ARTM2210 Intro to Web Design
Just another Intro to… siteArchive for Student Work
Review Topic 1: Amazon.com
I chose amazon.com because It is one of the most popular websites that people visit. it is not a one company the sell every thing and all the things in the websites, it gather all brands and companies in one website to make it easy for customer to shop. this website is like a big world that has everything you need in your life. you would always for sure find what you want from collage materials, to baby stuff. it also has furniture and home decorations. in another hand, in has almost all the brands of clothes, bags, or glasses.It has options that helps you to reduce the result so you look for exactly for what you really want. Another thing is that when you find the result of your search you can choose the prices that match your budget so by that you do not waist your time looking for thing so expensive or too cheep.
On the home page of the website there are many bars that include new stuff like electronics ,books , clothing, and brands. so if you do not have any specific thing to buy, you can just look for the news and new stuff that they have.
The homepage also includes options. first option is the search bar that you use to search for , also a prime option that option is only for people who has this feature, and an option called apartment which shows all the departments and section that they have. so you can easily shop in this website.
It is so easy to buy anything from amazon website. all the product has picture and when you click on any of those picture you would find an icon called “add to cart” and that allows you to put your items in a cart that you can then buy the items or even keep it for awhile and by that you do not lose what you searched. also next to each items there is details of the item and it shows if the item is eligible for prime feature or not. prime feature allows you to get your items delivered in a short time.
Another feature they have is track order. After you made the payment , they give you a traching number to use in the same website and track your order so you can follow the way of the item until it gets at your mail. the also have the option exchange, and return.
Eman Alaggad
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Puma review by Esther Gatemba
Puma has a clean and clear website that is relatively easy to navigate. At the top left of the home page is the search bar which cleverly starts a leading sentence ‘I am looking for’ that you finish. This makes it easy to search for items, it provides a direct route to finding exactly what you are looking for. No thinking is involved here as one knows exactly what they want, style of shoe, athlete or even color. Not only is the search bar inviting, it also gives you options depending on the first few letters of your search word. The predictions come with the number of items listed/available on the site.
For my shopping experience I wanted to get women’s wedge sneakers. I got to the shoes using the main menu. The main menu is laid out by gender, age and sale. Each of the categories have large drop down menus which are broken down into more specific categories. The layout of the site did not make me think at all, I credit this to the use of a great color scheme. The categories are highlighted in red when you run the mouse over and the sub categories are red when dormant. The rest of the words are in black making the ones in red eye-catching. The left side of the site gives options to filter and narrow down your search which makes it easy to find exactly what you are looking for. Also located on the left side of the site they have reviews on the product you are interested in. Products are displayed against a white background, clear high definition pictures are used, the price and ratings are also provided for each shoe. On selection of an item, multiple images of the product in different angles are provided. A disappointment on these images is not being able to view how shoes look once worn -use of models. (The apparel store utilizes models.) Though it does not give individual products reviews it gives ratings on what other customers liked. This I think is a great customer approach in enabling a consumer to make an informed choice on an product based on the satisfaction of others.
Overall the site is made to satisfy the consumer. Puma has subtle advertisement based on the athletes they sponsor but this is not a loss on their part. Fans of these athletes can find merchandise without considering the puma branding. It does not matter who the shopper is on the puma site, everyone will be satisfied with a thought free experience.
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Review Topic 1: AE.com
As a consumer, I do a lot of online shopping. An ecommerce site that I frequent often is AE.com (American Eagle clothing). Just recently, I went through the purchasing process on this particular site and in the following I will document my experience.
First thing I noticed immediately after landing on the page, is its simplicity. First of all, the company uses a strait forward sans serif font that is very easy to read. Color also helps in the design of this website, the company’s chosen PMS color, which is a navy blue and white make up the majority of the design and give it a very structured look. Navigation appears at the top of the page under the company’s logo. Navigation is easy to understand, as described in Chapter 1 of Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think”, unmistakable words are used (i.e., men, women, jeans, shoes, clearance). A search bar appears in the top right corner. As a test, I typed in “jeans,” a dropdown list displays a significant amount of options that could aid a consumer who might be looking to purchase jeans.
So what about the negatives, well, I definitely noticed a few in scanning the landing page. First of all, above the company logo there appear to be a lot of links that include jump pages to affiliating stores, account setup, rewards, etc. I can see how this would be confusing to a newcomer visiting this particular site. If I were redesigning this site, I would move these links to the bottom of the page. Also, in looking down through the page, there are multiple links that take you to the same place. This will cause the potential buyer several seconds of thought, “Don’t Make Me Think,” describes the importance of avoiding those wasted seconds.
Moving onto the buying process. So, I navigated the navigation to a particular pair of jeans that I wanted to buy. The product page gives me a lot of really useful information including price, product details, etc. I am prompted to choose a wash, quantity and size, all very self-explanatory. Now, I can add the product to my shopping bag, and I do. A dialog box appears, stating that there is an item present in my shopping bag and I now have the option to checkout. In clicking on checkout, another dialog box appears that gives you the option to sign into your account or checkout without signing out. I chose the later, for time saving purposes. Now, I am prompted to fill in shipping and payment info. Finally, I am able to review and place my order followed by a confirmation via email. The ecommerce portion of this website is a great representation of unity in both design and fluidity of actions.
My reaction to this site is mixed, there are some elements that work very well, and some that don’t. I like the overall design of the site, including the color and font choices. I also really like the ecommerce portion of the site, it was very easy to use and didn’t require much thought. However, there are some things that I came across, that made me think, and as Krug says, it’s crucial to avoid that.
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Review Topic 1 – Dick’s Sporting Goods
The eCommerce site I chose to search was Dick’s Sporting Goods because I am currently an employee at the Dick’s Sporting Goods in Robinson Township. The item I was looking to buy is a New York Jets Dee Milliner Jersey in a size small. As soon as I entered the website, the search bar was right on top with the word “search” in it. The bar also contained a magnifying glass symbol. It took no thought at all for me to immediately recognize where I could search for the item I wanted. There was also no question in my mind as to whether or not I was actually using the right tool to aid me in getting my product.
In the search bar I typed in New York Jets and clicked the magnifying glass. Several sub-categories appeared with pictures of items that you would expect to fit inside of these categories, making the experience simple and effortless. I then clicked on the sub-category labelled “Jerseys” that contained a picture of a Jersey as well. Another sub-category appeared giving me the option to pick a Men’s, Women’s, or Kid’s jersey, again with pictures of the product. I clicked on Men’s and found the number 27 jersey I was looking for.
