Category: Site Review

I’ve been a big fan of Zappos.com and their culture and work environment for awhile. So I chose this site to look at from the standpoint of usability. When you type in “sandals” it populates with a lot of different types of sandals to choose from. I noticed that if you choose one of the choices, it is defaulted to show you women’s shoes first. I picked of pair of shoes and then got different options as far as color and size before adding to cart. Once added, Zappos.com requires you to sign in. I get why they’re doing this, they want my information to get me hooked into their marketing. However, I want the option to just purchase as a guest and move on to the purchase process. Everything else in the checkout process is pretty much as I would expect and didn’t cause me any heartache to complete the purchase. The other thing I noticed about the site is that they limit the amount of hovers that they use. Even the horizontal menu across the top requires a click to bring up the next window. This seems like an extra step from what I’m used to in online store experiences. Overall, the site is aesthetically pleasing. I would say that the assumption that I’m looking for women’s shoes makes sense but is an annoying one as a man looking for shoes.

Whether it’s a business or a restaurant, there is going to be competition, and every industry needs to be able to stand out from its competitors to succeed. In terms of restaurants, there are many different ways for them to stand out. It could be providing only the best quality meals, creating a one of a kind experience, or even just giving providing customers someplace with a unique and wholesome atmosphere. The point is that every successful restaurant has something to make it stand out in the crowd. This goes beyond just the restaurant itself and into how they market themselves. A website for a restaurant also needs to be able to communicate to the viewer what they might expect before even going there.  

One restaurant that I look at as a possible competitor for my own would be the Square Cafe located in South Braddock Ave. in Pittsburgh, PA. Square Cafe is a small cafe that specializes in breakfast and lunch. They enjoy using their restaurant to help show off the artworks of local artists with a style that is simple and well organized. As such, their own website is just as simple, as well as being quick and easy to navigate. For anyone first visiting the website, the overall style is what sets it apart from its competitors. The homepage is presented in a standard display with a header at the top that is present on all pages, a brief summary with images telling about the cafe, and additional information at the bottom. The design of not just the homepage but the entire restaurant is shown with a bright, flowing, colors. The whole website is displayed with a colorful backyard picket fence and blue sky that I would imagine is inspired by Van Gogh. The colors and style give off a fun, welcoming experience that the cafe wants to provide to its guests.  From there, the menu is the third option in the header. It is quick and easy to find, and the layout is a simple display that shows off their seasonal menu and the drink menu. Both the website and its menus are visually fluid and smooth, providing a stylized version of the artwork they display to the overall design. I feel that the impression they’re trying to make is a fun, inviting atmosphere for anyone new or old.

The restaurant that my group and I created is called EYEPOP, it is a breakfast dinner/cafe with an overall theme that draws inspiration from the pop art movement. The website we’ve created greatly reflects this inspiration, with an overall display, designs, and colors drawn from different artists and their artworks. The layout is simple but eye catching, all while being easy to navigate. From the homepage, there is a single display in the style of pop art by Andy Warhol. Each individual panel leads to another page of the site. Each page is unique and has a style influenced by various artists. The menu is a simple click away from any page, from the header at the top of each page but the homepage where it is the first option displayed. With a more distinct theme to tie both the restaurant and website together, I feel our website has a little more to offer compared to Square Cafe’s. While Square Cafe’s design & layout provide a unique identity, in its entirety, it seems like multiple ideas just arbitrarily put together. With my group’s restaurant, I feel our website has a better unifying theme and overall concept. While Square Cafe shows off local artists in their restaurant, they would have to update their website to match the current display of the restaurant. This in turn results in more work overall for them. Whereas, EYEPOP is influenced definitely by the pop-art movement, it allows for enough influence from various artists and styles when it comes to designing the website, without being too limiting or restricting. Of course I don’t believe out website by any means perfect, and if anything I’d say we might have “too much of a good thing”. While each page provides various information along with graphics and drastic color palettes, it might be a little too chaotic for someone first visiting the website. However, aside from the little things, I’m proud of the site my group and I have created.
It’s not until you begin to create your own site that you start to understand how much thought, time, and effort is put into creating something as “simple” as a website. Both Square Cafe and EYEPOP are great websites that compliment their restaurant. Square Cafe isn’t only good competitor for our website, but it is also a good source of inspiration for EYEPOP. They both strongly serve the purpose of providing a early look at what each restaurant has to offer in terms of food, design, layout, and atmosphere. It never hurts to study the work of others for the chance to discover a new perspective, understanding, or idea that can help you develop your own creations.

