For this website review, I chose Six Penn Kitchen and one of my personal favorite restaurants, The Interchange Lounge. As I explored each restaurant’s page, I could tell that Six Penn Kitchen definitely has a more professional and sophisticated website then Interchange Lounge. That is because of the bigger customer base as well as location. While Six Penn is located in the heart of Pittsburgh, the Interchange Lounge is located off of Route 51 on a side road. Six Penn’s website is balanced, clean, and sharp. The layout is great and definitely emphasizes the food as well as the location. The Interchange Lounge does a decent job at explaining what their restaurant is all about but it needs to be polished just a bit. According to Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” a website should follow these five important concepts to make sure users see and understand the website as best as possible:
• Creating a clear visual hierarchy on every page
• Taking advantaged of conventions (both naming and graphic)
• Breaking pages into clear defined areas
• Making it obvious what constitutes a clickable link
• Minimizing noise
I believe that Six Penn Kitchen follow each concept well, where as the Interchange Lounge follows some but not all.
Six Penn Kitchen’s website it truly eye-catching with the graphics, photographs, typography, etc. One can definitely see the sense of hierarchy on the home page as well as every other page. Every page is unique and showcases it’s proper meaning. The noise level is extremely low which is fantastic for users. The nice white ribbon banner on the top is an awesome way of showing what it clickable link and what is not. The Interchange Lounge on the other hand needs some work. There really isn’t a sense of hierarchy or emphasis on any page. The images of the food need to be the prominent thing that users see and they just missed the mark. The layout is bland and does not distinguish each page. Every page has the same style and feels archaic. It is definitely a shame that the Interchange logo is not even clickable. The couple things they did manage to do alright is making the different selections clickable and stand out while minimizing noise.
Overall, Six Penn Kitchen’s website is great, stylish, and easy to explore while the Interchange Lounge has some ways to go to be of the same caliber as some of the most recognized restaurants in the Pittsburgh area.