After I clicked on the jersey the site gave me size, color, and quantity options next to a picture of the product I would receive. Next to these options I could add the item to my cart or find it in a store near where I lived. I chose to add it to my cart. After I clicked “add to cart” the site brought me straight to my art. I could either click “continue shopping” or “proceed to checkout”. If I left my cart, I could easily get back because there was an image of a shopping cart with the word “cart” underneath it that I could click on to return.
After going through the website and ordering my jersey, I quickly realized that I didn’t think! The entire process seemed effortless and made me wonder why I would ever go to the real store again because this seemed so much easier. The Dick’s Sporting Goods site made everything obviously clickable and used words that were obvious and required very little thought. Even though the site seemed to contain a ton of information, it was very well organized in a clear and understandable way. The Dick’s Sporting Good’s website’s use of simple images and wording along with their obvious and easy to understand layout make it an excellent eCommerce website for both themselves and the customer.
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Review 1-Amazon
Amazon is an easy website to browse and understand. It is not complicated to find the search bar, since the bar is at the top of the page. The search bar has a drop down menu that allows you to search by “Departments,” such as electronics or clothing. The layout is also in a nice format. I was looking for a Speedlight Flash for my Nikon D3200 and the site came up with ones that were compatible with the camera. Amazon has a one-click buy button, which allows the person to automatically go to the shipping information if your card is registered to the site. If the person is logged in and bought something from Amazon before, then the website keeps record, and shows stuff that thinks the person might be interested in. The homepage of Amazon is well balanced on both sides and doesn’t look off. The color that is used on the website attracts the person to look at it. One thing I would change on the site is trying to block all the advertisements companies put on. I find these distracting while browsing for items. The links are pretty clear, but at times I have found myself thinking “why can’t they just have the title make the point clear.”
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Review Topic 1: B&H Photo Video
B&H Photo Video is one of the foremost suppliers for professional photo, video, and audio equipment. They sell through their physical store situated in New York City, and online through their website, http://www.bhphotovideo.com/.
Because B&H caters to a range of often gear-obsessed customers, the shopping experience is highly filter driven. The website has a grouping of categories with icons across the top of every page. The homepage consists of an almost redundant second set of pictures. Recently, I was shopping for a particular filter to fit a now obsolete camera. When searching for a product, one selects the overarching category (Photography), a sub category (Filters), and then a third level of categories (polarizing filters). After these three levels, the customer is finally presented with the class of products they are looking for. At this stage, while all the products are of the correct class, there may still be a huge number of options. This is where B&H’s powerful filter system comes into play. Because B&H is a specialty retailer, the filter system allows you to use unique attributes to find what you want depending on what you’re looking at. This system ensures that in 4 simple steps, you’re presented with a selection of exactly what you want.
From there, you can sort products by rating, selling, or price depending on what’s most important to you. Pick out a product, and you’re presented with a summary of the product, pictures (when available), an exhaustive list of specifications, reviews, suggested accessories, and an open Q&A section.
On the back end, the checkout system is intuitive and the wishlists are powerful. Getting what you want is as simple as any other online retailer. B&H’s mobile app mirrors this experience very well, providing the same fast, efficient system for finding products.
It’s clear that B&H know their products inside and out, and they use this knowledge to best design their website for customers. Their website is intuitive and makes good use of pictures. If you have any doubt what category your product is in, you can simply follow the illustrations. The visual design is very table-like – Categories are represented by tiled squares, each generally containing a picture and a label. Color-wise, the website is black on a white background, except for where an olive green color is used in the header, sidebars, and certain design elements.. This color livens up the page without being at all intrusive.
In my opinion, B&H Photo Video sets a gold standard for online specialty retailers. There’s nothing I would change about the commerce portion of the website.
Here is what I think other retailers could learn from B&H.
- Know your products better than your customers.
- Anticipate what your customers want to know, and provide it.
- Help your customers get to what they want in the fewest number of clicks, without overwhelming them with options.
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Final Review
Having finished up with looking over both our personal restaurant site and the first restaurant site I have noticed a couple things.
Both had simple and easy navigation and color palettes. So just based off the eye test they’re both enjoyable. I really enjoyed both navigation bars on the sites. We had similar looks to it with the logo hanging out in the middle with the rest of the navigation bar coming out both side. If I had stumbled onto our restaurant site it would have at least peaked my interest enough to click my way through it. Overall the appeal wouldn’t be as high compared to the last site I reviewed
I liked the textures that we used for the background of our site. It ties into the theme of the actual restaurant which is long wooden tables for a family dinning experience. The paper texture used as the background for the text gave it a nice contrast to the background. The logo I wish I would have polished up a little more and tweaked a couple things, and that would have made the site look more legitimate.
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Final Review
In this day and age a website to a restaurant can make or break the business. If the website looks unprofessional, cheap, or disorganized, the establishment will take on the same feelings in the mind of a future customer. What’s more important, a restaurant website needs to seduce and entice a future customer so much so that they leave their house to spend money there. My partner and I are learning how to do such by applying depth with textures, bright, standout colors and readily available navigation with the website for Six Penn Kitchen as our inspiration.
Our website is similar to Six Penn Kitchen because we used a similar navigation system that centers itself around the logo. We liked that the logo was easy to find and in a place that Stephen Krug describes as a “convention” to standard web anatomy in his book Don’t’ Make Me Think. We are also borrowing their secondary navigation, which is located conveniently under their primary navigation in their menu section.
What we decided to not use from Six Penn was their lack of bright colors and texture. Instead we brought in depth with a wooden floor texture and bright colors that you can associate with the heritages behind our website. We wanted people to connect our website with our restaurant style and design. The wood texture represents our wooden floors and tables. All in all our design is beginning to take a form and its a good one.
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final review
When looking for a site to review that is related to my final project, the food truck site for Soups In The Loop (http://www.soupsintheloop.com/) stood out. Since my final project is also a site for a food truck, I thought it would be good to take a look at a real food truck site and compare it to what Trey and I have created.
Red and yellow is very heavily used on the Soups in the Loop site. Each page is filled with red with yellow and white accents. The colors of the site match the colors of their food truck, which would help unify it for people who are familiar with one or the other. These colors are very commonly found in fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s, so while it does give off the connotation of food and hunger, it is not very unique. The yellow and white are used as the text on the red background of the site which makes it fairly easy to read the sans-serif text. Although my initial reaction to the color choice is not very positive simply due to preference, reading the Color chapter of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design helped me open my eyes a little bit to see the benefits of the color scheme. The reds and yellows are very warm colors, and as noted from the Color chapter, warm colors represent heat as well as motion. Heat makes sense in this case because it is a soup restaurant and in most cases soup is thought of as being a warm dish. The motion comes into play in the fact that the restaurant is a food truck, therefore moving is a big part of its success. It is also mentioned that warm colors dominate over cool colors and having a site that stands out is a good thing.
