When designing a website for an up in coming restaurant, it’s always a good idea to look at what the competition has to offer. I choose to examine the website for Artisan Pizza Co. (artisanpizza.com). Since I could not find any direct competition in this area for our restaurant, that offers both Mexican classics and Pizza in an MTO setting, I settled for this place. They offer MTO pizzas and claim to provide fresh, natural ingredients, as we do.
Let me start out by saying that this site has all of the anatomy that comprises an effective design. As described in chapter one of “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design,” the anatomy should include a containing block, a logo, navigation, content, a footer and whitespace. This site has all of the above, however, I do not agree with some of the design decisions. For instance, the navigation is very small and may be hard for some to distinguish. Navigation is a very important element in the design of a website and it should be dealt with accordingly. Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think Revisited,” describes the important purposes of navigation; first off, it tells you what’s there, second, it tells you how to use the site, and third, it gives you confidence in the people who built it. Other than the aforementioned navigation issue, I think the layout is fairly effective. Everything is where you would expect it to be, the site id remains static in the top left corner and the navigation is persistent throughout the entire site. Both are important elements described in Krug’s book. This and the use of similar fonts, colors and positioning, keep the site persistent throughout, an important topic discussed in “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design.”
The site uses a tetradic color scheme including the analogous colors red and orange, along with their compliments, green and blue. Chapter two of “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design,” describes this as a “simple variation of a basic complimentary color scheme.” As I stated before, the continual use of these four colors from page to page really helps to unite the site as a whole.
The use of texture in this particular site is minimal, but effective. In looking at the design, I am able to point out a few examples. The most obvious, being the use of the semi-circular shape repeated (to produce a pattern) and flushed against the left and right sides of the page. Another example is apparent in the use of the three-dimensional looking “order online” button positioned at the top of the page above the navigation. The use of shape is also apparent in the share buttons at the bottom of the page. These, and many other examples of texture, are pointed out in chapter three of ““The Principles of Beautiful Web Design.”
As described in “Don’t Make Me Think Revisited,” we look to navigation to guide us to where we want to go, whether we’re on the web or in a department store. Aside from being small and illegible to some, the navigation of this site is pretty well organized. Categories are clearly defined in the primary navigation and drop down menus are used for secondary navigation when relevant. Another important factor, as described in the aforementioned book, is the matching of the page titles to the text being clicked in the navigation; the site handles this particular issue well and ensures that you always know where you are. A couple of things that this site is missing include breadcrumb navigation, active states for the links in the local navigation and a search bar, for those “straight to the source” navigators.
In comparing the Artisan Pizza Co. site to our Pepperoni To Pinto site, theirs obviously has a lot more information to portray, which can be a bit overwhelming to the customer; whereas, our site is a lot less cluttered and more straight to the point, which could be more appealing. Also, considering the clarity of our navigation, as compared to theirs, our site would be easier to navigate and less likely to confuse viewers. All things aside, I think that designer(s) who created the site for the Artisan Pizza Co., did an admirable job. With the exception of the navigation and a few missing elements, the site is well designed. I would consider them a valid competitor.