Playa Bowls sells açaí bowls and a variety of healthy shakes. If there is one thing that stands out about their website, it is their use of animation. There is a bar that automatically scrolls right after a certain period of time and gifs are used with some of the pictures of the bowls. If you click on their staff page, each person’s picture has a stop-motion element to it which shows their personality and it is entertaining to watch. 

Their layout of text is centered while there are a balance of graphics on both sides of the page. The text is not only centered in the navigation bar but within each paragraph of text. This is a subtle layout feature I noticed but it goes a long way of keeping the website consistent. To break up different sections, they either use a straight line or wavy line. This balance of straight and wavy adds character to the page while still breaking up the information effectively. The overall layout of the website is simple but they make it stand out by their use of color and textured elements.

The colors for their website are very saturated. This color palette is appropriate because they are selling a variety of fruits which have those strong colors. It makes sense to highlight those colors. Three consistent colors they use throughout their site is sky blue, dark grey and white. The sky blue they use is very saturated. One thing they do to break it up is to add texture. The texture is similar to a watercolor look with different spot illustrations used throughout. The texture breaks up the solid colors and keeps the page interesting as you scroll. If there is one more thing that makes this website stand out, it is the navigation system.

One thing that stands out is their standard header and footer. The header stays at the top of the screen which is helpful while scrolling. When you reach the bottom of the screen, the footer appears which has all the categories in the navigation bar, the logo and other detailed information. There is no lag time on the scroll which is nice for the user to feel like they are in control. I am not confused if a word or button is clickable because whenever I hover over it, it changes color or the opacity goes down. Lastly, If I click on a link that takes me to another site, I am still able to get back to their site by the “BACK TO WEBSITE” button they offer.

The Playa Bowls website compared to our website will have a similar style in terms of colors and pictures. Our website will not stand out by the use of navigation or animation but by the colors and product itself. By taking our own photos, we took advantage of making the ingredients of our product stand out. Our logo colors are consistent with the overall site which makes it pleasing to look at along with consistent. Overall, our website has a simple layout that will go a long in users searching for what they need.

After searching the web for a website that looked similar to my fusion restaurant website, I stumbled upon www.eggslut.com. The restaurant basically incorporates eggs with any type of meal. The layout was basically one column, it always featured a photo before any content appeared and in between each section. The color theme is yellow and white, which makes sense because egg-white, yolk-yellow. Navigation was very easy and had everything at the top menu bar. I think they made it easy for users to scroll through the content. Like I said previously, everything was basically one column and had more content as you kept scrolling.

Mine and eggsluts websites were fairly similar. The navigation bar & logo were pretty much in the same place except I feel like I had more items in the nav bar and two drop downs. Their pictures were always at the top of the site and in between each section, but mine took up the entire page.

My website will probably stand out more because you don’t have to scroll to get the content you’re looking for. I think the photos of the food in the background give my site less white space and by looking at the food, it would persuade a person to come to the restaurant- or in my case a food truck. I also think that since they do not have their gallery, faqs, quality & taste, customer service, gallery or online orders in the nav bar its annoying for people to have to scroll.