In the background of the site, texture comes into play with the company’s darker red logos and various words overlaid on the red. In the main content part of the site, the logo is repeated in different opacities of white to break up the plain red again and give some needed texture. The top of the page near the navigation is also broken up with some nice texture in the form of the yellow outline of the Chicago city skyline. The texture chapter of the aforementioned book brings up the point of using rounded corners to make the site feel more organic rather than geometric and that technique can be found in some places on the Soups in the Loop site. On the home page there are links to other pages outside of the main navigation that are displayed on images inside of their rounded speech bubble logo. The corners of their twitter feed box are also rounded off so they are not too sharp and geometric looking. This rounding is found again on their content containers as well as some images on the various pages. Overall, the color and texture is quite consistent from page to page which helps make it clear to the user that they are on the same site when they enter a new page, but might make it slightly confusing to exactly which page they are on.
As for navigation, this site does a good job at always having the main navigation at the top of the page in a consistent spot. The main navigation is slightly small, but the white, uppercase lettering on the red background still makes it easy to see. More navigation that remains consistent is also at the top of the page and links to their social media sites. I think it is convenient to have those options available to the user, but it does come off a little bit weird that the buttons for the social media are bigger and more noticeable than the website’s main navigation links. Some pages, such as the menu, have a little bit of their own navigation that is only found if you are on the specific page. Upon clicking any of those links you are taken to another page with the only new navigation being a “back to menu” button to take you back to the previous page. A good aspect about the navigation is that you get what you expect to get based on the link name that gets you there. In the Street Signs and Breadcrumbs chapter of Don’t Make Me Think, Krug makes the point that the name of the page should always be the same as the words that were clicked to get to it. When you click on “about” it takes you to a page titled “about.” When you are on the menu page and click the option for “meaty” it takes you to a page entitled “meaty” that lists all of their meaty soups. Another thing they could have added to the main navigation would be some sort of change to the link when you are on that specific page. Krug also talks about how important “you are here” indicators are and says how sometimes designers make them too subtle. While the page name is indicated near the top of each page, having the word “about” switch to yellow from white while you are on the about page would have added a little bit more to make it more obvious.
My final project, while also based on a food truck, is fairly different from Soups in the Loop’s site upon first glance. Our color palette, while still fairly bright in some aspects, will be a lot more toned down from theirs. We have a good bit of white space in ours to appear more clean and crisp and also help our more colorful graphics pop more. We are using brighter colors in our graphics to relate to the cultures that we plan to fuse together, being Moroccan and Creole. I feel that our color choice will be more unique than the typical red and yellow for restaurants and make ours stand out in the minds of our customers. We also want our site to be a little bit more simplified visually so that we can add texture with the background and graphic shapes and not be overwhelming. In a similar fashion to the way Soups in the Loop did it, our site will have a background behind the content box. This will add a little bit of depth and also make the content clear while also having a unique background design. While Soups in the Loop’s container does give it some depth, the colors are still very similar to the background, which is different than what we are aiming at accomplishing. Like them, our navigation will be consistent so it is easy for the user to go through our site without wondering how they got there. We plan to use stronger “you are here” indicators since it makes it easier for non-designer users to know what is going on as well as do what Soups did by keeping the page links and titles the same. We hope to learn from the mistakes of others as well as use some great features and ideas that we saw around the web to help make our site be one that stands out among the rest.
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Review 3
The two restaurants’ sites that I chose to explore were Franktuary and Six Penn Kitchen. I have never been to either of these restaurants and haven’t really heard anything about them before now, so I had to rely entirely on their websites to discover exactly what they were.
The first site I picked to look at was Franktuary’s. My first impression of the site was not a good one at all. The home page lacks any information at all, only displaying a big picture of empty glasses, the name of the site, a generic navigation menu at the top and their most recent tweet. Based on this, I had no idea what this “restaurant” was. In fact, it looked more like a site for a bar because of the background image. Since I was still clueless, I clicked on the “about” link hoping to be enlightened. Again, the background picture made me think it was a bar since it was of bottles of alcohol. The written about section, although it was what I initially wanted to read, after looking at it I lost interest. They seemed to have made the paragraph text bold and the headings regular text which makes it harder to read and puts emphasis in the wrong place. The fact that it is white text on a dark background only added to the difficulty in reading it. After looking through the “press,” “blog,” and “photos” pages I was slightly happier with the site as a whole. Each of those pages had a good sense of unity and balance with the content all being in the same container and being where I expected it to be. It lost some of that unity when I looked through the three location options since each one had a different way the menu was displayed, making me have to question if I clicked on the right link or something was wrong. There really isn’t much to this site or its layout, and I kind of wish there was more, especially on the home page. Even though I cannot say I am a fan of it, it does do a decent job at following Steve Krug’s list of things to be obvious from the end of the Street Signs and Breadcrumbs chapter of Don’t Make Me Think. Each page has the site ID clear at the top of the page in the same spot. Aside from the homepage, they all have the page name displayed at the top of the content box. The primary navigation is always located at the top, although the buttons do not change to display your current location. Like Krug mentions in the aforementioned chapter, the site designer made the “you are here” indicators too subtle in the fact that the only indication is the page name at the top. The local navigation shows up when on the different location pages and has the same issues at the primary navigation. As for the search option, I did not even realize it was there until I really looked for it. It is at the bottom of each page, except the home page, which was a bad choice. It is also very repetitive in that the heading reads, “Search the Site,” the search box reads “search for:,” and the button to search says “search.” They easily could have taken out two of the “searches” by taking out the “search for:” and changing the button to simply have a magnifying glass like Krug mentions is universally recognizable as a search mechanism. Overall, I was very disappointed with Franktuary’s website.
Next I searched the Six Penn Kitchen website. Compared to Franktuary’s, I was very happy with the homepage. They included a good amount of information in a way that didn’t overwhelm the page. They showed the restaurant itself along with a few photos of their food and also did a little bit of bragging. They have a nice, clean navigation bar at the top that stays standard throughout the whole site and some secondary navigation at the bottom with their location and options to contact them. Unlike with Franktuary’s site, the layout of each different page of Six Penn’s is slightly different but still stays unified by keeping the same navigation at the top and bottom as well as using the same colors and fonts. Although they also utilize a mostly white font on a dark background, it is easier to read because of their thinner, sans serif font choice and spacing. Although Franktuary’s site did a decent job with Krug’s list, Six Penn did better. Their site ID was similarly always located at the top of the page, though the page names did not reappear above the content. I did not feel that it was too much of an issue though because unlike the other site, Six Penn’s navigation bar had page names that changed to a bold green when you were on that page. That made their “you are here” indicators more obvious. When on pages like the menu, the local navigation did the same thing, which unified the design further. There was no search option that I could find on this site, but the links were so self-explanatory and the site itself was simple enough that a search option did not seem necessary.
