Author: sldst116

Cardello Pizza is a restaurant that could be considered competition for my group’s fusion restaurant, Slice Cream. While I cannot find any pizza and ice cream restaurants near moon, this is a pizza restaurant not too far from campus.

When it comes to color, Cardello Pizza primarily uses whites and grays, using red as an accent color. Like I mentioned in my previous review, I think red is always a smart use of color for restaurants, because it stimulates hunger. Many restaurants utilize this, however, so I think the oranges and browns of Slice Cream could help it stand out. I have always been a “light” fan when it comes to color over “dark”, so I do really enjoy this color palette and think it gives off a calming yet effective making-me-hungry impression.

There isn’t too much to note on texture for this website, though I do enjoy the pizza oven graphic that is telling me my cart is empty. I enjoy the bricks, which seem to add some texture, as well as the arrow and writing because they look handwritten, which is a nice, fun texture. Whenever you hover over menu items, the outline of the item becomes black instead of gray, so that also emphasizes texture and motion, keeping the eye intrigued.

Looking at the overall layout and organization, the website is mainly just one really long page. You can scroll for quite some time on the home page and find the entire menu, as well as the “About” section all the way at the bottom. The header of their website features their hours and address, which I think is very smart and beneficial, but the only other thing you can press is an “About” button, but all this does is take you to the bottom of the page.

The only time you are transported to somewhere completely new is when you select either “Pickup” or “Delivery”, which takes you to the same location no matter which one you pick. I think they one-upped us by having the hours and location at the very top, but I think we had a better layout by being able to select more things on the top which took you to different places, rather than our website simply being primarily one page.

I also think we could stand out over somewhere like Cardello Pizza because we have a cohesive theme and style throughout the entire website. We maintain the same design elements, while Cardello seems to just shift willy-nilly from thing to thing. Their menu is also very unsettling and seems very long and unorganized, they could have laid it out much better, and even had tabs for different items. They should have an entire new page for their menu items and lay it out much more neatly.

Overall, our website could of course use some work looking prettier, but I think our overall layout and organization beats theirs in terms of user friendly and composed in a nice manner, which could make us stand out.

For this review, I chose to compare Franktuary and Burgatory. I immediately was much more drawn to the Burgatory website, as I felt the design was much more appealing. Burgatory heavily utilizes the colors black and red, and I think the balance between these two colors is very strong throughout the entire website. I’ve heard before that the color red stimulates hunger and is used heavily for food chains, so I think it was a great choice, especially paired with black to make it stand out and contrast. This is similar to Franktuary’s primary colors used, which are white and red. 

Another example of balance for Burgatory is towards the bottom of the home page, there are three images of the same size placed next to one another. One is about ordering online, the middle is to join their mailing list to get a free birthday milkshake, and the third is about joining the crew. I was surprised to find something extremely similar on Franktuary’s website. Toward the bottom of the screen for this one, there are three images of the same size placed next to each other. They are “Franks”, “Poutine”, and “Libations”. Similar to the images for Burgatory, this is very satisfying and exhibits great balance. My one complaint with this, however, is that clicking on any of these three images takes you to the same spot; which is just the general page for the menu. I think it would be better if it took you to their respective sections on the menu.

I do think both websites exhibit strong unity. Both Franktuary and Burgatory maintain the same style throughout their entire website. They have the same fonts and design features, such as fonts and image designs, throughout their entireties. Looking at the design element of emphasis, I think the most emphasized thing on Franktuary’s website is the photo of the frankfurters found once you scroll a little bit down the website. You first see the food truck and how to book it, but then you find a very large image of some of the items. This is similar to the giant image of a burger you see when you first arrive at Burgatory’s website. I would take a page out of the burger joint’s book for Franktuary and begin with the giant image of the hot dogs, and then put the part about booking the truck, so that users see that first and are intrigued. 

In my opinion, I think the overall layout for Burgatory is much stronger than the one for Franktuary. Both sites have similar design elements, but for Franktuary, it focuses more on finding the truck or booking the truck than what the truck is actually selling. At the header of the page, you can click on “Book the truck”, a button that takes you back to home, or “Find the truck”. If you wanted to find the menu, you would have to scroll all the way to the bottom and click on one of the three images. Burgatory’s header, however, has many features including the menu, and much more. I also enjoy their rotating images that you see when you first arrive at the website because it keeps the user intrigued. 

