Category: Site Review

Danielle Bobish
Web Design
Prof. Ames

Review #3

The 2 websites I chose to review are Applebee’s and Texas Roadhouse. I chose these 2 because I don’t necessarily live in Pittsburgh, so I am familiar with these local restaurants through the means of their services and brand personality.
I find that both of their sites look balanced, even though they are focused on the middle of the page. The aspects that make these pages unified are their use of color, and layout. In the Applebee’s layout, they are very structured and require minimal clicking to navigate the page. Their use of color also helps create a more distinguished and unified look. The Texas roadhouse layout is similar to Applebee’s, however they have a zoom effect on images that help identify clickable links on their page. Emphasis is put on images primarily based on a scrolling gallery to give you an idea of the menu, as well as the hierarchical navigation. The layout in general of Applebee’s consists of a lot of square and rectangular shapes in nature and consists of a neutral color palette. The layout of Texas roadhouse uses an out of focus background image and then uses a lot of images as links to navigate through their page. The five important things Krug states in his chapter are clear visual hierarchy on every page, naming and graphic conventions, breaking pages into clearly defined areas, obvious clickable links and minimal noise. In these terms, I believe that Applebee’s was more successful in following a correct guideline. Applebee’s uses hierarchy navigation through its tabbed and rollover scrolls. Everything is named accordingly and has a place that fits. Unlike Texas roadhouse however, where rollover clickable images are more emphasized, Applebee’s lacks noticeable click action. Also in terms of noise, Applebee’s is more calm in a sense that it isn’t busy. Your eyes can flow across the page at a good pace without getting distracted.
In conclusion, Applebee’s is a more effective website. Good color palette, strong sense of unity, little noise, all links lead to a reasonable page. There are also a lot of extra features that help the user navigate better like a search bar, an order now roll over tab, and prices on the main page. Overall it is very inviting and fun which helps promote the atmosphere of the actual restaurant.

https://www.texasroadhouse.com/

http://www.applebees.com/?

The single page website that I choose  from http://onepagelove.com/ to explore was “The Secrets of Magic: Revealed.” This site focuses on several very popular illusions throughout the history of magic and exposes exactly how the performers deceive our eyes. I actually found the topic very interesting, the website hooked me and I learned all the magic secrets they had to offer.

The site has a great color scheme that encompasses the theme of the site well. Its use of dark backgrounds and bright titles gives an almost mysterious vibe. The use of a purple grid over top of short magician clips gives the site its texture and depth. As you scroll between the 6 Magician secret options the clip in the background changes to give a preview of the selected act. When one of the 6 options is selected the user is instructed to reveal the magic, opening up to a full video clip of the specific Magicians act and a synopsis of how the illusion is accomplished. The site also provides a brief biography of the Magicians that perform each act. There is not very much interaction necessary other then a few clicks between illusions and top to bottom scrolling, so the site is very easy to navigate.

The sites large fonts and easy to follow navigational instructions make for a very user friendly experience. Further, its use of video clips to show the trick to the viewer make the experience enjoyable as you are able to watch the clip then read how they accomplished it. The user is then tempted to rewatch the clip and try to catch where the magician creates the illusion. This site is very well designed in my opinion, because it grasps the user’s attention with its intriguing layout and then holds the user’s interest with  interesting subject matter.

https://www.foxycasino.com/featured/the-secrets-of-magic.html

The site I chose to navigate through was Zumiez.com. Zumiez is a streetwear outfitter that carries goods from clothing and accessories, to complete skateboards. Their most valuable market is reselling clothing from multiple streetwear companies and manufacturers.

Navigating through their website was very simple, and can be done without any headaches. I was searching for sk8-hi vans and it took me no more than three clicks to get to what I was looking for. As soon as I specified that I was interested in shoes by clicking on the footwear tab. The website brought up the exact model I wanted under a heading titled featured. From there I only had to choose the pair of shoes I like and proceed to checkout. All that was left to do was enter my credit card information and hit complete to solidify my order. Zumiez has a very smooth layout that is easily maneuvered. They do a very good job of keeping the website simple, and do not confuse customers with odd wording and random placement. It flows through the process almost naturally, making it so that anyone can do it.