Comparing the two sites, they both had a similar layout and balance with the top navigation being strong and the rest of the content being centered below. But based on the way each handled their design, Six Penn comes off as a much classier and respected restaurant that I would rather go to. They made it easy to navigate their site and find exactly what you are looking for, unlike Franktuary’s which leaves me with more questions than answers.
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Review 3
The website that I chose to review was Six Penn Kitchen.
http://sixpennkitchen.com/index.aspx
To start things off I would just like to comment on the colors used on this site. The grey works so well with the orange and green they used as highlight colors. I like the way the white and green text work with the grey background. Just looking at the homepage everything is clean and spaced out well, and you are able to get a clear sense of what the restaurant is all about. It’s nothing to overly complex when it comes to the designs on the homepage. They just have some photos and a couple bits of information highlighted that they feel are important. I mean it works and I enjoy it. However that’s because I am a fan of simple and clean looking designs and that’s what this site comes off as to me. Navigation wise it is pretty easy to get around the site. They have the bar at the top of the site with the Menu, About Us, Private Events, News & Events, Gallery, and Location. So as soon as you get to the site you would be able to go exactly where you need to go just being on the homepage. I did really enjoy the idea of putting up a gallery. It also the user to see exactly what you have to offer as a company and what the overall atmosphere is there. That also is another feature that allows the user to interact on their site. It covers the interior of the restaurant, the food, some of the past event, and one of their main features to the restaurant which is their rooftop. Another feature I really liked about this site was how they set up their menu. They have a sub menu that lists their brunch, lunch and dinner menus. Being able to cycle through the different menu types was a unique aspect hat I don’t really see to much on other restaurant websites. So overall I think that this website really works well. The color scheme used for it blended well together, and the navigation of the site was simple and easy. Just based off the website alone I would visit the restaurant for a meal. So I guess you could say it did its job.
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Review 3
As a child I remember choosing where we ate dinner was always determined by how much money we had, if we got a coupon in the mail or if the place was highly recommended by a friend. We were less likely to try something new unless we had reassurance that it was kid friendly and didn’t cost “an arm n’ a leg”. In other words, we typically stuck with a few favorites and never branched away from them. Now, thanks to the computer age, trying new restaurants is my specialty. In fact, my decision is solely based on good reviews from Yelp! and the restaurant’s website. Restaurant websites can be dealmakers or breakers. Consciously the user is looking for prices, a menu and for directions or hours. Unconsciously, the user is looking for style, atmosphere and organization. A poorly made website for a restaurant push me away without missing any of my requirements. To exemplify this, I decided to compare and contrast the websites of two local restaurants, Bravo Franco Ristorante and Six Penn Kitchen.
I began with Bravo Franco Ristorante, a little Italian restaurant located on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The homepage was given a scrapbook look and there were large photographs of Italian dishes. The design elements gave a warm, up-scale family vibe. The primary navigation led me to the pages they had described and it was easy to navigate, but they broke a few web design rules. They used too much “happy talk”. Happy talk, as described by Stephen Krug in Don’t Make Me Think, is wordy self-congratulatory talk that basically fills space. The problem with this is that it’s all talk and no show. If Bravo Franco Ristorante really was the best, they could show it in photographs to prove it not fancy words. Secondly, there was no evidence as to my location on the website. As Steve Krug states in his book, navigation should be so obvious that it’s obnoxious. I found that there was no indication as to which tab I was apart of.
Six Penn Kitchen, also located on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was the restaurant that earned my patronage. Just based on the site alone, I found Six Penn seemed sophisticated and modern. They did not use a lot of “happy talk” and showed a ton of images. In fact, they had an entire gallery with pictures of food, staff, events and venue. What I enjoyed most about the site was their use of current content. Krug states that using current, or live content can keep a relatively stationary site. All in all a good restaurant should have a good website.
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Trey_Review 2
For my review, I want to cover the http://lostworldsfairs.com/atlantis/ website. Immediately I found this website very entertaining mostly because of the “magic trick” they did with the code. Overall I feel like the color scheme and texture used in the layers of water was very successful, as it reminds me of an vintage comic book. The textures in the colors look almost spray painted making it very original in my opinion. If I were to feel it on my hands, I imagine that it would feel like construction paper. And if the designer was “going for that” I think they did very well and accomplished it. The text really adds to the experience making it seem like a real attraction of some sort, a tangible section of the world. I would describe it as a retro Las Vegas casino.
The navigation in this site is very simplistic. Just scroll up… and down… but I would like to commend the designer on his/her decision to use the colors of the water to break up the sites into sections. If that were not there I feel as if the site would be lacking depth in it’s construction and it would really hinder it’s aesthetics. Another piece that adds to the navigation experience is the marker on the side that lets you know where you are on the page and the occasional headliner ads through the scrolling. These elements make you rally feel as if you are getting deeper and deeper inside of this ocean and are getting close to the sea floor. The icing on the cake is the character in the middle. Even though he is not moving. The holes in the elevator are enforcing the motion that is being implied and it works great. I really thought the guy was in a elevator somehow for a few moments.
In my opinion the site is created very well because it is very cohesive in it’s design. All the factors at play really catch the viewers attention and the ease of use make It a very interesting website. This isn’t a website that is going to direct you somewhere else. It is very artistic in it’s nature and as much as I like that, I would say I wish there was more. If there were fade in’s of animations or fish swimming
about, “mermaids…. mermaids would be cool as hell”, I think that it would really put it over the top and I would probably visit the website multiple times to see if I can find anything I missed and show my friends this as well.
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Review 2
One of my favorite one-page sites that I came across while searching through onepagelove.com is called Portuguese Chimneys, found at http://www.chimneys.pedrogaspar.net/#1. The site is fairly minimalistic and is more of a display of the architectural designs of different chimneys found and recreated by Pedro Gaspar.