A single page that jumped out to me on One Page Love is laluofficial.com. It was described on the website as, “Wild and colorful One Pager…built for vocalist, dancer and Latin Grammy award winner violinist La Lulu”. Upon further examination, I found that it certainly was nothing short of “wild and colorful”. The reason I was so drawn to it was due to its vibrant colors and fun graphics. There are bright blues and purples immediately on the page, along with vibrant yellows which contrast very well.

The site uses texture well when you first arrive at iit because it features images of La Lulu in polaroids, and it layers cartoonish images on top of them, such as a diamond or a smiley face. Some of the polaroids are also layered on top of each other. This gives great dimension to the page and makes you as the viewer feel as though you are immersed in a space with these images, rather than them being so static.

To navigate the page, you are to scroll up and down, as you typically would for any webpage. On the top right of the page you are able to find La Lulu’s various social medias and places to listen to her music. At the very top of the page, there is a yellow bar which has words moving from the right to the left like a news bar. It has emoticons and emphasizes that her new single is out now. This is similar to the yellow bar at the very bottom of the page, which has constantly moving text of her logo for her name, and further her brand. The constant movement on the page is very intriguing to the eye and instantly draws your attention.

Overall, I think this website is extremely well done from a design standpoint. The bright, exuberant colors instantly drew my attention to the site, and it has many complimentary colors that contrast well with one another. There is also constant motion on the page and many layers of fun images, as well as dynamic shapes, that give off great texture. Scrolling throughout the page almost felt like looking through art rather than a typical website, and though I knew absolutely nothing about this woman prior, I suddenly felt very intrigued by her and her story just by the way the website was designed. 

After reading Chapter 1 of “Don’t Make Me Think”, I learned a lot about the strategies eCommerce sites use. I explored these this weekend when I visited Lego.com.

I was looking for the Rapunzel tower build from Tangled. When I was first brought to this page, I was greeted by a Lego City Stuntz set. This took up about the top third of the page, and it had a “shop now” button that would take me directly to all Lego City sets. Underneath of this was a featured set of products labeled “Recommended for You”, but I think they were just the most recent products to be released. However, the first one in the lineup was a Lego Star Wars advent calendar, which is something I could potentially be interested in purchasing.

Scrolling down the page, underneath of the recommended sets were Bestseller, Fun Family Builds, Offers and Promotions, and Featured Sets. All of these were great and eye catching, but I was ready to look for the tower I came here to find.  Above the Lego City Stuntz set, there was a yellow bar with the Lego logo in the top left corner. Over to the right I found the search bar. I pressed it and all I typed in was “tangled”. The very first search result was exactly what I was looking for. I gathered that since it is the only Tangled set, it was followed by other Disney sets, most likely some the website would tink I could potentially be interested in. It made me laugh because the set immediately following it was a Minnie and Mickey camping set, which I got as a gift for my birthday this weekend. It must know me scarily well or something.

I could have pressed on my Tangled set to look at it more closely, but since I knew I wanted it, I simply hovered over the product and was able to select Add to Bag (or Add to Wishlist). I clicked “Add to Bag”, which prompted another screen. Here, I could select “Continue Shopping” or “View my Bag”. Since this was all I came to buy, I selected “View my Bag”. I thought it was very helpful that it gave me that option, so that I could go directly to checkout. If I did not want to select either of those options, I also could have closed out of that pop up with an “X” in the top right corner. But now, I was at checkout. It was time to whip out the credit card and give my money away to Disney Lego for a birthday present from me to me, just what any twenty-one year old would want, right?

I could see the contents of my online shopping cart on the left side, and on the right side I found the checkout options. There was a spot where I could add any promotional codes I may have, but unfortunately, I did not have any, so I clicked on “Checkout Securely”. I do have an account but in the spirit of simplicity, I chose an option to checkout as a guest. I added in my shipping information. I then proceeded to add in my contact information, along with my payment information. It was all very straightforward and I could see all the steps at the same time, which I appreciated.

I was able to checkout securely and purchase my Tangled tower with Rapunzel and Flynn Rider. What else could a girl ask for? It was all very simple and I loved the website, it was so bright and colorful and featured so many things on the home screen but when it was time to find what I wanted, it was very simple and even gave me suggestions of products after the one I was looking for, without taking anything away or seeming too excessive. All in all, I would totally recommend this website to shoppers and will continue visiting in the future.