Danielle Bobish

June 28, 2016

Web Design

 

Review #2

The website I chose to review from www.onepagelove.com was Coffee Finder. Coffee Finder, is a web page that promotes scrolling and clicking based on mood and personality. The design itself is simple and attracts high end users through the use of bold script fonts and light condensed fonts.

The website itself has a limited color pallet and is attracting a more feminine crowd. A light peach adds color to the page in specific points, while the format remains bland in white, central focus. There is very little texture on the page, everything gives the vibe that it is crisp, clean and organized. When scrolling down, you are taunted to play a game of Mad Libs in which as the user describes his or her personality, a fill in the blank clickable option is presented. You can only choose from the options they provide, and in return, the formula that calculates your answers will direct you to a new page for where you can find the type of coffee you prefer and where they are located. This form of interaction is somewhat short with a few simple clicks, but it gets the job done. I almost feel like there could be more, however it is interactive and fun. It keeps the user clicking.

 

http://sfcoffeefinder.com/

Danielle Bobish

June 15, 2016

Web Design

 

Review #1

The website I chose to review is www.chegg.com. Chegg is a website designed for students to rent, buy or sell college books for a fair price. Book rentals are amongst their most popular feature, but they also offer scholarship opportunities, tutors and test preps.

The navigation of this website is fairly easy and requires little to no clicking on the main page to discover where you want to go in a short amount of time. For starters, the main page features a roll-over effect on the tabs appearing from left to right. The far left titles the page and proceeds with available features the site offers; such as books, study, tutors, test prep, internship and colleges. As mentioned before, the central focus on this site is book rental and buying, so they have engaged the viewer in the center of the page with a search bar that also has hints on what to ask. Similar to Google, as you type, suggestions appear with graphics for easy navigation and understanding. In my example, I chose ‘Don’t Make Me Think: Revisited’ by Klug. Once I have clicked on the image of the book that I wanted, it took me to their pre-checkout screen. Here I was given easily navigable and readable options like rent, ebook and buy. The nice feature this website has is the prices next to the options, as well as the savings you potentially earn. This is a thoughtful gesture that encourages the buyer to make the purchase and gives them the piece of mind that they are getting a good deal. After you have added the item to the cart, you can see everything that you have added and proceed to checkout. Using a universal green, people are able to identify how to proceed and where. The checkout button is green and the fonts (in general) are probably Helvetica because it is standard.

In conclusion, this site is very easily navigable and requires little to no thinking. This website is also user friendly on a mobile phone or tablet and has little change in the process of navigation. The color scheme of this website is neutral and is nothing to bright or flashy. The font is readable and a little bubbly, which adds to the friendly vibe it gives to its users. Besides the title, the other fonts are mostly Helvetica (I believe) and are easy to read. If this site had terrible fonts and where unreadable, it would make the navigation process much harder. A good website requires few clicks, yet at the same time clicks are money. I believe Chegg did a good job on making this website student and user friendly based on color, font family, text size, backgrounds and navigation.

Our restaurant is THE BREAKFAST SWIRL. I found a restaurant can compeat our restaurant is SQUARE CAFE in Pittsburgh, which that it serves breakfast like us.

In Square Cafe website they have a professional layout. Their website the viewers glad about the design because is sweet and beautiful, and find what you want quickly, no noise in design. And if you go to another page on their website, you know that belongs to them, the same theme they used.

Also, their page anatomy, they use different blocks to divide their site. Their containing block was perfect and fit whole windows. And the logo in a good position to the left of the page, that describes the company work. The navigation, footer, content and white space was outstanding. Also, they used a perfect color for website light blue, white, gray and orange; that combination of color was great. Works well for looking to it.

Also, the texture for website great. Is it straightforward and clean, and their graphic gorgeous. And they use a readable font.

Our site is right. It is simple; we minimize the noise on a page. We try to create a website for restaurant beautiful and easy to read because most people want a straight page and find what they want quickly like prices, work hour and dishes. So, we have a simple layout and containing block on the a home page to divide our site like the pictures and button.  We use almost two colors red and gray and a little green. I think these right color for a breakfast restaurant. We did footer with social media icon if someone want to contact.