I was drawn to the site by its simplistic, yet powerful use of color. There is a heavy use of variations of blue for the background of each different section. As mentioned in the color chapter of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, blue is strongly associated with the sky as well as water, so having it as the background of pictures of chimneys makes a lot of sense. The chapter also makes note of the calming feeling blue can exude, and scrolling through this site is admittedly fairly calming to me. Although each section has a different tone of blue, the fact that they are each still related by their color similarity makes the design even more cohesive. While most of the site is prominently blue, the chimneys themselves are mostly white with some other small portions of color to accent them. The whites and off-whites of the chimney illustrations make them look clean and are representative of actual chimneys from Portugal. The text on the site is also white which looks quite good on the blue background. The color chapter mentions using white in this way to shake things up, opposed to having colored or dark text on white backgrounds. The other colors used in the illustrations range from yellow to beige to brown to bright red. These add to the design by distinguishing the differences between each chimney even more than shape simply does.
As for texture, the design of this site is quite smooth in appearance. Everything is filled in solid colors that work, although it lacks a bit of depth. Depth is added with shadows on the chimneys, which does make up for it a bit. The texture chapter of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design does make a point by saying:
Now that I’ve spent the entire chapter explaining texture and convincing you to add it to your designs, I feel obligated to let you know that sometimes texture is just unnecessary. Just as you might eliminate color from a design to create a specific effect, discarding texture may just be the best way to establish your site’s personality and character. (texture, 111)
Adding texture to this design might take away from the illustrations if it is done too heavily, but adding a minimal amount to parts of the chimneys might make them look a little more real. The shapes used to create the chimneys are mostly geometric, but some of the details on them are more organic which gives them some character.
The navigation of this site is from top to bottom. I like the option of scrolling a bit to take you to each section or clicking on the circles on the right hand side to pick which section you want from anywhere. It was also a nice touch to have it automatically take you back to the first one if you scroll down while on the last section. It is very easy and simple to navigate through. Having it be so simple really compliments the design since it is also very simple. Though there is not much to read, the font choice is a clean one and it is very legible. The kerning could be altered a little to make it more visually pleasing. Overall I like the way this site was made and hope the designer updates it to add more of his unique illustrations.
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Review 2: The Hipster Alphabet – A One-page Design
One new trend in website organization is the one-page design. The website One Page Love describes this trend as designs that, “aim to provide the user with enough information in a single page to make a decision and act upon it.” As with any other web layout, there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to use this style. An example of the “wrong way” can be exemplified through Michael Mahaffey’s site, The Hipster Alphabet. Albeit an extremely amusing, innovative and visually appealing site, it defies some of the basic layout principles for all website styles.
The first problem I noticed with The Hipster Alphabet is its failure to follow any sort of conventional visual hierarchy. The order of importance as I scan the page begins with the illustrations, secondly the word that each illustration depicts, next the letter of the alphabet and lastly the description. What the user needs to see is the letter, the word, the picture and lastly, the description. What makes my eyes go to the wrong items has to do with a rule Steven Krug defines in his book, Don’t Make me Think; “The more important something is the prominent it is”. The most prominent thing on the page is the illustrations. This is a problem because I have no idea what the purpose of this image is without the prior knowledge of what letter and word the picture is describing.
The second problem is a disorganization of the website anatomy, specifically the title and logo. A typical website will order the title and logo at the top of the page, then the navigation, the content and lastly the footer. Instead, Michael Mahaffey placed the title and logo at the very bottom of the page. At the very least, a title should allows appear above the “fold”. The fold, as described by Jason Beiard in his book The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, is where the content of the page ends before the user needs to use the scroll bar. The title below the fold makes me ask myself, “Am I on the hipster alphabet? Or am I somewhere else?” A user should always know on what site they have landed. While the title was the only item out of conventional order, it had unintentionally made the navigation bar confusing. I was unsure whether it was a border or a device for locating information on the page.
Despite the site’s issues, the choice of texture and color was spot on. All of the images on the page followed a distinct style that offered variety while still appearing to connect into one seamless design. The color scheme included multiple pure, vibrant hues, which harsh tones were evened out with the use of a few saturated browns and greys. While there was a limited color palette, texture was subtly applied with these hues to create a more dynamic and visually appealing array of graphics. Most importantly, the texture was never over-used; only simply added to create a more depth to the design.
Take Michael Maheffey’s The Hipster Alphabet as a learning tool for one page design. One-page designs need to follow the same basic layout conventions as any other site. They need to include a simple organization of visual hierarchy and element set-up. They also need to follow a strict color scheme and stylistic elements to enhance the one-page design’s unique flow of information. Most importantly, one-page designs need to have easy to understand and usable scroll and navigation devices. Lastly, remember: you need to provide a user with enough information on a single page to inform its target audience.
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Review 2
After burning through page after page on the site onepagelove.com I have found out that I am rather fond of a well done one page site. One example of this would be http://www.seattlecidercompany.com, aesthetically it is nice to look at and it’s easy to navigate. The nice part about this site is that you can either scroll your whole way through and enjoy some of the animation they have going on, or you can click the links that will jump you down to the lower sections. On top of all of that the color scheme they chose to work with really helps fuel the page. With going with a lot of white space the colors they do use tend to pop off the page, or really accent important information they are putting forward. They also have a couple scroll over features that I didn’t see on other pages. An example of this is whenever you scroll of the photos of the founders it brings up a brief bio about them. I enjoyed that rather than having to click it and it take me off to another page. It helps the flow of the page keeping it like that. So in conclusion I would have to say that this site does a lot of things right. So moving forward if I were to put together a one page site I would certainly look to this page as an example of what works and what doesn’t.
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Review 1: Freshtrends
Thanks to the wonderful worldwide web, shopping for specialty items such as body jewelry has become a much simpler task. Before the appearance of ecommerce stores, (such as amazon or eBay) searching for a unique good meant driving around town, often to many different stores only to maybe find the item you desired. Now the search can be in your home while wearing pajamas and your item is only a few keystrokes, a simple click and $7.95 worth of shipping away.
While piercings are becoming increasingly popular, it’s still difficult to find quality jewelry at a reasonable price without going to a tattoo parlor. Thus, I did some “googling” and came across the website, freshtrends.com. Fresh Trends is a website that sells all types of body jewelry for both men and women. I was interested in finding some new dangling belly jewelry and clear retainers for my nose piercing.
Upon arriving on the site, the first glance was clean and pristine. The logo and site name was on top and the navigation bar was underneath. There were highly colorful ads and all of which looked clickable. But with a second glance, I could see the site was going to have its frustrations. The navigation bar listed each type of piercing for which they catered in addition to two puzzling tabs one labeled “gold” and the other “jewelry”. Wait, what? I thought I already was looking at jewelry? And gold? Couldn’t all the piercings come in gold? It seems like a subcategory. I hovered over the “jewelry” label. It consisted of a spew of random links. I assume a very lazy designer probably just couldn’t fit into any of the other categories. Had this “jewelry” button been before “belly rings”, I may have clicked on it out of confusion. I came across similar circumstances throughout my shopping experience. For instance, I really love UV belly jewelry, but they didn’t have an option for it so I decided on “basic” belly button rings. This ended up giving me a lot of randomly place studs. I ended up settling with a site search.
