Ames' syllabi

I decided to do my first website review on the site ThinkGeek.com because I have been on their site many times because of their unqiue products based on movies and tv shows, their site from what I remember has always been very easy and fun to browse.

On their homepage I noticed that they have 3 lines of option bars to choose from. One helpfully shows categories of products and interests to choose from. Underneath these two drop down menus, is a full line of specific categories that would be helpful for people looking for new stock, buying a present, or celebrating a holiday. Lastly, the bar underneath that is a line of logos from various brands; Doctor Who, Star Wars, DC Comics and more. I found this part particularly helpful and eye appealing, it is one of the first things the eye comes to on the site and are the brands that people shop for the most.

For my item I chose to go into the Doctor Who section. I really liked their way of listing items, and the size of the thumbnails were perfect for getting an idea of what the product was, while not too big and not straining the eyes. One change I would make would be to shift the listing of the items further to the left and centering it to make it more comfortable to browse.

I found a comic book featuring the 9th doctor that I wanted and clicked on the link and had no trouble of finding the “Buy Now” button, because it was a different color and size than the rest of the text on the page. I liked this a lot about ThinkGeek and I think it makes the buying process easier. However, when I got to the cart page and clicked ‘continue shopping’ it sent me to a general book search page and not the original Doctor Who page I was on. I would have liked it to take me back to the original page I was coming from incase I wanted to purchase more things from the same brand.

Overall, I think the ThinkGeek site is good aesthetically and avoids making assumptions on gender in their design. The site has a good balance of color between black, grey, and green, and uses other colors to bring attention to other details that are important. The site also functions very well in design for people that are not familiar with their products, as it as helpful links and pictures to guide the shopping process forward.

The website I chose is nastygal.com. I do a lot of shopping online but have not used this site yet. When I first arrive at the homepage the first thing I think is that is looks pretty. The aesthetic is clean and modern, with just the right amount of color here and there to direct your attention to the most important places. Most of the screen is taken up by an image of a model wearing their clothes. The image’s background is a simple yet pleasing light pink-to-purple gradient.

Their logo is at the top left corner, and to its right are buttons to take you to pages for “new”, “clothes”, “shoes”, “accessories”, etc. When you hover over each link, a drop down menu appears with more specific categories. There is also a search bar at the top right. I am going to look for shoes, so I type “heels” into the search box.

I am immediately shown a list of many different heeled shoes. For each product there is a visually pleasing photograph, an item description in a clean, sans-serif font, and then the price. They also give you options to refine your search, and you can narrow the results by color, price, size, and more.

Upon scrolling down the page and hovering over one photo, I find that the image switches to show you a different view of the product. I click on a pair of shoes I like and it takes me to another page.

The page for these shoes is nice to look at and very easy to understand. Most of the screen is taken up by an image of the product. To the right, there is the name of the shoe followed by buttons with each available size. The unavailable ones are gray, and it is very clear that these sizes are not in stock. I select my size and a large black “add to tote” button appears. I click on it and then on the “view tote/checkout” button that appears.

I am brought to a page with my “tote” items on it as well as suggestions for other things to buy. The checkout process looks like it will be easy (there is a big black “checkout” button to the right), although I don’t know for sure because I can’t afford $110 shoes.

Overall, nastygal.com is exactly what I look for when shopping online (except for the prices, that is). I love their clothes and their aesthetic. It is clear that they know who their typical shopper is. It is very well constructed and does not make the user think at all. A part of “Don’t Make Me Think” focuses on how people don’t really read websites, they scan them. This website is designed for that- there are very few words, and you don’t need to sift through information to find what you’re looking for. They make it easy to glance at the screen and immediately know what to click next. I think pretty much anybody could use this website, even those who are not used to using computers or the internet.

