ARTM2210 Intro to Web Design
Just another Intro to… siteArchive for Spring 2013 a
Monthly Review 2: Paige Neat
MONTHLY REVIEW 2:
I chose to observe the Carlos Sousa website for the second monthly review. The site uses both texture and color to emphasize its contents. The navigation on this website is crucial and creative. Multiple design elements make the site easy to scan, read, and understand.
The first screen on www.carlosousa.net portrays great usage of texture. Beneath the text and other contents is a subtle map. The streets and text of this map become a pattern since the map views the ground from a distance. This pattern provides texture for the website.
Another screen on this site features an autobiographical segment on Carlos Sousa. This page has a slight texture as the background. This texture consists of multiple shapes fit together. Though this pattern is not bold, it provides dimensional texture for this portion of the website.
Sousa’s site also utilizes color to achieve a successful design. A simplistic color palette was used. Black, white, and various shades of green were chosen to form a successful color palette for the entire website. This choice was successful for this site because it emphasizes the subject matter. It also brings each page together with unity.
Since Sousa’s website is a single page site, the user must have an efficient way to navigate between sections. The first screen does not explicitly say what to do to get to the next portion of the site, but the scroll bars are brightly colored to draw attention. I found that this was somewhat confusing at first, but the top to bottom scroll bar was effective at properly navigating to the next portion of the website.
Multiple design elements make the site easy to scan, read, and understand. The website exemplifies a grid design. The separate boxes on the site contain various information, and the grid is a useful way to organize this content. The site also shows unity through its simple color palette and similar shapes. Rhythm is also visible on this website in its textures. All of these elements come together to form a good design.
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Bi- Weekly Review
For this Bi-Weekly Review I chose to do Jiouhe single page website. When I visited the website I knew it was a single page. At the top of the website where the header is there are buttons one is a logo that looks like a tree, then there is a service, team , project and contact button. The background is all white at first and then the name shows up in grey/ light pink color, then it says scroll down/key down in a yellow font. As you scroll down different colored circles appear slowly, each one has a different text with it. At first, its pretty much all over the place but when you leave the service part its takes you to the right to start introducing the team. Blue diamonds appear and as you scroll down the diamonds flip over so you can see pictures of the staff its starts out to the right and then slowly changes to the left. Once again it takes you to the right to show you their projects. The way they have the projects set up is on a timeline moving from the right. A light coral color box highlights the projects for every month. It scrolls to the right for their contact information in light pink. I really enjoyed looking at this website it is a very fun single page website. Every time you would scroll the buttons at the top would be highlighted with a pink box so you know what your looking at. The colors worked very well and they gave you a sense of direction.
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Jack Threads website review
Jack Threads is a clothing site for men who want to dress nicely for less. With tailored clothes and inexpensive shoes, Jack Threads is rarely visited without a purchase.
You are required to sign up, which is usually an issue for me, but they show examples of a what’s inside and it’s enough for me. They have the option to sign in with Facebook and that tends to make the process easier, but I chose to be less public went for the e-mail sign-in.
The tabs are straightforward. Clicked tab is highlighted light grey with the others in dark grey. Each tab page has content to scroll down. Each following option is dominated by Imagery and a small amount of info indicating a sale or designer. Lots of transparent boxes with easily readable texts that don’t take away from the images. They almost do too good of a job of enticing you, I’m scrolling down and I want to click on watches under $25 but right under it I see shoes for under $30 and I have to decide. Too many options works out in their favor because I would have ended up buying both. All I had to do was enter credit card info and shipping address and I was done, they already had my info when I signed in. I downloaded the app, which they advertise on the side of their page, and now I never have to log in and they continue to steal my money with addictive products.
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Shopping On Amazon
I recently visited the large commercial website Amazon.com. On this website, an individual can find almost any product they want. From books, electronics, movies, and CD’s, the website can safisfy hundreds of commercial consumer needs. In my opinion, the site is very useful for online shopping. Amazon is easy to navigate, narrow down your products, and eventually make the purchase.