So, we have a simple layout and containing block on the a home page to divide our site as the pictures and button.  We use almost two colors red and gray and a little green. I think these right color for a breakfast restaurant. We did footer with social media icon if someone want to contact. And, our logo stands in the middle of our page, nice logo that represents our company  and what we serve. finally, we used recognize font, everybody should read it.

Maybe we need some graphic texture to give some aesthetic to our website.

For my review#3, I choose Alihan’s cuisine and Istanbul Sofra, Turkish restaurants that serve Middleestren cuisine also in Pittsburgh.

For Alihan’s Cuisine website, they have used colors on the page well chose a light color dark, and the other makes it easy for the eye. The second site used the colors in a positive way and chose the black color to all website pages except the pulp via the Internet was for me the best form.
As for the logo in both the similar website form of a little logo regarding the red rose and some blue. It is important, first chose the site and put it on a small left-hand The other was in a clearer and larger in the middle, but I think he needs to edit a little bit, does not suit them white border around it.

The book said about minimizing noise; I believe the site needs to do through lessen the writing in the home and placed in the other pages of the subconscious mind, because most people do not read what in the page just scan it, also reducing images or putting pictures explained. But in general is good, especially on the menu there are pictures of every meal that’s a good thing so that the browser sees what this dish, especially if he does not know the food well. As I said and requiring, reduce clutter on the home page because there are things that do not interest them from the face of a theoretical example booking needs to deletion.
The second site did not put a lot of chaos, but there is something that bothers me and put a picture on the wine Jeff shape I do not think that there is a significance to it on the homepage. But they worked on a clean slate so of the most important points of the Krug “Creating a clear visual hierarchy on every page.”

On the whole, I found both sites used the lines clearly, and the browser can read well. The use of images for the first site in an over, in the second site was well good. Colors were both right.
Both easy to navigate between pages and there is no other complications this is a positive thing.

Alihan’s cuisine

http://www.alihanscuisine.com/about.html

Istanbul Sofra

http://www.istanbulsofra.com/index.html

 

 

For my final review, it was hard to choose a website to compare to our restaurant because our idea is so unique. Having a mix between classic american dinners like burgers and breakfast food hasn’t been done before anywhere that I have seen on the internet. So the website I am comparing ours to is Matt’s Big Breakfast, www.mattsbigbreakfast.com. It’s idea is similar, loading people up with a ton of food would be apart of our real restaurant, so this is the next best thing.

Their website is a lot more trendy with it’s web design, and it emulates our folktale project as it is just a single page scroll down website with everything on it. This style of layout it’s something I really like, but because of the mountain of information on the site it is a bit too much to try and fit on one page. They included their entire menu on it, which I think deserves to have it’s own separate page.

Their color scheme of this rugged orange mixed with white is perfect for the type of style their going for. Their menu boasts a lot of meat for breakfast, so to have a meaty sort of color as your primary is something that really stuck out to me. One thing I saw they were lacking though was interactivity. There are no rollover or hover effects of any nature. Their graphic design work means well, but their logo and other small graphics on the site could use a little improvement. The logo itself, only three words, uses three different fonts, which really bothers me for some reason. The navigation is simple, you click a category at the top navigation bar and it scrolls down to that section of the single page.

Overall, I think there are some good elements here and for a small time restaurant it gets the job done. I’ve seen big chain restaurants that have websites a lot worse than this, and while everything is jumbled on one page, it is still easy to navigate to everything you need to find on the restaurant, which is the main goal of any website of this nature.

 

 

