website I was constantly looking at DSW.com,  The website was clean and fresh looking.  We knew that we wanted to have a clean and modern looking website as well but, we also wanted to have the feel of vintage because of the shoes we were selling.  The people at DSW are clearly shoe lovers.  Their use of color gives a modern feel, for a modern shoe company.  They used neutral grey’s so they didn’t draw the eye away from what’s important, the shoes.  In all the pictures they used they had more colors that drew your eye to them, but it worked because they were  the focal point of the page at that point.  I feel that their simple design and use of neutral colors shows the type of business they are, simple yet modern.  There is also a great deal of emphasis on the shoes with large vignette’s that draw the eye to the shoes.

The texture at DSW.com is also very simple.  They only used it in the background of the pictures, and on the sales boxes.  The texture that they used reminds me of a painted drywall.  Its very simple but just enough to add detail.  This little use of texture makes the pictures have depth to them.  I think that the lack of texture throughout the website was a good choice for DSW.com.  If they would have use more it would have distracted the viewer from the shoes, which are the main focus.

The navigation of this website was straight forward.  They have a simple navigation bar that gives you main categories:women, men, kids, sandal shop, athletic, etc.  I feel that having a butting for a “sandal shop” is a good idea because it is beach season and customers are looking for new sandals. So the fact that they have that as a main button in there navigation bar allows us, the customer, get to what we want faster, rather then dig through a bunch of sub categories to find sandals.  Once you get to one of the main shoe pages, such as women, the bread crumbing is placed allowing simple navigation backwards through the site.  They also placed the sub category navigation bar on the left hand side for easy access to what you want.  They also have a featured section that showcases: new arrivals, top rates, luxury, and also shows sandals again.  The site has a lot of redundancy allowing the user to get somewhere via multiple routes.  I think this is a good thing because the user is able to find something faster than searching through multiple pages.

I think that compared to this name brand shoe site Soley Shoes needs a lithe help.  DSW has clearly spent a lot of time designing their site and adding things that allow the customers experience to be greater.  Our website is good for a little mom and pop store in Pittsburgh but the vision I had for our company was to expand, and in order to expand we would have to constantly update our website.  If I were to change anything for the better it would be the layout.  DSW has a larger width to their site which gives them the extra space for a sub category navigation bar.  I think that would be the next step for Soley Shoes.  Also filtering the shoes by size, color, brand, etc. would be a nice touch.

Overall, I believe that Soley Shoes has some improvements if it wants to play with the big leagues, but for what I envisioned the store to be at now, Soley Shoes is doing a great job.