Our fusion restaurant, The Pasta Project, would face competition form such companies like Olive Garden. We will have similar menu items and will be targeting the same customer base. The Olive Garden web site, http://www.olivegarden.com/home, is extremely well built and offers a lot of insight for our own site. The site uses the elements of layout, color, texture, and navigation to its advantage. For starters the layout of the web page is easy to follow. When a visitor enters a web page they don’t ready the page logically, their eyes bounce all over the place and information is discovered in an unorganized way. Even so, the Olive Garden web page is simply designed and uses a lot of stunning graphics. The layout makes it easy for the viewer to find information without putting too much effort into reading.
Another elements that helps with the pages layout is its navigation. If a page is organized well and easy to navigate than the page suddenly feels like a seamless experience for the user. The Olive Garden web page keeps the navigation bar on the same part of the screen for every move and scroll. The background is also static. Both of these elements give the user an anchor while browsing the page. At no point should the viewer feel lost, as there is always a reference point that doesn’t move or change in appearance. The navigation bar itself is effective due to its simplicity and options to select. Rather than add a lot of different buttons for the user to click on the Olive Garden web page keeps things simple and only presents the topics that really matter. This is something that The Pasta Project should aim for: simple and easy to understand navigation.
In some cases color and texture and be critiqued together as they are responsible for the aesthetic feel of a web page. Olive Garden’s web site used both elements to create a visually stunning experience. The entire web site has a color scheme that it sticks too. The colors are soft beige, dark red, bright mint green, and subtle browns. These colors combine to create a feeling of warmth, compassion, and fresh ingredients. The colors play nicely together and invite the user to keep looking and find out more. The texture has a similar effect. Olive Garden’s web page uses very soft textures compared to some other sites. Watermarks of their logo appear in different sizes throughout the web page. These subtle designs help to give the graphical elements more character as well as give the page a little more depth. Many pages that feel very flat are the cause of a lack of texture. The Pasta Project will try and do the same in creating effective textures and color schemes to make the page easier look at for the viewer.
The Olive Garden’s web page is visually stunning, and pleasingly simple to use. However, the site is not perfect. Because the company is a franchise that is owned by a larger company the web page is built to encompass Olive Garden restaurants all over the nation. The Pasts Project will focus on making the page more personable for the user. Seeing a menu is great, but it is also nice to get the feeling that the restaurant actually wants you, as a customer, to come in and have a good time. With Olive Garden, the customers are simply numbers in a spreadsheet that keep profits in the green. The Pasta Project site will focus more on the individual and present the user with as much friendly, and welcoming information as possible. We want our site to say “come on in, we’re happy to have you.”