Today I was shopping for rare, hard to find movies and DVDs. First, I typed in the search bar the title of the film I was in search of, titled The Man From Nowhere. Even without narrowing the search to “Movies” the first on the list was the DVD I was looking for. The website even goes as far as to recommend other products that may interest the buyer, further provoking the consumer demand.
Shopping online can be a fun and interesting process. A website such as Amazon contains hundreds of thousands of items consumers can buy. The site provides a detailed description of the contents and even has sophisticated package tracking systems. Since sites like Amazon have so many products, the creators thought of a sophisticated way to find the exact product, or model you are looking for by copying and pasting the barcode in the search engine. The search engine I found was easy to navigate, with many advanced search options that make it easier to find your product faster.
Creators of websites such as Amazon are even smart enough to write a program that recommends similar products to online consumers, increasing sales and time spent on the website. When adding the item to the cart, you are offered different options such as, add to wish list, or add to cart with free two day shipping, and other such offers that persuade a sale. Online shopping is becoming so sophisticated, yet so easy, that in years to come, strip malls will be a thing of the past.
Nick E.
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Monthly_Review
For my monthly review I have chosen to analyze newegg.com. The home page is very clean, sporting their logo in the upper left along with a search engine. To the left it has a categories table listing all the different categories of items that they sell. The eye catcher here is in the body of the page where newegg has done a wonderful job to catch people’s eyes. There is a slide show on top showing sponsored ads and deals they have, and below that they have their “Shell Shocker” deal, “Featured Daily Deal” and their “Eggxtra! Eggxtra” deal. They have a great use of specialized fonts and use of bolding to make certain words stand out amongst the pictures. The “Eggxtra! Eggxtra!” deal is a cleaver play on words that plays into their brand and I personally feel is easy enough to understand what they are trying to say, ‘extra’. Two helpful little tables they have below the categories table are the “Shopping Guides” and “Shopping Tools”. Working with computer and the components that make up a computer can be a daunting task, but newegg does a great job of helping out the consumer, which could help build trust. The search bar looks and works great. Navy blue with white search boxes, it has a categorical search and a keyword/model#/item# search. I decided to search for Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors. When I started typing, I was pleased to see an auto fill feature which is nice because it’s quicker and seeing all of the other words and you type letter by letter may also lead you to other products that you did not even know about. Newegg could possibly have one of the better search queries in the business. I searched “ivy bridge” and my results show up with pictures, rating, brief technical description, any deals that go along with that product, the price, and a quick “add to cart button”. On top of those great features, to the left there is a “Narrow Results” table that can help you pin point the exact model. Since there are so many variations in computer parts, they’ve added a 5 item comparing tool, which I’ve used and is extremely useful. It helped me make an informed decision about components. I’ve chosen to add the i5-3570k to my cart and check out, the button to the right of the picture is clearly a clickable button and you can tell since they used shading to make it seem as if it’s a physical button. After hitting in, it directs me to a confirmation that I have added it to my car and also has a “May We Suggestion” section highlighting items that might go along with the product I just added and also products tailored to me based off of past searches. Directly above the picture of the item, they have navigational buttons to lead you either back to your search query or to your shopping cart to check out. The shopping cart is one of my favorite because it has a lot of functionality to it. With this one page, they cut out one if not two pages from the checkout process. In the shopping cart you can delete an item, add more of it, calculate shipping, actually select a delivery method, and they also have a table with the “Newegg Promise”. Overall, newegg makes a difficult and frustrating thing such as technology easy as possible. The web site is intuitive, clean, and visually stimulating.
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Monthly Review Number One – OneSaleADay
For my monthly review I chose to review a site that seems to have poor design and usability, 1saleaday.com. When you get to one sale a day’s website, you are bombarded with many different items from different categories that are all on sale. This gets confusing to the user because you’re not sure where to look or what to click on. This site makes you think. You spend a lot of time wondering if you actually want to continue with the purchase of the items on sale.
