The two local restaurants that I chose to compare were Burgatory and Quaker Steak and Lube. Now both of these establishments produce roughly the same products and have very similar dinning environments, so one would assume that their websites would be too. This is not the case.

When arriving at Burgatory’s website the eye is instantly drawn to the huge bugger in the middle of the page. This is counter balanced by the iconic Burgatory B on the left and the tabs square on the right. Beneath that is a simple description of what the restaurant is and even the daily specials are easily located and legible all while drawing your eye to it and not being to over done. The page is easily navigable with simple words to click on and take you to what page you would like. A unique way that they go at taking you to the menu page is by scrolling over the burger itself. When doing this little caption boxes pop up with unique things about their burgers along with the menu key. When you click on that, it takes you straight to the burger menu page that is laid out very simply and very similar to their actual menu in the restaurants, and located in the menu box to the right are every thing else they have to offer. Over all, Burgatory’s website is very well balanced and with layout by the use of their color palate, the highlight of their key products, and overall cohesiveness of the site.

Quaker Steak and Lube’s website on the other hand, completely one eighty from Burgatory. When you first arrive at Quaker Steak’s website, there is a huge box with smaller boxes within that. In each cube is a different navigational point of the site, and this idea works well except that each cube has to much going on. The larger one that takes up the entire top half is a changing banner with each different thing that they offer. This is a huge fault because the slides go way to fast and some may be simple, but others have way to much going on that it makes it very difficult to read. Another thing that makes the home page lesser then Burgatory is that Quaker Steak’s logo is very small and just pushed to the side. Also, at the top of the page are tabs for their locations, menu, etc, but they are so small that they are taken over by the obnoxious amount of other information. Once you can navigate your way to what ever you’re looking for, the other pages are underwhelming, and I mean very. Due to the excess of information on the home page, you expect the others to be the same but it’s not. From the menu page to the promotions page, the same exact font  and color is used but the what was chosen is so hard to read after a while that it pushes the viewer from continuing on the page. Over all, Quaker Steak and Lube’s website is very poorly laid out and the home page alone would deter someone from navigating any further. Although the majority of the website can be improved, they did do well with some aspects. The balance of certain things on the pages was well thought out followed by the use of pictures and slides. This can help draw a customer in if they can get past the awkward navigation.