For this review I decided to review the Ihop’s website. My fashion restaurant serves breakfast food just like Ihop. When deciding on pricing I used Ihop the help decide on prices. Ihop’s website is very easily navigated. On their homepage you can easily either click on one of the tabs on the menu bar or you can scroll through the site and click on something. It had plenty of pictures and popping colors to catch the eye as well. One thing I noticed at the top near the menu bar the location closest to you shows up. I thought this was pretty cool because instantly you can know where the nearest one closet to you is. You can also click on it to get more information about it and directions. When on the website it is very easy for the user to know where they need to go to figure out whatever they were looking for when coming to this site. When my group designed our webpage we looked at Ihop’s to try to get an idea of what we needed to do. Our homepage is definitely different than theirs. On our homepage you don’t scroll up and down as much. We nine squares that when you click on them it navigates you to where you need to go. Then we have a tool bar that can help bring you elsewhere. Also Ihop has a pretty general background with coloring popping in the text and pictures. Our website all around is colorful and popping. Each of the nine pages has their own assigned colors but have the same general theme to help keep the website consistent but also different.

EscaLa Restaurant & Bar

I chose escalaktown.com for this review. It is a Korean/Colombian Fusion Restaurant in L.A.

The Home page has a smooth and clean yet fun feel to it. The white background paired with the fun photographs and their interesting logo makes for a interesting homepage. My only complaint would be the amount of text. They have a lot of about information mixed with other info. I feel that it could be separated into another tab. Their menu page is clean and easy to read, but they use white text over top of their photographs of white plates making it hard to read. Their events page is a simple calendar, but flipping through it you do not see any events. If there are no regular events scheduled maybe it would be best to just delete that page and add an about. Overall it is easy to navigate and provided a fun and easy user experience.

Compared to our website it is very different. Ours uses dark colors and large simple photographs. Our photographs are taken up close to provide a textured feel to them. We tried only to contain text that was important for people to know and all of our pages are used and deemed necessary. Our menus are split into pages by category, whereas the other was all one long page.

Overall I think that if we were in the same area they could be considered a competition fusion restaurant, but only if they also had a food truck. Our websites do not have a lot in common but they both work in their own way.

For this final review I chose to review Rock & Brew’s website in comparison to my group’s website. The overall aesthetic of the website is very similar to my groups website. On the Rock & Brews website, they have a lot of black and red throughout the website. They have a banner across the top of the website that has lots of rock and roll bands posters. The fonts they have chosen to use are bold and bulky looking, but fit the aesthetic very well. The overall layout of the website is very pleasing to the eye, and keeps the user interested in seeing what else the website has to offer.

The navigation of the website is pretty standard in the sense of having a toolbar on the top. On the toolbar they have Foods & Brews, About Us, Shop, Promotions, and Franchising. When you mouse over the Foods & Brews and the About Us tabs, there are several more smaller options that appear below the main tab to navigate you to specific parts of that tab. All the font on their page is very easy to read and easy to navigate. They as well on top of the toolbar have a search box to find locations closest to the user. All the tabs that they have on the website are very straightforward and easy to access and use.

My groups website Black Diamond compared to the Rock & Brew is similar, yet far different. The Rock & Brew website has a feeling that I’d like for my groups website to have a little more of, positive space. I feel like, when people think rock n roll, they think of posters everywhere, black and red, grungy looking things, and I feel as though my groups website is little too clean cut to be a rock n roll based website. Rock & Brew has more of an edgy look while still being professional, and my groups is far too professional. We took this a bit too serious and didn’t have enough fun with it like we could have. Our website does stand out though, from our promotions page. We have pictures of real people enjoying themselves out on nights out (all of which are my friends and family who allowed me to use their pictures).
Overall, the Rock & Brew website is very easy to navigate, has a nice on brand layout, fitting color scheme, and was very aesthetically pleasing. rockandbrews.com gives a typical rock n roll experience, and Black Diamond gives an edgy feeling while also keeping things simple and sweet.

The restaurant that would be a competitor for my restaurant is Cold Stone Creamery. The layout is simple with one line with different categories of what they offer. The color is different shades of white and red plus they have a few graphics to grab your attention. They use their logo on either side of each page and it gives the page a new dimension plus texture. Each on their tab has sub-tabs to make navigation easier and more simple. I think they have to many sub-tabs because users may be annoyed having to go through so many tabs just to get to what you want. They do a lot of online order and delivery but my website is more eye catching and is more simple in categories.

