The two websites I compared were Burgatory and BRGR, both are burger restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. The Burgatory web site is straighter forward, where I think the BRGR web site could be a little confusing. Burgatory’s balance is strange because with the sky and grass in the background, it seems symmetrical at first, but with the restaurant logo and burger and shake images on the left side and on the other side is the navigation tabs, it makes the design look more asymmetrical. This applies to the home page and the submenus. BRGR’s is asymmetrical because of the grainy orange background and all the tabs have pictures when you click on them. For unity, I think Burgatory’s website is kind of crammed with a bunch of things on the home page, but I think it’s enough information that is still appealing to a viewer where as BRGR, I think there’s too many tabs on the homepage making it confusing to search for what you are looking for.
I like how Burgatory emphasis’s the theme of the restaurant making it look like purgatory. But something I think that stands out as far as elements for the restaurant, I like how they have the big burger in the middle of the page where you can click the arrows to see their popular items for the time, which is effective for advertising. What is also unique about that is when u put your cursor on the burger, it shows additional information as well. BRGR, however, they have a really small slideshow at the bottom of the page where you have to scroll down to and it doesn’t really stand out which I don’t find effective because viewers want to see that stuff as soon as they open up the home page. When I first opened the site, there was nothing that stood out to me. Burgatory also has a good layout with everything being right there as soon as you open the website and easy to navigate to find what you’re looking for. BRGR though as I said before, has too much information on the home page and doesn’t really have an appealing layout.
Steve Krug mentions five things that makes a web site easy to understand for users. First is clear visual hierarchy. Burgatory’s is very successful in its design and straight to the point. It sets the theme, but it also elements that stand out to you where BRGR is too plain and doesn’t have anything that stands out as soon as you open the page. The same applies to graphics as well and titles. Burgatory’s also breaks down the different pages well but also on the home page doesn’t have too many options yet where BRGR has so many options on the first page. An example would be having a different tab for food and drink or news and team. Some of these things should be under the same tab then broken up more under that page. If it’s on the home page, it would make the user think more than they need to. Both of these sites though have obvious buttons for clickable links so nothing really blends in. All of this put together explains the noise for each website. Everything you need to know for Burgatory is rite there broken into simplest terms, where BRGR has too much noise on its site.
It’s obvious at this point that I think Burgatory’s web site is better than BRGR’s. Burgatory has a good system breaking down the information you need to know advertising its latest products and specials on the home page and not too many tabs. You can’t have two things on the homepage that could mean the same thing, which BRGR does and viewers won’t be sure at first where to look to find what they’re looking for, hence the goal for a web site is clearly stated on the name of the book Don’t Make Me Think.