Today I will be reviewing another restaurants website, but this time I will also be comparing it to the website that my group is currently finalizing. The restaurant that I was to find to review is that which could be in competition with my own imaginary fusion restaurant, “Cream & the Crop”, a restaurant I feel fits this bill is “Gaucho”. This is a small restaurant that serves Argentinian food, and boasts a wood fire stove. The reason I believe this business is in direct competition with “Cream & the Crop” is the location in Pittsburgh’s strip district as well as it’s unique style and reasonable costs. I will be comparing the restaurants’ websites, but first I’ll discuss the use of layout, color, texture and navigation.
Firstly I will jump into the overall layout of the Gaucho site. On the homepage we see a large container floating in the center of the screen with margins around it. In the top right hand corner of the container is the menu, featuring; restaurant, menu, find us, and reviews. It is slightly off putting that the entire top left hand side of the home screen is blank, as this is where users typically begin their search for a site ID and navigation bar. Then inside the box below the menu is a large logo followed vertically by an embedded commercial, and below that the address and hours of operation. Upon opening each of the pages in the main navigation menu I notice that apart from the home screen the rest of the site features a site ID at the top left of the screen. The center container is the only change on each page, getting larger or smaller to fit the menu, reviews, or map. The two boxes stating the address and hours of operation remain the same on every screen as well. Overall I think this site’s layout is simple and works well enough, but could be enhanced if the menu was in a place that felt more natural, and if each pages didn’t feel so disconnected from one another.
Moving on to color and texture in the design. The site uses a handful of colors to help unify the pages into one company scheme, but fails in some regards. The main colors of the site are a pale yellow, black, and light gray. These colors are used on every page, grey for main containers and menus, black in the text and logo, and a yellow background that also features a photo. This scheme works effectively to give the whole place a feel of south of the boarder food, but a few problems effect the overall effectiveness. Mostly the page that features the menu, on this page the main container has another container inside itself, this is the menu and it is very dark grey nearly black, with white text and a reddish boarder. the dark grey with white text is not seen anywhere else on the site and feels out of place. The reddish boarder could be explained as matching a strip of color between the yellow background and the background image, but these two colors even appear to be slightly different. As far as texture goes many of the colors are flat, which I don’t this is bad. Gradient effects are used sparingly on the menu bar to give a sense of roundness, and it works to create more interest on the menu bar. The largest problem as far as texture goes is the image that is found in the background of the site. The image is not high enough quality to be blown up so large, and has not been edited well enough to match the color scheme of the rest of the site.
Lastly is navigation, one of the most important things to keep in mind when creating a site. As already discussed there is an issue with the menu being located in the top right as opposed to the top left, this could confuse users as the first place they look is to the top left for a site ID and menu options. That being said the menu does it’s job, with a simple hover effect that shows what can be clicked on and what can’t be. But there is no way to tell what page the user is on based on the menu bar. This problem is made worse by having the word Gaucho before each page name so that’s all that can fit into the tab above. There is also no courtesy navigation at the bottom of the page, which is a useful tool when navigating a site. Other issues include blue lettering in places when they are not clickable links, and the logo sometimes linking to the homepage and sometimes being just a graphic. Overall the navigation is simple and while it does it’s job, it could also be improved on for the user.
The Gaucho website is not bad, it is very simple and does what it needs to in many ways. I feel that “Cream & the Crop” will have a superior website that will be usable and visually appealing. It will do this by having a more unique layout featuring a fixed menu that scrolls with the user, as well as unified pages. With a constant color scheme that gives a feeling of an old fashion ice cream shop while reinforcing textures that bring up visuals of potatoes. And finally by clearly showing where the user is, and featuring multiple ways to navigate to the same page, for a more organic user experience.