For my final review, I decided to choose the website www.awlins.com.  It is the site for the A.W. Lin’s restaurant that serves a fusion of Chinese, Sushi, and Thai cuisine.  To start off, the layout of A.W. Lin’s is very typical of other restaurant sites. On the main menu page, it features a top navigation bar with their logo to the top left.  Then as you move down, there is a title area. In this area there is a static photo of food with a box of type featuring the restaurant name and also a summary of the style of food they make.  This title section is a nice touch, helping users like me who have never heard of the restaurant before, have a general knowledge of their food. It is something our site lacks currently but after seeing it I will add.  The rest of the navigation consists of slideshows and noticeable buttons to take throughout the site. The sites menus feature the consistent static photo with title at the top with a centered list of menu items. This list of items is clear and noticeable but becomes very boring when scrolling through.  This gets me to the color portion. The color pallete consists of white, brown and several shades of red. While the the red and brown have a big contrast on the white background with helps with navigation buttons, it becomes boring in a few spots throughout the site. One of the things I might add to the site would be the use of texture.  A.W. Lin’s has very little, if any use of texture in the site. With its plain white background and bars of colors the site has no texture at all through the site. I would likely add a subtle background texture to the white and also add more of a textured line to the thin rules that separate sections of the layout. The navigation of the site is very consistent of many restaurants.  The global navigation consists of menu, order now, private dining, gift cards, locations, promotions, and news. These sections I believe clearly order the content in a logical manner except for the gift cards page. The gift cards page is very small only having a line of text saying you can buy a card at the store which I believe to be unnecessary for it to have its own global navigation section.  This restaurant has many items on the menu and also seems to focus on ordering take out and delivery which makes it necessary for the full menu to be available. Therefore with all the menu items, the site broke the menu into five sections with a drop down bar on the global navigation. I think this is necessary for this site specifically because of emphasis of ordering from the phone and its large menu.  Lastly, while I believe the site can effectively guide a user through the content, I think there are a few places where the user could become confused. With the contrast of the site, the user can clearly find what is clickable and what is not, I believe there are some places on the main menu where a user can ask “Why is this button here?” Overall the site has an effective contrast use that helps with navigation, the overall design feels boring to me with its lack of texture and interesting features.  A.W. Lin’s site did point out things like a main menu title that I need to add to our fusion site, but I believe overall our fusion website will be more effective with more use of texture and photography to interest our users and make them starving for out food. Our sites navigation will also be smaller, taking bigger logical chunks of content to put on each button of the global navigation bar. This I believe will help the user navigate to the page they need to be on much more than that of A.W. Lin’s.

Lacocinitafoodtruck.com

La Cocinita Food Truck’s website utilizes a simple one column layout with an analogous color scheme. The site makes use of minimal texture, which can be seen in the dark colored ribbon at the top and bottom of the page and bars on the sides of the photos that are on the homepage. The site also has a slight depth to it as seen with the arrow buttons on the sides of the photos on the homepage that overlap the red background. La Cocinita’s site is a good example of a clean and grainy design. The color scheme ties in with the color scheme of the physical truck, which can be seen on the “Truck pics” page, very well. The use of bright red on the site as a dominant color effectively stimulates the eye and makes viewers feel that the food truck and website are exciting.

The navigation of the page effectively leads viewers to what they are looking for with ease. The utilization of a menu bar at the top of the site allows users to find what they are looking for immediately or by simply hovering over an option and finding their destination in the drop down menu that some of the options possess. Navigation is also assisted by the website using a different color to highlight what page viewers are on as a “you are here” indicator. If for some reason users are not able to find what they need from the navigation bar, there is also a search option at the very top of the website.

Overall the La Cocinita Food Truck website works well in providing the information that viewers are looking for effectively and efficiently. However, the design of the website is forgettable because of the aforementioned minimal texture.