A second mistake I noted was the overwhelming amount of labels and links offered once I left the home page. The sheer amount was dizzying. Just underneath the “Themes” category there are 40 different links, many of which only led to one or two different items. A worse crime was that many of these links were categorized incorrectly. For instance, the category “style” had the underlying labels of “basic belly rings”, “logos”, “belly chains”, “add-a-charm”, “eternity” and so on. “Style” is such a broad term I feel it could stand for anything. Plus, they already have a category labeled, “Type” which to me means almost the same.
So why do these little mistakes make a difference? Think of it this way; a shopper at supermarket is looking for a particular brand of cat food. Their goal is to go directly to the correct aisle, pick it up, throw it in their shopping basket and proceed to the checkout. They don’t want to go down every single aisle in the store or have to ask somebody. If they do, they become frustrated. They may even feel stupid, because they can’t find something as simple as cat food. You can now almost guarantee, this consumer will think twice before coming back for cat food. Just like in a supermarket, people do not want to have to search the site or wander around aimlessly to find what they want. In conclusion, the site isn’t a gem, but neither are any of the other body jewelry sites. People are going to either have to muddle through the site or travel to a tattoo shop.
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Review 1
Whenever I use the Internet, ending up on online shopping sites is one thing I can rarely avoid. Although I almost never end up making a purchase, I can’t help but be constantly searching various clothing and jewelry websites. At any given time my laptop will have at least five tabs open with different sites pulled up with items perpetually waiting in my cart. (Right now I have three different windows with seventeen different tabs, featuring all different fashion sites.)
The site I chose to look at for this review is one I frequent often called baublebar.com. Bauble Bar is a jewelry website that I happened upon by accident. The site stood out to me from the start because of its clean, chic design. The site itself uses minimal colors for its background and wording as to not distract from their usually colorful products. Aside from the black bar at the top with white lettering, the background is white and the letting is black. They add some color in the bright turquoise, greenish yellow, and fuchsia details such as the many links that only show the colors when you hover your mouse over them. Their typefaces are clean and modern and make the whole site appear very professional and classy. Aside from the site’s appearance that I was obviously taken by, I hadn’t thought too much about the way it was designed in the way I do now after reading the first part of “Don’t Make Me Think.”
To test if Bauble Bar required me to think while shopping, I pulled up the site and decided to look for a statement necklace to pretend to purchase. As soon as the site loaded, I instantly could see the menu bar featuring the list of different types of jewelry. I hovered my mouse over the ‘necklaces’ tab and a large drop down box popped up featuring the names of different types of necklaces along with photos of two seemingly random ones. I easily found the statement necklace option that turned fuchsia when I hovered over it and alerted me that it was obviously a link. Once I clicked on it, their large selection of statement necklaces appeared. Most were pictures of the necklaces on the plain white background that switched to a photo of the same necklace being worn by a model when I hovered over them. I liked that feature because I didn’t have to actually click on each necklace and go to a new page just to see what they would look like on someone. I decided to pick a pretty necklace that was on sale and clicked on the picture to take me to the product page. Once there, it was very easy to find the ‘add to bag’ button along with color and quantity options. They also had expanding information on the description, size and materials, and delivery and returns. Once I picked my color and pressed ‘add to bag,’ a drop down menu showing what was in my cart appeared in the top right corner of the page stemming from the ‘shopping bag’ link in the top black menu bar. It only stayed for a couple seconds before disappearing though, which was slightly confusing since I only wanted the one item. I can imagine it being a good aspect if I had been wanting to just continue shopping without having to press the back button a bunch of times like on many other sites I frequent though. To proceed with the order, I clicked on the ‘shopping bag’ link and this time it took me to a new page with the checkout ability. I stopped there before I could spend $20.
Overall, I found the shopping experience on baublebar.com fairly simple. The design made it quick and easy to find what I was looking for. Nothing was too crowded and I didn’t really have to think very much at all. A good design like that makes it fun to fill up my cart with stylish items I really can’t afford to be buying.
-Emily Brosko
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Final Monthly Review
For this review I have chosen to compare my groups website, Ethel’s Laceups, to the website we got our inspiration from, Walk Over. Walk Over’s website for antique shoes is a very clean and well set up website. Everything is to the point on where the buyer would want to go and how easy it is to navigate through the website. Very similar to my group’s website, the home page is set up the same with a slideshow of shoes, a textured background, and drop down menus for easier navigation. The color usage of Walk Over is very precise to the products they are trying to promote on their website. The whites, light browns, grays, and blacks really give the website a vintage feel to it. They also stay consistent with their color choice through out the whole website which make it look more clean to a buyer’s eye. The colors also compliment the shoes that Walk Over is selling. Walk Over’s website does use a bit of texture through out their website. They use wood panelling which is really apparent in their homepage, as it is the background for their slideshow, and then very subtly through out their website behind a faded white background. In comparison to my group’s website, we chose a similar layout and stayed consistent with our colors throughout our website. We also used a drop down menu for easier navigation for the customers we were trying to sell to. We did use a texture for our background, which I thought complimented our website and also really helped catch the eye of the specific target market we were trying to build the website for. I believe our website will stand out because of how well the navigation is set up and also how the website is designed for our target market. We set up the website so that we would be able to catch the eye of women around our age, which is 18-25, and I think we were able to do that pretty well.
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monthly review 4
For this review I chose walkover.com. I have heard of this website previous due to my cousin who is a vintage clothing designer in LA but then I came across this website when I was looking for vintage shoes inspiration for our Soley Shoes website. Walkover was started in 1758 by the Keith family shoe makers. The main thing that I liked about this website is the fact that they pride themselves on being made in the United States even to this day. However, they didn’t start making women’s vintage shoes until the 1990’s. The website has a color palette that is definitely vintage, simple and clean. The colors they used were white, black, a rust orange and a tan. The color palette never takes away from the shoes themselves. When you hover over a shoe there is an orange box that shows up that says the name, price and view details where you can click to view more and view the shoe bigger. The shoe photographs themselves are on white background and are on their side and gives emphasis of the shoe. That was the idea we had for our shoes was to have a white background. Through the website there is a type of wood paneling texture as the background. I think wood makes it feel more vin gate because it gives it a old feel and appearance. The site was easy to navigate though and can easy find things quickly. There was a drop down navigation bar at the top as well as a footer with links. Overall, the site was well composed, classy and detail-oriented. After looking at this site think we could add some things to make it look more classy. I think our site displays vintage more.
