The two burger chain web sites I chose to compare were McDonald’s and Sheetz: McDonald’s because it seems to be the quintessential American fast food brand and Sheetz just because I like it.

The McDonald’s website felt kind of like a handcrafted scrapbook, with some of the lettering scribbled messily, colored circles that looked like they had been cut out imperfectly, and a background that reminded me of paper. The site is navigated by a bar on the left of the screen that expands when you scroll over it. They keep their logo in the same spot (upper left) on every page, which helps create unity. They have a page dedicated to their ‘values’ such as improving animal welfare standards and practices and making green restaurants, which helps me to understand what they’re about. Their promotion page for Spicy Chicken McBites is interactive and engaging.

They really seem to keep unnecessary words off of their page, which makes it easy to use. One thing that threw me off though was that the bottom half of the search bar has letters that are gray, making the buttons seem unusable at first. I can’t figure out why they would do this.

Sheetz’ home page only uses about a third of its space, with a giant red border around the text box that grabs your attention. Once you click on your first subtopic, however, you are taken to a very different page, with either dollar bill, asphalt street, Sheetz logo, red striped or brick wall repeating backgrounds. This design seems disparate thanks to the constantly changing background. There doesn’t seem to be a color scheme, or at least not one that’s present on enough of the pages to make them feel like part of a whole.

It also seems harder to use since the information categories are distributed across two directions, with topics going horizontally across the top and subtopics going vertically down the left side. McD’s navigation was much easier because it kept everything together. Overall McDonald’s has the better website because it was simpler and more visually consistent.