For my last review, I chose Épicerie Boulud which is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at Broadway and 64th Street. This catering business/restaurant would definitely become competition with my group’s bistro, The Eurobean, because we serve similar foods and desserts. Our restaurant only serves breakfast and lunch while Épicerie Boulud breakfast, lunch, dinner, as well as alcohol. I definitely believe that The Eurobean would still do very well even though we just serve breakfast and lunch. When I first went to Épicerie Boulud, it was beautifully designed from the menus and display cases to the tissue paper used for the baked goods. Therefore, I was expecting the same setup for their website. That was not the case. Their website completely focuses on their catering business than their restaurant business. The homepage is clean, sharp, and modern but I was looking for more. On their navigation bar, they only show “Catering, Gift Boxes, Giftcards, Cookbooks & More, Corporate Gifts, and Locations.” I was expecting them to have at least an in-store menu which was disappointing. The dropdown menu for their catering section is kind of confusing since there is “Passover Catering” and “Corporate Catering.” Once you choose an option, it lists each food by breakfast, lunch, receptions, etc. One nice thing is that each different food has it’s own picture. In our website, we decided to have one picture as the background to simply showcase the food as well as keeping the navigation simple. Épicerie Boulud‘s color scheme is nice but I feel that The Eurobean’s is more eye catching and pops. Our website is simply and straight to the point while giving potential customers a fulling experience. Overall, I believe that our bistro will not have a problem with Épicerie Boulud in sales and customer competition. With our different assortment of foods from multiple countries and our fast “in & out” service, I feel that we, The Eurobean, will stand out and become a great place for customers to feel at home and eat delicious soups, sandwiches, and desserts while drinking our fresh coffee and iced beverages. By the words of Julia Childs, “People who love to eat are always the best people.“

La Gourmandine is an authentic French bakery with locations in Lawrenceville and also Mt. Lebanon, PA.  I believe that this bakery could be considered competition for our fusion restaurant, The Eurobean.  La Gourmandine has a sleek and clean website, with a very limited palette when it comes to color scheme.  However, the colors and fonts used on the site give the appearance of a modern and an upscale type of bakery.  The navigation and layout on the page is very similar to ours and also easy to use, with an about us page and also hours of the bakery located on the site as well as social media information.  Additionally, the site features a drop down menu with rollovers that make it very easy to know when you are able to click on something.  Similar to our website, La Gourmandine has up close photographs that make the viewer’s mouth water.  Compared to La Gourmandine, The Eurobean is a fusion bakery, showcasing all of the essential breads, soups, sandwiches, and pastries that different countries have to offer.  Our website uses an inviting blue color, as well as a sleek and simple logo that is also playful with the coffee bean illustration.  The more relaxed font and color scheme make the customers and viewers on the site feel that it isn’t expected to be high end or top notch, that they can come stop by for a quick drink or snack on their casual stroll through the neighborhood.  I think that the way our site is laid out is very user friendly and the navigation through the pages is simple enough for any user to understand.  The Eurobean homepage displays a carousel of photographs of items you may find in this fusion bistro.  These user friendly features and eye appealing layout and photos on the site will make The Eurobean stand out over the rest as a fusion bistro.

Piccolo Forno

The restaurant Piccolo Forno would be competition for our restaurant, as it is both located in Pittsburgh and is a higher class Italian eatery. The website has a good layout to it, the images and text fit nicely on the screen, with the image sitting the full width of the screen. On the home page it has a quick snippet of background information and scrolls down through links to the menu and finally ending with their hours. The color scheme works very well for their restaurant, with a deeper red, a green, and a cream. With the Italian cuisine and the typical Italian colors it works well, they are also very clean with adds to the classier feel. The navigation for the site makes the view flow from page to page. They have a navigation bar at the top with their logo to the far left that returns you to the homepage. The menu page is laid out very nicely with even spacing and it is easy to follow. The descriptions beneath the entree name is short but gives good information. With each individual heading only containing one page it makes it easy to navigate throughout the site, without drop down menus or a stack of pages to go through to find information. Compared to this site, I would say that ours is just as easy to follow. Though our menu does have a drop down in the navigation bar for individual menus such as wines/drinks/entrees/desserts. I would say that theirs seems a little bit more colorful and bright which would help keep the viewers attention, so that is something that we can change on our site. But something that will make our site stand out is that we do have a good amount of images to go with our site, with photos of our food, drink and location that run across the top of every page.