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Monthly Review 4
When working with this final project we chose a website called Walk Over. We had a lot of inspiration with this site. We chose to do a slider like the site. We also tried to take the photos like they did. The color schemes were similar; we chose colors that looked older and flowed together. The shoes pictures were a success. Our site was very easy to get through everything had something linked to everything. The site was very professional looking and we wanted our site to look like that. The colors of the site were consistent with every page and they looked like an actual site. The only thing that should have been changed was the slider to make it more consistent with the rest of the site. This final project was very interesting.
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Monthly Review 4: Us vs. Them
For this final monthly review we were to choose a website that relates to our final project, and compare how much better it is than our project turned out. Our project, dubbed Kicks for Cause, is a charity foundation that takes gently used shoes and sells them at a reasonable rate. All of the proceeds go to a different charity that is rotated through each month. If we had more time, we would probably implement a fun contest sort of thing where, if you donate a certain amount of shoes, then KfC would give out rewards for cooperation.
The site I will be comparing to is toms.com, a well known charity organization.
Now, at first glance, I notice that the layout for our project actually turned out very similar to how toms is laid out. We unfortunately did not have enough time to do as much as toms, but with what we had we were on a pretty good track to an ok website. Both sites showed a very simple color palette, and navigation was also quite easy to use. Both sites also contained mostly images,with only bare minimum text to explain what is offered.
Time was against us for this project, but I feel like we could eventually have a website as visually pleasing and usable if we kept working on the KfC site.
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Final Monthly Review – Frye Company Vs. San Fran Kicks
For my final monthly review, I decided to focus on the Frye Company site to evaluate and compare to my group’s site, San Fran Kicks. One thing that stands out of Frye’s site and is something we chose to adapt to our site is the use of subtle colors and textures coupled with large images that can speak for themselves. Frye does this with full screen width images of models wearing the products in eloquently designed settings. Text is then super imposed over these images to highlight products and special offers. As you drill down into sub pages, however, the Frye site reverts back to more traditional grid based layouts.
Color wise, the Frye site is very subdued aside from the images. The sites text and header is composed entirely from black and shades of brown that combine to give it an earthy, rustic tone that generally matches it’s products. San Fran Kicks, on the other hand, uses mainly black and white with an orange for accent the more modern, active type of shoe we are selling.
The navigation on Frye is one area I think could use some work. I feel it tries to do too much without properly separating areas. Customer options, information about the company, and product navigation are all stacked on top of each other in horizontal nav bars that don’t follow any specific grid from one to the next. That being said, it does provide links to a ton of content in a relatively small amount of screen space. San Fran Kicks, on the other hand, does slightly less but more clearly with its navigation. It features only two horizontal nav bars, one for customer info and the about page, and one for product categories. The product one is, as it should be, much more prominent and draws the users’ eyes. The other nav bar is kept to a corner where it can be seen by any user seeking it but doesn’t interfere with the balance of the layout in any way.
One area where I think the two sites are rather similar is texture, especially when it comes to shape. Both sites use hard lines with only occasional shadowing to make sharp squares and rectangles to form there layouts. This does different things to different styles. For instance, in Frye, this layout design perpetuates the bold, rustic, almost regal design of the site, especially combined with the subtle rough grainy background texture. The San Fran Kicks however, these hard shapes emphasize the clean, sharp design used.
Overall I think Frye has a stronger aesthetic. The design never seems unsure of itself as San Fran Kicks does at times. On the other hand, San Fran Kicks does a better job of guiding the user around the site. The cleaner design and more simplistic navigation means the user is never lost when they just want to look at shoes.
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Monthly review 4
While creating our shoe site, our concept of a socially conscious company that gives back to the community made us immediately think of Toms shoes. Toms.com uses the color blue as an accent throughout the website, with a clean white background. This helps the pictures to come to the forefront. Their pictures, especially their image scroller on their homepage, help show the story of giving that Toms is trying to convey. On their products pages, all of the images of their products are on a white background, which help the products pop from the page, drawing your eye to them and minimizing distractions while browsing.
Toms is all about giving back and social consciousness, and they highlight this focus by placing their “One to One” giving program on the main menu bar, as well as a link for stories and videos of people they have helped. They could have placed this information lower on the page, or in a submenu, but by placing it right alongside the shoes they are selling, they let a visitor coming to their site know that this is a primary focus of the company. They also highlight other socially conscious companies and products through a marketplace tab on the main menu that is a tannish color, which helps it stand out on the menu bar.
Overall the website is very easy to navigate. Links are easily recognizable and intuitive. The top menu stays in place throughout the site with their logo branding the page to remind you you are still in their website. Each subpage has either a picture or text that tells you were in the site you are. At the bottom in the footer are all the main link for their pages, with their social media icons colored a blue to tie them into the site nicely.
We attempted to take some of Toms website designs and incorporate them into our shoe site. We placed a link in the navigation to highlight that we were focused on giving as well as selling shoes. Keeping our logo prominent throughout the site was also important, though we should have enlarged it some. We also tried to have a simple, elegant design to highlight our products, photos, and our mission. To improve our site, placing all of our products on a simplified background, or a background color to match our site would help the shoes not get lost in the page amongst other shoes and products. Overall I think the spirit of our site matches Toms, but needs improvements before it could be taken seriously.
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Fuss: Final Monthly Review
For my final review, I will be comparing the website www.nike.com, the official Nike website, with my groups final website project, JNS Shoes With a Story. I will first discuss the Nike website’s use of color, texture, and overall navigation. Nike’s use of color, actually ties in a bit to their navigation. The sites color in general, is a light grey and white, with a lot of white space around the area that showcases the shoes. This use of white space gives a very clean feeling. On the sidebar, there is a section for the user to select the color of shoes they would like, which navigates them to a page containing shoes only on that general color, which I found to be an interesting use of navigation. Other than the texture of the shoes themselves, the site does not have much use of texture. The lack of texture adds to the clean feeling of the site as a whole. Some of the imagery used in the site, does differ from this lack of color and texture, with well shot high definition photos that are vibrant both in color and texture. I found the navigation of the site to be of a very high quality, and extremely user friendly. The top navigation bar is easy to use, though I had a problem with the drop down menu staying dropped down no matter what. Other than that small problem, the navigation was very smooth and usable. When being guided through the content, I felt as though I knew exactly where I was going and what I needed to do to get to the next step and purchase the pair of shoes I was looking for. I only ever felt a slight bit of confusion when I would first go to the “men’s” “women’s” or any other category page because they were first covered in pictures, though I quickly found my way to the shoes. Once finding the shoe I wanted, using the cart was very easy.
