Ethan Petyo

Monthly Review (nov. 12th)

For this months review i decided to compare between Dogfish heads brewpub and fatheads. I chose the two based off of similarity in the restaurants. Both have their own breweries and bottle and draft their own beers. So to start i decided to take a look at fatheads first. What i found interesting was how clean the site looks at first glance. They have in very bold visible type the address and location of Fatheads. Below that the search engine categorized by menu , beer , locations , merchandise, etc. Under that you will find their slideshow , with some very good photography of the food,drinks and establishment. when you put your arrow on top of any type on the page in interacts by glowing orange. The contrast of Orange on grey works very well , making it extremely visible and clear to read. When you click on any of the categories in the search bar at the top it brings you to a page with clear pictures and info on the beer on tap , the food thats being served or any social media or merchandising products for sale. These categories are further categorized after clicking on them. for example when clicking on “menu” it shows you a list separating wings from burgers and sandwiches , and wraps , etc. overall Fatheads is a very easy site to navigate through.
The same cannot be said for Dogfish head. right from the very start my eyes had trouble figuring out where to look and what exactly i was looking at. Everything on the homepage is set up like a bulletin board including the clutter. the search bar at the top is rather convenient , but when you click on something like the restaurant link it takes you immediately to the list of tap and bottled beer. It seems smart to do it this way because at a restaurant you would order drinks first then food. Im not sure that was the approach they ment to take but if so its rather confusing. there is so much information about their beer products on the website that it seems like overkill for them to place the entire list as the first thing you see under menu. Once you find menu on the side bar and click on it , then your directed to a 5 set list of other menus. for example it lists Main menu , kids menu , specials and once again whats on tap , and thats all you see unless you click again. However the information of the beer on dogfish’s site is rather helpful. You get a good explanation of the beer and its information (abv , Alc %). The menu is set up very nice also , and looks really well designed with all the info you need there.
Overall the design work on both sites are very good , dogfish being my personal favorite in that category however overall Fatheads seemed much easier to find information on and navigate through as well as successfully organizing everything which dogfish failed to do.