The biggest competition I see for our burger fusion restaurant is BRGR(brgrpgh.com), a burger restaurant located in 4 different areas in Pittsburgh. Their website is a combination of the colors orange and blue, which is a heavy contrast and makes the website pop in the viewer’s eyes. While the colors do make the website pop, i’m not sure if it’s the most pleasant-to-the-eye combination when on the site for an extended period of time.
BRGR uses a side navigation bar, which with certain buttons (specifically the EAT and DRINK buttons) will show text saying they are “handcrafted”. While the emphasis to their crafty food items is a plus, the pop-up text covers up part of the burger picture they display on their front page, which looks sloppy and at times hard to see. Besides the pop-up text, the overall navigation is clean and effectively stands out, as the buttons are blue circles against an orange background.
I enjoy the use of texture on BRGR’s website, it is mainly in an orange background image, which uses a speckled look, which makes the feel of the page more rustic.
Compared to our burger fusion restaurant page, we may stand out more because of our simple and serious layout that focuses on our end product (fusion burgers) and we also do away with any un-needed background music (unlike BRGR’s homepage page). It also goes without saying that our product with stand-out because we produce unique burgers with cultural combinations that do not exist in many places in Pittsburgh (and not at BRGR).
Our layout is straightforward with little guesses to where things are. We have a top navigation bar with drop-down menus for more detailed information and links, all without taking away from our images and product. Our website uses a more at-home color scheme that Pittsburgh knows (White, Dark Gray, soft Yellow) but also makes certain things pop-out to our customers that call for added attention, all this without added strain if on the page for a while.
The Burgh also has the chance to become part of a bigger community. The Burgh has a E-Club that supplies discounts as well as email exclusives to those that sign up. BRGR does not have this aspect on their website.

Our restaurant is called The Breakfast Swirl because it is a combination of all foods served on a breakfast menu. I found a restaurant that would compete with ours called The Funky Brunch Cafe. The Funky Brunch Cafe has a fun menu much like ours. They have an orange, green, and tan color scheme throughout the entire website. As it says in the reading, orange is a very active and energetic color which works perfectly in a breakfast restaurant setting. Green symbolizes growth, freshness, and hope, which is also a great color choice for the early birds. The Funky Brunch Cafe’s logo makes me feel sticky because of the words drawn in syrup but that too gives off a successful breakfast feel to the site. On the home page background lies a stack of pancakes. The home page is extremely simple yet gets the point across. The navigation is quite simple as well. The navigation is located at the top of the page and to the right of the logo. Once you click on a nav. button, the word lights up bright green. The Funky Brunch Cafe would be great competition for our restaurant because our main focus is offering customers a unique experience. I would like to see the prices of the menu items on their site. I also would like to see the greens that they use for the logo and the nav buttons be the same color green. The Breakfast Swirl will stand out because our buttons are a little different than most restaurants with the simple word as a button. Our site is just as simple layout wise. The Funky Brunch Cafe has a multi page menu and ours is only one page of everything our resaurant has to offer. I’d prefer to see everything on one page just to make it easier on the eyes. Our home page will definitely stand out because of the images that will be in constant rotation. Our navigation buttons look like actual round buttons which is rare. Both The Funky Brunch Cafe and The Breakfast Swirl are simple layouts but that’s what breakfast is all about. I think both websites are competitive and successful.

For my final review, I will be discussing Pizza Roma’s website (pizzaromamoon.net) and how it compares to my group’s restaurant, East Carson Bistro. First, Pizza Roma has their logo above a nav bar and has a photo slider. We plan on having a similar layout, but we are using a three column system in order to add space on the sides of each page for future information or advertisements. They also have a footer that contains business information, location, and legal statements. East Carson Bistro plans to have a footer with similar information. Pizza Roma appears to use a 2 column layout system with the left column being larger than the right column. An image is always at the top of the page showcasing the message or mood of the page. East Carson Bistro will be using a similar technique because we feel that this kind of layout quickly shows the viewer what information they will find on the current page.

They have persistent navigation, which is explained in Chapter 6 on page 66 in “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. Persistent navigation is any navigation element that appears on every page such as Pizza Roma’s Home, Appetizers, Salads, Wings, Pizzas, etc. in the navigation bar. Some may even include drop down sections to allow the viewer to have a more direct search. On each page, they tell the viewer that they are on Pizza Roma’s website and that they can navigate to any page from any page. This is an important layout and navigation tactic that will be used on East Carson Bistro’s website.

