Apple’s website is build in a way that is tailored to the user, but their own goals are clear as well. From looking at their site their goals appear to be selling their product, supporting their buyers, matching their design and branded standards, and promote use of their services and products. As far as the users needs after purchase, the site allows easy access to a page related to each of their many products and includes links to content related to starting use, and issues with a wide variety of topics.
Facebook, being a site that has changed a lot since its creation, has many functions on the feed alone. The site shows posts that are up to date from my “friends”. It allows users to search for people or pages. It has a chat system in place for users to talk. The site notifies users of events, birthdays, and messages. Navigation is also allowed through menus.
Hierarchical structure starts with a home page and branches off based on sub sections. rmu.edu
Matrix allows users to move from page to page by defining search criteria. amazon.com
Organic is free form and does not have clear paths from one page to another, and is based on user decision. wikipedia.org
Sequential can only be seen in one order, usually to tell a story or guide user through sections. Logging in to many sites follows this.
The Huffington Post’s homepage features very little actual content, maybe an 80% navigation to 20% content. It may appear to be mostly content, with photos and articles appearing over all the page, but these are just content snippets which function as Navigation to the actual content. This trend carries over to etsy, the site’s homepage focus is on getting the user to a page of content using snippets, as opposed to having full content on the home page. Google’s homepage has only the google logo as content, and the rest is navigation to other places. Wikipedia is similar to google in that it does not have any more content than its own logo on the homepage, with navigation to elsewhere.
Landor uses many elements of art to guide the user throught their site. Color plays a big part in eye movement on the web, in this case it pops against a white backdrop to instantly pull the eye towards the colors. Color also helps distinguish between different pages and ideas. Motion is also a huge part of the site, there is a want to move down by scrolling, then options to move to the side by small arrows, which are used over and over to create continuity.