For the third monthly review, we were told to analyze two different shoe company websites and compare how well design elements and Krug’s “five important things” are used. There were six different websites we could choose from. I ended up choosing zappos.com and thefryecompany.com simply after looking at their home pages. There was such a stark difference in the two sites I figured that finding stuff to compare would be easy. Turns out, in my opinion, I was right for once.

Zappos.com is the amazon of clothes, shoes, etc. From the homepage you can see how clean and organized the website feels. As you browse through some of the pages; the menu, search bar, and logo are at the top of the page. On the left side of the page there are also some subsections of some of the menus, which I think is nice. If I simply want to look at women’s shoes, I can easily click on this instead of using the menu or the search bar. The search bar worked surprisingly well for me. Like Amazon, the search bar will attempt to fill in your search for you. The search bar also accepted some pretty vague words; I was shocked that it accepted colors as a search for some reason. Once you decide on your search, the items pop up and, from there, you can narrow your search down via the “sort by” button or by the left hand subsections (which have now changed according to your search). Overall, it is a fairly straightforward shopping website.

Thefryecompany.com website is a lot more design oriented than zappos. The first thing you notice on the homepage is a rotating set of photos of people. Okay now, I realize that this is in fact a shoe/accessory company. But for some reason these photos threw me off a bit. They were highlighting the people wearing their products instead of just showing off their products. One thing that really bothered me was that, when you try to refine an item you’re looking at, there’s not really a clear indication of where the options are located. Turns out, you can find it by clicking on a little upside down arrow (carrot, whatever it’s called) thing. I did not even notice this the first couple times I tried narrowing down my searches. This website, while pretty to look at, made me a bit annoyed when I tried to do simple things.

Both of these websites are actually pretty good in their own way. They each have the basics: a menu that follows you, a search bar, a nice theme/color scheme, and good sectioning of items. I did prefer zappos.com a lot more than thefryecompany.com though mainly because I feel like it took zero effort to find exactly what I was looking for. I suppose I just prefer function over style.