Their use of warm reds bouncing against cool greys sets up a successful contrasting color scheme. Coincidentally, East Carson Bistro choose colors that are very close to the same tint of grey and pure tone of red. Their grey is more of a darker shade of grey whereas our grey tends to have more of a tint to it meaning that their grey has more black and our grey has more white in their tonal values (The Principles of Beautiful Web Design: Chapter 2: Color pages 50-51). It has been a persistent study in color psychology where warm colors such as reds, oranges, and yellows seem to stimulate hunger, anger, heat, and motion. These colors tend to be more stimulating and provide more engagement and interaction. We want our customers to be hungry, but in a controlled method, which seems to be what Pizza Roma did by having the red balanced with a dark grey that prevents the viewers of the site from being over stimulated or subconsciously aggravated (The Principles of Beautiful Web Design: Chapter 2: Color pages 50-51).

As for the texture on Pizza Roma’s site, the nav bar demonstrates color change when hovered over or clicked, which leaves it feeling very flat. They have a pattern of their logo repeating in the x- and y-axis in the background behind their content sections. The value of it is toned down so it does not distract from the content on each page. The only three dimensional feature would be the moon in their logo with an outer glow and slight drop shadow of the text (The principles of Beautiful Web Design: Chapter 3: Texture pages 95-98). Our logo is very flat and made out of typographic letter forms leaving a sharp texture from the thicks and thins of the letter strokes. It seems that Pizza Roma’s uses about three typefaces (not including the one in their logo) and each of them are a form of Sans Serif utilizing thick weight for bold headings and a thinner weight for more detailed content. It may be too many typefaces battling for their place to set the overall theme of the site. We plan to only have one type family with no more than three weights or versions such as bold, regular, or italic.

Pizza Roma has obvious hierarchy for their navigation. For my first time visiting their site, I can identify where I want to look for their salads, calzones, or contact information. I do not need to jump around to find information because it is clearly labeled on each and every page. Having the nav bar being persistent on every page helps the process of visitors heading straight to their desired information. I feel this site does not need bread crumbs because the site layout goes down to one to two level from the home page meaning it goes from the homepage to content pages and then across to other content pages like pizza to wings or back to the home page. There is only three instances where the dropdown feature of the nav bar brings up an additional page (ex. appetizers then desserts), but that is the only way to access those pages through the nav bar (Chapter 6 “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug).

East Carson Bistro will stand out as higher quality over Pizza Roma. We will utilize a similar layout of hierarchy with a photo slider and persistent nav bar. Our menus are simple in each section with a clear line to the price. Our photography and corporate identity will be the strongest part of our brand to make our site stand out. We believe having a strong structure for our identity and target audience would help give us a more stable plan for building our website and attracting web traffic.

–Katie Carlton

http://www.breadsbakery.com/

 

I chose to review the website of Breads Bakery in New York City. It is a small café that sells many types of bread, pastries, and desserts. This place would be competition for my group’s restaurant because we also focus on food like this instead of large meals. They are trying to achieve the same type of feeling as we are. A page of their website says “It fills us with satisfaction to feed and to host. Much thought is put into this – making it comfortable, pleasant, appetizing, aromatic, satisfying and abundant.”

 

Their website is a little dull for my tastes but it’s also quite busy. When you first go to it you aren’t sure where to look because there are so many things competing for your attention. Their logo at the top center of the page is one of the things that stands out the most since it is bright red against a light tan background. The only texture is in the photos of their food throughout the site. The dominant colors are the tan background and the same bright red that is used in the logo. Red also appears on their “passover menu” and “order online” buttons. It seems they use that color to draw attention to whatever services they are featuring at the moment.

 

Their contact and location info is at the top of the page where it is easy to find. Their navigation is simple and easy to read- they use a horizontal menu near the top of the page, and when you hover over each word, a drop down menu appears.

 

One thing that stands out to me is the success of their menu page. They did a great job of fitting all of that information into one page while also keeping it uncluttered and easy to interpret. There is texture on this page that makes the menu look like a real, physical menu. It’s light green and stands out from the rest of the page.

 

The only thing I don’t particularly like about this website is the business of the home page. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, though. Its format reminds me of a blog with photos and text throughout. It does make the page interesting, but it could be distracting to people who are looking for a specific thing on the site.

 

I think my group could consider doing a menu page similar to this. We have been having a hard time fitting all the information on one page, and this might be a good format.