Category: ARTM2210 Intro to Web

For this review, we were supposed to find a single page website from OnePageLove and analyze it in different ways, shapes, and forms. When looking through the site, the website I chose to look at was Kod & Form, or kodochform.se, simply based on the bright colors used for the layout. Upon reaching the site, I was very intrigued by the color and texture of the page, and think that the styles used overall worked very well. Each different section or “page” of this single page site had it’s own unique color scheme, but no scheme in itself varied too much from any other. The textures were very nice, and to the eye the site was ultimately pleasing. When it came to navigation, I was a tad bit annoyed. I personally am a sucker for different text boxes and hyperlinks that help you jump and move around on the site, which this page offered none of. There were no clickable options until you reached the bottom of the long single page site, and the only way to get to the bottom was to manually scroll to the bottom yourself. The text along with other various things confused me as well, but I came to the conclusion that the makers of the site were most likely from Sweden, which ultimately made the alternate text okay.

Overall, I think the site is done very well. I wish the navigation was easier, but the fact that the site was easy to look at makes up for it. People’s eyes have to physically meet the site first before they even begin to try to move around on it, so to me, look is a world’s more important than any other feature of a site. I think the site is a 7.5 or so out of a possible 10, with obvious room for improvement, but overall a well-done job.

I chose to review the single page site NativeSwinson.com.  My eye was drawn to this site because of it’s simplicity and nice design.  After opening up the site, I first analyzed its texture and color.  I think its use of white and black backgrounds keep the site clean cut and allows the content to stand out on the page.  The use of both black and white as backdrops give the website depth. The homepage stands out the most with its use of background images that look almost as if they were drawn in the background.  I think the use of the paint brushed drawing that change on the homepage give the site even more depth and dimension.  This is something that I think works really well in the design. Native Swinson also uses a set color palette of cool colors that go together nicely.  The choices of blues and greens give the site a serene, and nature like feel which is appropriate for the content of the site.  Overall, I genuinely liked the use of texture and color throughout this site and find that the design elements work well together.

As for the navigation of the site, I find it to be slightly chaotic.  In order to scroll through the site, you do not scroll but you have to click on the words in the navigation bar.  Once you click for example “About” button the entire screen shifts either left, right, up, or down.  I feel that not everyone will grasp this concept as quickly as I did and may be confused that you really can’t scroll and that there is no blatantly obvious indication on where to click to get to the next portion of the website.  As I mentioned above, I liked the different images on the homepage however they only appear if you click an arrow key on your keyboard. I think there should be some indication that there are more images, like with the use of arrows on site’s homepage. Another specific portion of the website that I would like to mention is the setup of the Gallery. At first, I did not even realize that the list of content on the left was even clickable. Then I noticed that if you move your cursor across the content the image changes on the right.  The problem I find with this is if you move your cursor the image changes, so I think it could become frustrating to some users that the image they want isn’t staying up.

There are design elements of this site that I find make the site easy to scan, read, and understand despite the criticism from above.  The site is very well organized with content that is clearly sectioned off, making it easy to read.  I like the simple fonts and overall layout.  I also find that the site has a very clean look, it doesn’t overwhelm you and has no clutter. Although I find that the use of the navigation bar to scroll may not immediately stand out to some users I do find that the flow of the site overall works very well.
All said and done I think that overall this site is done very well. To highlight some key points I made above, the texture and color design elements are done very well.  As far as the navigation I think the site can be improved with some minor adjustments. For example, I think that making it more clear what is clickable would be an improvement. I think making what’s clickable more bold to users will help them to more easily understand and navigate this site. Also, making it a point to display that there are more images to be viewed on the homepage would be another change that I think would improve the site. I think adjustments  on the sites Gallery portion might be something they want to consider.  I think the Gallery could be more user friendly by using thumbnails of images with their titles below them. Like I said overall I think Native Swinson did a great job at designing their website, but there is always room for improvement.

After looking at a variety of eCommerce sites, I chose to review RowdyGentleman.com as I am very familiar with it. Rowdy Gentleman is a brand aimed towards the consumers that are into the “frat” lifestyle. It has become increasingly popular in the past year and its website has evolved tremendously.

When the website first loads up you notice that is has a very sleek and modern layout to it. With the layout that it presents, it is very easy to navigate the website because everything is shown on the front page. I also personally like the black and white color scheme because then it makes all of the products pop out on the screen. Along the top of the page are the links to the different styles of apparel and accessories that they offer. As you scroll down you see a banner taking up a large portion of the screen to advertise their latest sale. Further down there are a few rows dedicated to showing off the most popular items on the website. Once at the bottom of the site there is a space sign up for the email list and a section for all social media links. The very bottom is dedicated to help, orders, retailers, and about the company.