When I clicked the add to cart button, I was hit with even more things on sale that had nothing to do with my remote control helicopter. Sunglasses, watches, and jewelry all compete to be put in your cart as well. To the right of the item you selected, you have the typical login to purchase area which is seen in most carts. The shopping cart on 1saleaday.com could use some simplification. It’s overwhelming even to a seasoned internet veteran.
Although the site is overwhelming for me, they do make some effort towards usability. They have a banner at the top of the page that says free shipping, which lets the user know that the price they see is what they will end up paying. This allows the user to have faith in the company. There are also colored tabs at the top of the page with different categories that the user can choose from. As you click through them, the main category is the biggest object on the page, but they still really want you to buy those sunglasses.
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Jake Niehl reviews Aint it cool News.com
Hello all!
During my adventures on the inter-webs I have found only a few things that particularly bother me. In no specific order they are the amount of cats online (they’re lurking everywhere!) and bad site design. This leads me to one of the more obnoxious websites I visit on a daily basis, because I am a masochist. Aintitcoolnews.com is home to hundreds of movie geeks, like myself, who wish to find neutral, non-opinionated solid reporting. Instead we find ranting and raving based on what studio decided to help out the writers.
Enough about that though. Let’s talk about design!
AC, as I will now refer to it, is riddled many problems. First, I’m pretty sure a commandment is “thou shall not design a site with bright orange as your primary color.” AC has a palette of brown orange, white and pale pale blue that makes your eyes scream like a monkey in a barrel going down Niagara falls. It’s just not easy on the eyes.
Secondly, AC can’t seem to understand that a site of nothing but toolbars does not make an organized layout. AC often looks like the old testament in grocery list form. Good luck trying to find a new story/update. Usually they will have a bright red outline around an updated story but good luck finding it amiss the brown orange and other colors.
On top of everything else, there is a small animated gif at the top of the page on repeat forever. Forever ever? Forever ever ever? Yes, Virginia, forever. Add in the aforementioned colors that make slick web design (apple, NHL.com, any website with any other palate) cry big crocodile tears. It looks archaic. I understand that “technically” they are a blog, but with how many viewers AC has there is no reason for poor design as such.
And since I’m such a nice guy here’s three easy ways to fix your crappy, ugly website!
1. Pick colors that are appealing. If you really like orange, how about a nice auburn orange? Or maybe still with blue and silver. Silver screen? Huh? Get it? (It’s so clever!)
2. LESS TOOLBARS. Information should be easy to access and you need to lead us through your site. Think of it more as a 7 course meal as opposed to a gas stop buffet. One makes you want more and more, the other gives you irritable bowel syndrome.
3. Finally, if you really need a gif at the top, make it go maybe once or twice. Having a constant moving image while trying to read information is about a pleasant as gasoline to the eyes. It’s a never ending twitch that burns with the intensity of 1000 dying stars.
So, to recap. Redesign your site, AC, so that it doesn’t look like ass.
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1st Bi-Weekly Review – WWEShop.com
The e-commerce site I chose was www.wweshop.com. Upon the first visit, it seems a bit busy, but the navigation bar helps a lot. It clearly defines the possible categories of narrowing down your search, and the search bar itself is simple. Possible choices are searching by superstar, product type, package deals, new items and sale items. Hovering over either one brings up a drop down menu with more specific options. Once I narrowed down my search, I got a list of products that fit my criteria. I clicked on the product I was interested in, the size I wanted, and then “add to cart”. A drop down screen came from the cart icon at the top. It had a button to checkout right then and there, or I could just continue picking items. It is very easy to find what you’re looking for on the site, and it’s also easy to find stuff you wouldn’t have thought to look for. The buttons are clearly labeled, nothing makes me think too much. When I think about it, I feel like it would be incredibly difficult for me to design a site like this. It looks like a lot of work went into it, and it was very difficult to code, but is very user-friendly.