Our World Showcase Website uses a sleek and nostalgic style with the texture background of the site and dark colors. The navigation of the World Showcase site is very similar to that of La Cocinita’s. The general layout of our websites are very similar as well; World Showcase also utilizes a one column layout. The difference between our websites and what will make it stand out compared the La Cocinita Food Truck website is the texture. Our textured background and depth through the use of the floating pages over the background create a more memorable look and experience for viewers. Both lacocinitafoodtruck.com and the World Showcase website effectively give viewers information. World Showcase’s website goes the extra step and makes it memorable.

     I chose to review and compare no.9park.com and burgatorybar.com for this assignment.

     To start the No.9 Park Website is easy to navigate and pleasing to look at. They use a Hierarchical/ Sequence architecture and Global/Secondary Navigation. This makes the site user friendly and easy to follow. This site gives off a classy and put together feel that you may not get from other sites. It shows that this restaurant is expensive and elegant without being too in your face about it. This site contains a nice balance of images and text so as not to overwhelm the user. These elements also work together to provide a positive viewing experience. Overall this site has a clear hierarchy and layout making it in my opinion an easy to use and enjoyable site.

     The Burgatory site is much different from the first in regards to style but everything else is pretty similar. While No. 9 Park was classy, Burgatory is more of a Trendy site. It too uses Hierarchical/Sequence architecture along with Global/Secondary Navigation. It is user friendly and easy to navigate just like the first site. The websites design and navigation makes it fun and interesting to navigate. You can tell from this site that this is a fun and trendy place to eat. While this site relies mainly on pictures to attract its audience there is enough supplemental text to get the point across. This site does not overwhelm or frustrate, so I would say overall that it is user friendly due to its clear hierarchy and layout.

     Overall, I enjoyed both websites. They both were different yet both had similar setups. I think I enjoyed the No. 9 Park site more simply because it looked cleaner. It was not as in  your face as Burgatory was and I think that it works to the sites advantage.

The website for the La Cocinita Food Truck (https://lacocinitafoodtruck.com) would be considered competition for our fusion restaurant; as we are both food trucks looking to sell our food to people on the street. The first thing I noticed while visiting this site is that the website has a red background; and according to “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” red is known to “increase human metabolism,” meaning that it’s smart to have a food related site on a red background, as it will make the viewers of your page hungrier. On a similar note, the company’s truck is also red, having the same effect as the site background, making customers want food. The main accent color is a shade of mustard yellow, with the text on the red background standing out well. Yellow is “associated with happiness” to quote “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design,” making yellow a friendly option when used to offset the red. They also use this deep tone of yellow for the background color of their main navigation bar. The reason this color is an accent color as opposed to the main color, is that “too much yellow can be overpowering.” The La Cocinita website uses color well, and is not tough on the viewer’s eyes because of it. Something that stood out to me was the fact that the top NavBar had some items present drop down menus on a hover, but not all of them. I liked the look of having different styles on one NavBar, it makes the site look more diverse or have more depth in my opinion. The layout of the site is okay, I feel that the sharp corners of everything on the page looks kind of harsh, but I did like things such as the auto scrolling gallery on the homepage, and the idea of pictures showing the progression of the truck. The site has no apparent texture, as everything on the site is just a plain, solid color. The only elements that could have texture on the site are the pictures, but only two of the pictures actually load when you click “Food Pics” under the Photo tab. The site feels quite “blocky” due to the sharp corners on the images and the straight bars surrounding the headers on the other pages. One thing that I really liked, and I’m now planning on incorporating into my group’s final project, is that on the La Cocinita home page they have pictures of the logos for Twitter, FaceBook, and Instagram. Should you click on one of these pictures, it will take you to the company’s page on that particular social media source. The menu is laid out differently, as with our site we will be listing specific dishes to incorporate the fusion aspect of the restaurant, but La Cocinita has a menu set up like a Chipotle or Moe’s, which consists of pick a vessel, pick a protein, pick sauces, toppings, etc. This site is an okay webpage (5.5 or 6/10) as far as getting the job done, but our group plans on making our web page more refined than the La Cocinita, through CSS styling and slicing. The World Showcase site will have some similar elements, such as a NavBar up top, a logo above it, and obviously many similar page ideas. However our stylization of the website would be much cleaner, with a more luxurious and homely feel than the La Cocinita, establishing the World Showcase as an elite food truck.