The style and layout of the website is something that I see on a lot of websites on the Internet today. The sleek black and white scheme is almost like the status quo now for a lot of websites. Although it is used a lot, I think it works very well in this case for what they are trying to put out there. The site itself has is very user friendly and easy to navigate so in my eyes it is a very professional site.

I chose to review the website RocketJump which is a production company I’ve been following for a while.  Their simple layout of a montage at the top of all their work followed by a second section of their current shows is nice and lets the viewer see all they have to offer on one page.

The adding of a news reel, specified for them, is also nice so that we can keep up to date with their projects without going to external sites.  The only problem I have is with the title card where it says what they do TV, podcasts, livestreams and behind the scenes.  These look like the buttons to navigate the website however these are actually located at the very top.  The colors of red and grey are also tacky but that’s the company logos so I can’t say much there.

They also clearly present every button, even those at the very top  because they are always the top of your screen as you scroll.  There are no drop down menus either which can easily get annoying for some.  Then they replaced the about section for a who are we which I see as more personal.

-Charles Stockhausen

The website I chose to review was allelectronics.com. Overall the website is moderately easy to use, but could benefit from a few adjustments.
Searching for a product without knowing exactly what you want on this site is very overwhelming. You must know a keyword or else you have to scroll through a very long and intense alphabetical list of descriptive names of electronics to find what you want. When you finally do get to the shopping cart. It is organized and easy to navigate, but they throw all the information you need to fill out all at once, which again is slightly overwhelming.
The design principles on the site seem fitting for what the products are. It’s very blue and gray with hints of orange, which seem to work for an electronics site. There’s some wording in the top corner in dark red, which does not seem to fit well. And the logo, while gets the message across of technology, has a bright shadow which is a bit uneasy on the eyes. The font is very basic and fits in well. With a few tweaks, the site look could be very successful.
In conclusion, the site is functional overall, but could use a few alterations to make it more user friendly and inviting. However, for a site based around electronics, it surely gets its point across.

Brittany Mayer

RMU Sentry Media VS. USA Today Review

For my review, I decided to look up two news sites. They are RMU Sentry Media and USA Today. I am comparing them because I am part of RMU Sentry Media, and would like to look at different news sites to see how our’s compares. From there, we could either improve it, or keep on the right track.

A news site has to be designed in a way that it would be easy for reader’s to get to the section they desire to read. USA Today does this. They have all the news, entertainment, sports, and other sections listed at the top with tabs that are easy to see. As you go down, you can see the top stories and the important information that happened this week. The issue with this site would be the amount of pictures. The farther down you go, the messier it gets. There is less white space and the reader misses the content.

RMU Sentry media has a lot of white space. It also has the easy to access tabs. It’s pictures and graphics are nice and spaced apart. The problem I would have would be, that when you get deeper into the site, you find old hyperlinks that might not work anymore. Also, there is a lack of design. It is very repetitive, and lacks a lot of color that would make a site like USA Today get more views.

Both sites do a good job of getting the information to their readers in an easy way. However, while USA Today lacks in organization, they make up for it in design. The opposite could be said for the Sentry. The Sentry is nicely organized; however, it lacks color and design that could get it more views. Both sites are equally good at their jobs, and get a lot of views from their selected audiences.

After reading the first page of “Don’t Make Me Think”, I learned that most of the eCommerce websites are designed in the way that it should be self-evident, obvious and self-explanatory. People using the website should be able to get it- able to know what it is and how to use it. My recent experience about this came from gifts.com, when I bought a product from their website.

The home page of the website is beautifully laid-out. It shows very nice gifts presents which can attract the attention of the user in a few minutes. Even if someone is not willing to buy something, he would get attracted towards it and will end up buying it. On the top left corner, they have their website logo and on the top right, they have account registration, blog and cart.

Across the top of the website is the main menu, subdivided into various different categories including Valentine’s Day, birthday, occasion, recipient, category, red envelope, and personality. These categories are further divided into the occasion that you need to gift for and the gender to whom you want to give the gift. It is also include the gifts according to the age of a person. Depending upon what the user is looking for, he can easily find it from the top shopping section of the website. Underneath the main menu, they have different kinds of gifts arranged in a symmetrical way.