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Monthly Review 1 – Sephora
For my monthly review I chose to take a closer look at the Sephora website. The search bar was the first thing I saw when I got to the Sephora homepage, which was perfect since I was looking for a specific item from a specific brand. My problem was that I did not know the exact name of the product; I only knew some the qualities it had. I knew the brand name and I knew they were a set of two limited edition eye shadow palettes featuring Disney’s new prequel to The Wizard of Oz. When I started typing inside the field, the search bar tried to guess what I was searching for based on matching phrases to what I had typed and products they sell. What I was looking for didn’t pop up in the list, so I put the keyword ‘Disney’ at the end of Urban Decay (which is the brand name). The two eye shadow palettes I was looking for were on my screen in a matter of seconds; nothing else popped up along with them. Before I clicked on the palettes to add them to my cart, I got curious as to how accurate the search actually was on Sephora. So this time I simply entered ‘Disney’ into the search bar; I got nine items that matched my keyword. Although nine items total on the site contained the word ‘Disney’, only two also contained the phrase ‘Urban Decay’, and the site knew that. I do a lot of shopping online and there is nothing more frustrating than when I search for an item or product specifically by brand name and a keyword and other brands pop up in my search. I love that Sephora’s website has advanced filters that show your search results and not a thing more. From here I clicked back in my browser to see my original search results again, I was only interested in one of the two palettes, The Theodora Palette, so I clicked it and was taken to the product information page. As I was looking at the picture of the palette, I saw a lipstick and an eyeliner along with it, which I did not previously know of. My first thought was that I needed to double check; I was happy to find that right below the product picture was little text filled section titled “This set contains”, and it did indeed come with those additional products mentioned. Although I had a minor question about the product, the site already had my answer right in front of me; I did not have to think about where I would have to go to find my answer or read a huge block of text, by simply skimming the product information page I found what I needed instantly. Adding the product to my cart was easy; the ‘add to basket’ action button was an eye catching bright red, opposite off the rest of the site, which is strictly black and white. When clicked the button, a pull down menu hovered from the global navigation for a few seconds showing me that my palette was indeed added to my cart. It also gave me the option to head straight into my cart and checkout. I chose to ignore this menu until it disappeared and continued shopping around on the site. This time I went to the other main search option, a drop down menu that listed all the brands Sephora carries in alphabetical order. I wanted to see what other products Urban Decay sold, and the menu made it simple to find the right place to look. After clicking on Urban Decay from the drop down menu I could choose to filter by face, skin, eyes, etc.; from each of those filters came more specific filters that narrowed down the product choices even further. I would say that overall the site is setup to allow shoppers to easily find exactly what they are looking for. I had no problem figuring out what was clickable and what was not on any of the pages. The site is simple and straight to the point; I don’t feel like content on the pages are overwhelming and competing for my attention, it is very well balanced.
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Monthly Review 1 – Zappos
Upon opening Zappos.com, I immediately noticed the search bar. Front and center on the page, the product search bar was easy to find and simple enough to use. The search button was the first to catch my attention, for it was a bright orange. The only other button on that page was the “My Cart” button. My eyes were drawn to both of these areas, and a connection was made. It was clear where I was meant to search for the product of my choice, and where it would live after I added it to my cart. After these assessments, I entered my search criteria – “Ugg boots” – and hit search.
My search results showed up instantaneously, but the first page of options were mostly children’s shoes. This; however, barely slowed me down, for I knew just where to refine my search (probably because of my online shopping problem). For a user who has never been in this situation before – a likely scenario, believe it or not – will have a little more trouble with this minor hiccup. Nevertheless, the user will find the options on the left of the page to narrow their choices and click on “women.”
Once the products page was updated, I scrolled down the list a bit and found the style of Ugg Boot I was looking for. I was taken to the specific product page, where the price was displayed in a large and appealing font, along with options to choose a different color and then choose your size. Right underneath these options was the “Add to Cart” button. It was easy to find, obviously, but I noticed that it was not the same orange color as the cart button at the top of the page. Maybe the site designers wanted it separate? I don’t understand why that would be. That is perhaps the only question I asked myself during my shopping experience. Maybe I noticed this because I am a designer, or maybe it’s something the average user questions. In my opinion, why leave that to chance?