The Nike site has a somewhat similar feel to the Nike site, as both go for the clean and usable feel. I believe our site would stand out from the main Nike site due to our use of color. The large pictures that we used on our homepage were also very similar to the Nike site itself. Our site definitely lacks in functionality in comparison to the Nike site, but if we were to make this site into a real business, I believe that we would be able to use Nike’s site as a guideline to make our site very functional and successful while still using the quality and clean feel we were looking for.
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Monthly Review 4-Zachery Calloway
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.
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Final Monthly Review
Brandi Calhoun
www.shopruche.com
For the final monthly review, I chose an online store called Ruche. My group actually found this website at the beginning of our project and was going to use it as a vintage-feel inspiration, but came up with other ideas. Though this website offers other products besides shoes, it has a very vintage feel to it, which was one of the ultimate goals of our final project.
Ruche uses a very pastel, pale color scheme throughout the site. The majority of the background is white, but with hints of some peach and turquoise to make it pop. The “Ruche” logo is a vintage-y script font with some pale leaves in those colors behind it. This scheme makes the website simple, yet attractive.
There isn’t much texture to the website, except for the leaves here and there. Overall, it is a pretty “flat” website; no shadows really, or dimension to any specific parts. Also, the navigation is pretty simple. The main navigation bar gives you multiple options, like new arrivals, clothing, shoes, and accessories. Under each category are also sub-categories to help the consumer find exactly what they want. It is easy to get to the shopping cart, located in the upper right hand corner. It even offers a rollover of the shopping cart, so that you can glance at what you have put in there so far.
One thing I noticed right away about their website that we fixed on ours was the inconsistent background for all of the shoe images. They range from a neutral tan-gray to white. We made sure that the white background in all of our shoe images remained the same through the photoshopping. Also, our website could be a little bit more organized when it comes to types of shoes, or colors of shoes, since it is primarily women’s vintage shoes. Some of the font on both websites is a little bit small, which may not be a huge problem, but may help older customers a little. Overall, I think our website turned out to have a very vintage-feel to it and looks very clean and easy to navigate. We could have some extra options, like Ruche has, including a blog, a search bar, a sort button for the shoes, sub-categories, new arrivals, etc. Our website does, however, have a little bit more texture to it and has more dimension; shadows, outlines, etc. But for now, I think our website stands out for the most part. It is different, clean, attractive, and easy to navigate.
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Monthly Review 4
I feel that http://www.sneakerhead.com/nike-retro-lifestyle-shoes-p1.html is similar to our website. It takes vintage sneakers and refurnishes them to re-sell them to the public. The colors are very neutral to the eye. Mostly black which makes it easy to look at and the textures on the wood paneling add a sense of style to an other wise solid background. It looks very organized. It has all the categories on the left hand side, which makes it easy to fid the brands you are looking for. Bu also organized in much broader categories across the top if you have no preference.
If you search by a certain brand, you can search by your size. When you clock on a shoe, it has a pretty brief description of the style of the shoe. The check out is very clean an organized and nice to look at. It also had this really cool thing called sneakerfolio which took you back through past sneaker releases which I thought was interesting. I think if we had the time, something like that on our site would have added something more to look at and made the customer stay a little longer.
It similar to our site, because the site we produced was a company that refurbished nike shoes to re-sell. However, ours is a much more concentrated version of that.
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Monthly Review #4
For our final shoe project, the site that I looked to for our layout was none other than http://www.allenedmonds.com/ it was one of the sites that I talked about in the last monthly review. It’s use of dark colors and minimalistic feel was what attracted me to it. The dark colors, gave the site a mature feel, which I wanted my site to be like. The layout is pretty clean, which I liked a lot. It has the basic everything that a site needs, which is the logo in the corner that will connect the viewer back to the home page, a workable search bar, and a indication of when a consumer buys a product, he/she will know how much is in the “shopping bag”. And at the bottom, I guess you can call it the footer; there is a list of links that will show you to each page, without having the consumer try to find the page, through buttons.
The only texture, isn’t from the structure and base of the site, but by their products, and imagery. The imagery used are rich with the colors of nature and the patterns that decorate the shoes (clothes and their other products also makes up the texture) makes the site more interesting.
The search bar of JNS is not as complex as theirs, Allen Edmond’s search bar actually extends and gives you options when you start typing (almost like google), which I think will really help a consumer, if they’re searching for something basic, like ‘dress shoes’ different options pop up giving the consumer a range to choose from. My only concern is that the product page, isn’t really as attractive as the homepage, perhaps it’s the drop down field, or the surplus of information, but if I was a consumer, being enticed by the mature homepage, getting to this point in purchasing, I think I would feel a little disappointed honestly. They had a theme going on, and the feel of the product page, just feels cheap and completely lacks luster.
Past this point, once you add it to your bag, I think it’s really neat that once your cursor rolls over the shopping bag icon, a clear picture of the item you put there, and information, along with the price, and total, and quantity will be shown, and I feel that, it really gives the consumer an idea on what they are purchasing, and the maximum products you can really see is two, and the rest they tell you that it’s in the bag. In my opinion if it was only going to show you two of the products, then I think the feature is unneeded.
For JNS, I tried going for a similar feel like Allen Edmonds, we used the same dark color concept and structure, except instead of using a golden color like Allen Edmonds, we instead used a dark navy. Our site stands out because our shoes are bright in color, and the colors of the shoes doesn’t really clash with the site’s dark colors either, together with the site, it actually feels unified, it doesn’t feel cluttered or overwhelming. Our site in comparison is much simpler in comparison with Allen Edmonds, it has a structure that can handle additional shoes, (even in odd numbers) it’s a relatively clean and simple site, and that was what we were going for. Allen Edmonds, might just be a tad bit overwhelming, but they organize their information and options in a way that the consumer can understand and navigate. Consumers will like JNS for simplicity and easy navigation; it’s straight to the point, clean, and simple.
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Final Monthly Review
The website I chose that was related to or final project is Vans.com. The overall feel of Vans and the company we created are very similar. I feel like our website, because it uses background images and uses colors that compliment them, has better unity than the Vans sight color-wise. I also think because we use scenic background images that it gives the sight an overall better texture. The sites are similar in that we use very bold type and Vans uses many bold shapes throughout the site. One element the Vans sight does very well in is navigation. The nav bar has a large drop down when you scroll over “mens”, “womens” etc, that shows all the sub categories and a “shop by” option all without going to another page. Whereas our site you need to click on Mens or Womens to see the products. All in all the Vans site’s navigation makes up for its bold, blandness, where our site is the opposite.
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