I was looking a gift for my brother’s birthday and eventually I found an oversize beer cup which can be personalized as you want. I didn’t order the first time when I found it, and the next time when I wanted to order I just typed the name in the search bar on top right of the website. It was very quick and easy to find it again and order it. Once I added the item in the cart, it asked me to proceed to checkout or continue shopping. When I proceeded to checkout a coupon code popped up on the screen for the promotion of their products, and helped me saving couple bucks for my order. Checkout is also very quick and secure.

I think the search keyword works the best for the website. A user can find the product that he is looking for very easily. Also, the different gifts presented as a gallery of beautiful gifts attracts people to buy their products which works the best for a website. I guess site make me think of buying more and more products from their website as they are pretty cool. I don’t think if I would like to make any change in the site. I like how it is designed and programmed with all the main buttons in the front that are subdivided into small different categories. Each category is divided in a way that it makes a user’s search easy and help him find exact what he is looking for.

The design principle and elements works very well in this website. The white background color is suitable for this site because it helps the gifts to reflect their own color and design to get more attention of the users. The alignment of gifts are also perfect. They all are aligned in 4 different columns with same gap in between. Proximity is also good in between the gifts with not too much space in between. Different colors from the gifts reflects differently all over the site on the white background.

I decided to review colourpop.com, a website that sells various types of online makeup products. I visit the website quite frequently because of the company’s reliability and product quality. The site is aesthetically pleasing and reflects the style and mood of the products they sell. It also visually captures and targets their primary customer market. Upon viewing the website and examining it in a much more thorough and complex level, though, I find there to much more to both love and hate about the website.

As mentioned previously, the website is visually pleasing. The homepage shows several tabs with drop-down windows that allow the viewer to browse through their products more specifically. They show each physical product and give it a brief description. They even go as far as showing swatches of their different types of makeup on different skin tones so people can get an idea of what it would look like on their faces. The website also has an easy checkout process which makes shopping very efficient. They also recommend other products someone might like to buy based upon what they put in their cart. Overall, the website was a solid functionality.

One of the biggest flaws the site has, though, is its cursor. The cursor on this website comes up as stars instead of the average arrow. The stars are rather distracting and they make it hard to see when you are physically capable of clicking on something or not. Also, the pictures they show may not necessarily accurately represent the true color of the product, which may make customers disappointed in the long run.

Overall, the website does everything it’s supposed to do and effectively functions the way a makeup website should.

I chose to review Target for their usability when checking out an item.  When opening the Target website, there is a clean layout using largely photos with minimal type to describe the products they are advertising.  The home screen displays the current sale along with new merchandise that just came to the store.  They break up the site easily, giving the user options such as: “categories, deals, search, my account, and cart.”  Since these are most likely the most used functions on an ecommerce website, it prevents the user from having to think much about what they are doing.  I chose to search for a “Sony a5000” camera simply using the search bar and easily clicked on the item to read about it. I then easily clicked the “add to cart” button as it was the only large red button on the screen, drawing the user’s attention to it.  When clicking “add to cart,” a menu popped up, notifying the user there was an item added to the cart along with other suggested purchases that are similar to the item placed within the cart.  The whole process, without having to think took roughly three minutes.  Even when I go back and simply search “Sony,” allowing a larger amount of items to come up as results, it is extremely simple to scroll through the page and find the item I am looking for.  This is due to the fact that they have a very simple website and the only details that draw your attention is the photo of the item and the large red “add to cart” button because they are both displayed on an empty white background.  Target leaves multiple options for drop down menus in order to specify the search but they don’t overwhelm the user because of the slim type used as well as their small size on the side of the screen.  They also give the option to collapse the drop down menus in order to make them more compact creating less distractions.  Within the shopping cart itself, they continue with the theme of using large red buttons to guide the user’s next action.  In this instance the button states, “I’m ready to check out.”  Their constant use of red and white, with black for type, stays consistent with their logo as well as makes it simple to find items the user wants on the Target website.

The website that I chose for my website review is Nike.com. Nike has always been a very popular brand and over the years have updated their website many times to keep up with standards and continue to be creative. If you are looking for a specific product it is relatively easy to find. You can first use the search bar which is easily visible in the top right hand corner of Nike’s website. If you know the exact name of the product it will take you right to what you are looking for which is awesome for quick shopping. However if you only know some of the products name or the kind of product it will give you the most logical choices from their website. As far as the actual layout of the website it is very clean and simple which makes it easy for shopping and it does not feel crowded and makes there be less thinking involved while buying. You get to focus on the product you are looking for or find something cool if you are just browsing. They have a nice and simple task bar at the top for quick navigating and then a little further down they have some of their featured products in large tiles with a detailed picture of the product to show what it looks like for the customer. Overall Nike has a very nice, clean, and simple website that allows shopping to be easy and fun for customers.