Overall, I found that Zappos.com is an effective and easy-to-use site. I searched for the product I wanted, refined that search, customized the product’s color and size, and added it to my cart in less than two minutes. It would be difficult for me to explain how to make it easier to use. Like I mentioned before; maybe it was easy for me because this is something I do a lot, or maybe it really is that easy.
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W1 Monthly Review.
I chose The Clymb for my monthly review. The Clymb is mainly an outdoor store that has timed sales of popular brand companies for skiing, hiking, surfing, kayaking, biking, skateboarding and more. The popular brand companies change daily. The Clymb is a very user friendly website.
The color scheme of the website is black and white. It has images of the popular brand companies that show what they have on sale at that time. They have all the different categories at the top in white, bold font, along with an all sales button that drops down and you can pick what gender it is for and the level of experience. The layout is very simple.
When you are searching for a product you want you click on the image that the brand you want is on and it will connect you to all of that brand sales that they are having. For example, I clicked on the heart of winter, snowshoes, skis & more image. It will connect you to their sales and there are two drop down boxes that appear one is for view by category and the other one is view by size. For the category I put women’s ski’s. Then it came up will all the women ski’s they have on sale. I decided to go for the Kastle MX 98 twin tip skis. When you put your cursor over the skis and box pops up that says add to cart in bright blue. It shows you what you have in your cart and a picture of what you are about to order. They have ship unlimited items for just $7.98 in italic and it shows you how much money you have saved in a large font. Then you proceed to the checkout now button.
After shopping on this website I like the layout of the clymb than a lot of other websites that I visit. The color scheme is easy on the eye and the layout makes it easy to search what you are looking for. Overall, the clymb is a very user friendly website.
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Bi-Weekly Review 1- Champs Sports
For my monthly review I chose the web store owned by Champs Sports. Upon first glance of the website, I noticed a pretty busy layout, but needless to say it wasn’t hard at all to navigate through the website to find what I wanted. I would normally use this website to look for shoes, but Champs doesn’t just sell shoes, so they’ve sectioned out every brand with it’s own logo and clickable link so that the user may click on it and go to all the merchandise that, that specific company is selling through Champs Sports. For me, this made things MUCH easier because now I can just shoot straight for the “Air Jordan Logo” for example, and find the pair of Jordan shoes I want. After clicking the “Air Jordan” link, I am greeted with a nice simple way to further narrow my search results by, Jordan Shoes, Jordan Clothing, Jordan Accessories, Jordan Sale, and a Top Sellers list. So I click on Jordan Shoes, and can further narrow my results by clicking what type of shoe I am looking for, whether it be Casual, Basketball, Training, New Arrivals, and a Sale link. Considering I want a newer pair of Jordan Shoes, I Click on “New Arrivals” and can now choose between Men’s shoes, Woman’s shoes, and Kid’s shoes. I can THEN filter my results with choosing a “product style” if I wanted to, for a certain sport like baseball for Jordan cleats i.e., by size available online, by price, and by color. Again I can really get in depth with how far I wish to narrow my results. Personally, when using Champs’ website I usually know what I am looking for and can type in the shoe I want and find it instantly if it is available. But for people who don’t know what they might want, the search and filter results that Champs provides is outstanding in my opinion. It provides a lot of help with people who may be “picky” or need something a certain color or whatever it may be; Champs’ website makes it VERY easy for anyone to filter what they may want and in that case I feel that Champs’ website is very easy to use and is easy to find a product, and easily put it into your shopping cart with no trouble or confusion what so ever.
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Monthly Review 1: Barnes & Noble
After the assigned reading of Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think,” I reviewed a large eCommerce site and used his thoughts as a reference. I chose to examine barnesandnoble.com. On first entering the site, I noticed the design was clean and simple. The color palette was limited, which helps prevent the viewers from being distracted or overwhelmed. However, I do think their site was verging on being too simple and could be uninteresting to customers. From there I began to analyze the usability of the site. I searched for products by acting as two different customers, one who knew what they wanted and one who did not.
As the first, I found it very simple to use the search bar. The thinking was done for me because I only had to type a few letters before my product appeared. According to Krug, this is an important factor. I then placed that item in my shopping bag without much difficulty. My only issue was that once I hit the continue shopping button, it took me back to the main page. I find it tiresome to have to restart my search, especially if there were several items I needed in that area.