Francesca Barchetti

Review 4

April 23, 2019

https://www.onionmaiden.com

I chose to do my final review on an Asian fusion restaurant called ,Onion Maiden.

This restaurant is very similar to theme and style that we chose for our restaurant, Black Diamond. The Layout they chose for their website is very well communicated throughout the entire site. It is very cohesive on every page. The color scheme chosen is black and white. “Black often receives negative connotations such as death and evil”(pg 49). This is perfect for the theme they are going for. They want to reach the heavy metal music crowd just as we did. The Onion Maiden color scheme is very similar to our website which uses white, black, light blue, and grey. As for the “texture” of this website I would describe it as rough. I chose this word because the website makes you feel like your in a world of darkness. The website is very good at explaining the vibe that the restaurant wants the viewer to perceive. The Onion Maiden website is also very user friendly to navigate. At the bottom of each back there is a “back to home” button which makes things very easy for someone trying to move fast through their site. I actually think that we could have learned alot from this website had I discovered it sooner. That being said I think we do still compete with their site. Their website is much more simple and easy to get through and I think if we had done that it would have helped the overall effectiveness of our site.

For this review, I looked into Salud Juciery’s website. Their website is very simple and clean. The layout is like most other restaurants, with a logo followed by the tabs at the top. Under this, they inserted a photo and a statement about their restaurant. The website I am working on for the final is very similar in regards to the homepage. Off of the homepage there are pages like, “Menu, “About Us”, and “Order Online”. These pages are similar to the homepage because they are short and simple. There isn’t a lot of information to scroll to. The layout including the header and footer stay the same on each page. In the footer, they linked their social media accounts and have a way to get in contact with them. My final website will have these same features.

The color palette is very limited on each page other than the photos. The background is a white/cream and has black text. The only pop of color is in the logo at the top of each page. These colors don’t work well to create a welcoming atmosphere but make it seem modern.

Overall, the website is very plain which makes it easy to navigate. There are clear tabs at the top of each page to lead you to another. The header and footer remain constant to help viewers find the information they are looking for. There aren’t any special elements that keep the viewers attention though. Even on the menu page, the ingredients are just listed under the titles. If there were photos to click on and read about it would be more interactive and fun. The simplistic layout gets the point across but doesn’t offer anything more.

Our website will be pretty similar in terms of information and layout. However, we are going to include more colors and photos to add energy to the pages. For example, our menu page is something you would see at the restaurant rather than just a list of food and ingredients. Salud rarely uses pictures which are very important to restaurants. Viewers immediately judge a place off of what they see online.

makst299

Madisyn Kovach

ARTM2210

4/23/19

Review #4

Review #4:

The website that I have chosen that is very similar to my groups “Eye-Pop” Page is giraffe.com.  I have chosen this page for several reasons. These reasons include the color of the website, the type of layout, and the images created.  These are just a few reasons why I chose this website.

The first reason why I chose this website was because of how similar our colors were.  When designing Eye-Pop, we designed it with bright colors with dark backgrounds. When seeing giraffe.com, the first colors that made my eye pop was the yellows, pinks, and blues.  This was the first reason why I feel like giraffe.com is similar to our Eye-Pop page.

The second reason why I chose giraffe.com is because the layout of the website.  The layout is very similar to our eye-pop page. I looked on a few of their pages and they have very similar different layouts.  I feel like we have a similar layout because ours is clear and simple but still will catch the readers eye.

The third reason why I feel like Eye-Pop and giraffe.com are similar are because of the vector graphics featured on the page.  When looking at a website, you usually just see real photographs that someone took. Even though giraffe.com has some real images, most of the side images that are shown are all vector images. I find it unique to not only have real photos on your web page.

All in all, I feel like giraffe.com is very similar to our Eye-Pop page. I feel like our website will pop out a little more than giraffe.com.  I feel like Eye-Pop includes several more colors, little animations, and cool images. These are just a few reasons how I feel that giraffe.com is a similar website to Eye-Pop.