I work in-store at Forever21, so I don’t do much online shopping there. I was super curious to see if it was easy to search for an item and find it quickly, because that is often very difficult to do in-store. Instructions said to search for something I was interested in, so I chose high-waisted jeans. Instead of going to women, bottoms, then trying to figure out if they were listed under jeans or denim, I went to the search bar, and started typing in ‘high,’ and a drop-down showed up with multiple search possibilities. That made it extremely easy to find what I was looking for. Then, different prices and styles were listed with pictures. I chose one, added it to my bag, which was then displayed instantly. Then, it took me to the log-in, I logged in (using my previously saved information), then it showed me the jeans, my total, and a big red-orange ‘checkout’ button. However, I clicked on ‘checkout’ a few times, and it never took me to the checkout page. Up until this point, the site has been extremely easy to use, but now I want to completely give up on my order. It’s aggravating not being able to go to the payment page and actually buy the product. No matter how easy it was up until this point, I could very easily go find another website to purchase the jeans from. According to the reading, the user is supposed to think as little as possible, and the website should strive to be better than the competitors. However, I became extremely confused when I arrived at the cart, and was unable to check out. As the user, I completely abandoned the thought of going through with the purchase. And my mind went to thinking about a different online store I could go to for the same item. The poor functionality at the very end cost Forever21 the sale.

For this specific review, I chose to look at the Puma website when buying shoes for running. I chose a pair at random and selected to add them to the cart. Being someone who has a slight history of work with web design and the amount of different things it takes to create a website feature like this, it really is wild for me personally to think about this. The first thing that happened when I added the item to the cart was a new window opening, prompting me to sign up for the Puma website and subscribe to their newsletter. Although to some this may be annoying, in the long run it can be a very smart tactic, considering there’s probably a lot of people who follow through with the instructions rather than skipping the process. That pop-up in itself probably takes a great deal of coding to be able to perfect. The next window showed my cart, which is something that really made me think. This website along with most websites have the feature of a virtual cart, which carries specifically chosen items from page to page, keeping them in line and ultimately allowing you to eventually check out. It begins to give me a bit of a headache when I think about all that goes into this.

The cart feature definitely makes it easier for people to find and buy things they’re interested in, and probably prompts users to be able to buy more items easier and faster. I felt as though the site could be navigated rather smoothly, and was also very pleasing in it’s look and layout.

Ulta has a visually pleasing website at first glance. The colors work well and tie in to the brand as a whole, coming from an Advertising point of view. The search bar is front and center with an easy-to-decipher navigation bar on the lefthand side. The categories make it easy to break down what you’re looking for into smaller subsections. Also, when looking at the homepage it has the sales pictured in a slideshow type of way in the very center of the page. There is a popup at the bottom of the homepage (it follows and stays at the bottom even when you scroll down the page) that gives you the option to sign up for emails and future sales. The homepage is very scannable.

I used the search bar to look for the Tarte Shape Tape Concealer and placed it in my cart. The process was easy and thoughtless. The links were made obvious and once I added the item to the cart there was an option to go to checkout or to continue shopping and this was made clear with the buttons shown on the screen. There were suggested  products based on my purchase interest that made it easy to browse similar products.

Going back to the homepage, if I didn’t use the search bar it would take a few extra clicks to find the exact product that I was looking for. However, I would still successfully make it there in a fairly short amount of time with minimal thinking and question. If I was searching for concealer in general, it would be easy to find all products that fall under that category and then compare all products to find the best match for me. If I wanted to shop for products in term of brand, that would be just as easy with the “Shop by Brand” link at the top of the navigation bar on the lefthand side.

There was not a moment that I questioned where I should click or what to search for or which link would be the most efficient one to click to take me where I wanted to go. Navigation through this website seemed natural and “thoughtless”. Users with little online experience would be able to successfully navigate their way around the site to find the products they’re looking for and checkout with little to no frustration. According to Steve Krug in his book, Don’t Make Me Think, it is important for users to not question where they need to go within a site; everything should be easy and scannable. When scanning Ulta’s website, I can easily find my desired destination thanks to their good use of layout and links.