I then began my search as customer who did not know exactly what she wanted. I noticed that the product categories were not alphabetized or in any kind of order. This problem continued as I went farther into the site and was frowned upon by Krug. I believe this issue made my search more time consuming because I had to read through all the tabs. My first instinct was to look for a place that will recommend products to me. Instead of one area, I found many, including: B&N Top 100, NY Times Bestsellers, Trending Books, Best Books of the Month, Recommended, Best of 2012, Award Winners, Bestsellers by Subject, and Barnes & Noble Classics. Except for a few, small differences, these buttons seemed like nine ways to show the same items. After wasting a lot of time, I was able to find a product that I wanted.
I found the Barnes & Noble website to be decent place to search for products, but still could use some improvement. From the assigned reading, I remember Krug mentioned that customers should be able to tell right away whether or not a button is clickable. I did notice that while using the site, I would have to run my mouse over areas to see if it would light up or not. To make their site easier to use, they should make the buttons more obvious, decrease their amount of tabs and place the tabs in some kind of order. Overall, this review helped me to better understand how important it is for a website to have easy accessibility.
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Monthly Review Topic 1 – Ticketmaster
For my monthly review, I selected Ticketmaster, a popular website for purchasing tickets to sports games, concerts, and other events. Ticketmaster was helpful as soon as I logged on to the site, detecting that I was in the Greater Pittsburgh area. This automatically narrowed down the number of options I would have to go through drastically. It also had a list of popular items for my area, which led me right to the item I was looking for: Tickets to Pittsburgh Penguins games. After clicking on the sidebar option, I was taken to the options for games, helpfully laid out in calendar format with home games differentiated from away games. I selected a home game for the date I wanted and I was taken to a layout of the CONSOL Energy Center, marked of with sections and color-coded to indicate ticket availability. Highlighting a section gave a price range for the section. I picked a section and the layout zoomed in to that section. I was then able to pick my individual seat. The checkout button was nearby.
Overall, I found the Ticketmaster site to be incredibly helpful in making ticket choices. I was able to quickly make my choices, and the whole website was organized to make finding the tickets for what where and when that much easier.
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Monthly Review Topic 1 – Payless.com
For my review of an eCommerce website I decided to look at the Payless.com website. Working there I look at the posters they use in the stores and judge the layout and design from the perspective of a graphic designer, and I thought why not do the same with their website. Only in this instance I’d be looking at it from the perspective of whether or not they have a user friendly website that doesn’t make me think.
I have gone on the website often enough to see the new shoes that come out and come up with a sales pitch to tell customers, but after going back on and buying shoes myself I found myself thinking more than I really wanted to in just a few instances.
When you first open the site the first thing you notice is that they are having their BOGO sale, they have a few slides after that that show deals for women’s, mens’, and kids shoes. If you scroll down there are links to designers, athletic shoes, and wide with shoes. Seeing one of the slides had women’s flats on them I decided to go look at the flats and just clicked on the slide, which brought me to all the flats that they have and began to look for shoes that I like. Above every shoe picture there was a little tag that said if the item was on sale, the tag was red, included in BOGO, the tag was an orange color, or if it was an “every day value” shoe, a green tag. Trying to keep to the point of view as just a user I realized not everyone would know what “every day value” meant; I’d assume that because there was no BOGO tag that these were excluded from the deal but not be entirely sure. If I wanted to narrow down my search for shoes I can choose the size, price, width, brand, and color by easily selecting from the categories on the left of the page. Deciding that since it is still cold out I wanted to go look at boots. Quickly glancing at the side where all the categories were there was no clear way to choose a different style of shoe beside clicking on the link “women” at the top and going from there. I chose that and it took me to a page similar to the homepage but it had the categories underneath a slide show of deals and I chose the Boots category. I chose a riding boot just to see what the ordering looked like; it had a large picture of the item and underneath you could choose to see it in a different color and angle. On the right side of the page it had the brand name, name of the boot (I had chosen the Zoey Riding Boot) a rating of it, the sale and clearance tag with the old price in gray and new price in red. The numbered steps for you, choosing the color first, then size, they even had a chart to view, next you chose the quality and then “add to bag” button in blue with white lettering that stood out on the entirely white background. I added this to my cart and since it was BOGO clicked back to look for more. This is when I realized next to the category you were in there was an arrow button that if clicked, a menu of the women shoe categories would pop up and was easier to navigate by. After adding another pair to the cart I was ready to checkout and clicked on my cart in the top right corner and it brought me to my cart where it showed me the prices with BOGO applied and just had to choose shipping and put in my credit card.
Overall, there isn’t much color on payless.com, which I can see that it makes the shoes stand out, and for the most part it followed Steve Krug’s advice to not make me think with just a few small things in the way.
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Amazon Review
The prominent eCommerce that I chose for the first review was Amazon.com. Once I was on this website, I searched for a particular book. Locating the exact version of my product was simple when I selected the appropriate search specification options. I then placed the chosen product in my online shopping cart. As a customer, the process of choosing and placing and object in my virtual cart was thoughtless. The site was organized, with each product cross referenced into multiple search categories. This made searching for this particular literary work a quick and stress free task. Placing this product in my online shopping cart was even easier with just the click of one button. After witnessing the complexity of designing even a basic webpage I cannot even imagine the meticulous and intricate work that must go into making this process simple for customers. The simplicity of Amazon.com for its customers reflects the hard work that must be required by the website designer.
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Monthly Review #1: ThinkGeek
For my review, I chose to go on ThinkGeek, a website for the inner geek. I personally love the site. Has some great stuff at some awesome prices. I can never get enough of looking around that place. There is always something I want to impulse buy from there because everything is so cool that they sell.
Anyway, onwards with the review itself. When it comes to the overall appearance of the website, ThinkGeek has really outdone themselves.The colors are more on the dark and duller side, but their logo and the main interface that lists the items is lighter and brighter. There is some good contrast going on. It makes for some great appeal as well to attract consumers to come and shop. The font is easy to read and appears to be Arial. Even the small text is easy to read with the Arial font being used.
ThinkGeek itself is a pretty organized website overall. I decided I wanted to search for some Portal 2 merchandise, a hoodie or tee to be exact, because I am a huge Portal fan. At first, I thought it was a little difficult because you can shop by interest, but it doesn’t list every interest, and Portal was one that was not listed. In order to find it, it took extra thought to find the category closest to it. When I looked at the buttons and menus on the left hand side of the site, I kind of had a little bit of a thought overload because there are so many different little side menus and buttons and none seemed to be what I was looking for. Their buttons could be more simplified to make finding items easier.
As the book explains, buttons need to be more defined and simplified, otherwise it takes away from what we, the consumers, are trying to get accomplished and makes for some complex thought. This was what was starting to happen with me, so to avoid this, I went to the search bar and typed in Portal 2, pressed the Enter button, and away we go. The search bar itself is very good. It even pops up with a mini menu with items related to what you are searching for before you even press the Enter button using keywords you type in the box. I think that is very nifty. Also, when clicking one of the items listed in the mini search menu, it will take you directly to the page for that item. That is wonderful I must say. Takes little extra thought for me to search and click through pages of items to find exactly what I am looking for.
After finding a Portal 2 hoodie that has a turret on it, I clicked the ‘buy now’ and off to my shopping cart it went. Overall, the site makes it generally easy to find the item. However, if you do not know exactly what you are looking for, it can be a bit difficult to find the general range of items that you might be interested in. One might know he or she is looking for a t-shirt, but finding the t-shirt from the right category within apparel can be quite tedious and difficult in some cases. It can take some playing around to find where you need to go, but once you find it, you are good to go. The mini menu using keywords on the search bar is wonderful and an excellent pro to finding just what I want on the site. However, the buttons and sidebar menu can made it difficult if you do not know what category you want exactly because the item you are looking for may or may not be where you think it is.
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