For my review, I will be looking at the positive and negative aspects of a site. The site that I chose to do my review on is Walmart. Upon first going onto the site, I see that it is a pretty clean and minimalistic site.  There isn’t a lot of clutter or things to get you distracted along the sides.  There are advertisements that have a click scroll at the top of the page under the menu bar.  These ads  show things that they think are popular like healthy foods,  hygienic products, and popular holiday products.  For right now,  they have Valentines day gifts on there.   Under this they have the sponsored links and then links to every department.  I am going to see how well their check out is compared to other sites that we talked about in class that had a good checkout system like Amazon.  I chose to look at clothing to see the color and style options they might have.  Once I got into the clothing,  sidebar menus popped up that showed me categories of clothing, sizes, and price ranges.  Also, something surprising came up.  At the top of the sidebar, there is an option already for delivery.  This included whether to send to store or house.  After you choose ad to cart, it sends you to a page to make sure your item is correct while also showing you things customers also bought.  Once you go through that step, you can’t go any further without making an account.  Even though you can’t go any further,  I can already tell that this is similar to Amazon in many ways.  Like Amazon,  the goal of Walmart’s site is to sell their products.  Walmart also differs from Amazon because Walmart has stores that customers can go to and buy the products too so their site has to reflect that aspect of their store.  Walmart is, like Amazon,  a matrix structure because in the book it says that a matrix is a structure that can get to any point from any point.  I think that this site is very user friendly and is even friendly to elderly people too because Mostly all of the writing is big and in colors that are very easy and appealing to the eyes.  All in all, I think that Walmart has a very good site that is user friendly and has many good features.

Recently, I had been asked to look up possibilities for lavaliere microphones and one of the stores I was suggested to look up was Best Buy. So I went onto Best Buy’s website and searched for lavalieres. The search bar was immediately in my sight. When I searched, it gave me a few pages of options, but on the left side, there were different categories that allowed me to search for what I was looking for without going through the whole tab. An example would be a price range or a specific brand or wireless. It also shows next to the tab how many items are in that brand. When I added what I was looking at to the cart and went to check out, it gave me three shipping choices with the price and date of arrival by them. You would then click checkout to continue to log in to your best buy account and choose your payment method.

After reading the beginning section of “Don’t Make Me Think”, it helped me pick out the smallest details on Best Buy’s website. When I first went on, the search bar was visible and it stood out to where I needed to find it. A search bar should always be at the top of the page because it is what a viewer will be looking for most of the time when they go to a web site. I liked the order of the tabs on the side to reduce your search. I think the order it is in from what’s on sale to brand then price I think are some of the first things that come to mind if someone wants to look for specific details on a product. It was a little strange though that the page would always refresh when you checked off one box. To improve that, I think you should be allowed to check the boxes off first that you want to check out and click search. In other words, it’s an advanced search. The cart was up in the right hand corner to keep it visible while I continued to look at other items, but there was a notification by the cart to show that you have one item prepared to check out. When I was done, I just had to click on the cart. Finally, I liked how the choices for shipping were listed and it had the answers to some simple questions someone would be thinking as soon as they go to review their order. It had when you would receive it by and how much it costs. I did find it a little odd though that it had the name of the shipping type below that information. Most web sites would have the type of shipping first in bigger font, following the information. I still think it worked though, but others might disagree.

In conclusion, I think Best Buy’s website is well structured with the search. Not only do they give you the tools to help you find what you are looking for easier, but it is organized into what most customers would want to know first. With someone in media like me, it makes a good site to search options for on equipment and any other media material needed.

Overstock.com

For the first review, I chose to visit the website Overstock.com. Overstock initially focuses on selling returned and surplus merchandise on the online website. I have used Overstock to buy small miscellaneous items from time to time but have not used it or visited it in a while. A short while after launching I knew that Overstock.com attempted to simplify the website name to O.co but by doing this, several users were confused and struggled to get used to the change showing that simplifying something does not always make it better as stated in the reading. While scrolling down the home page, the images that are actual links to sales and categories are a positive addition to letting a user know what the website has to offer instead of just listing the sales in a categorical and somewhat boring order.

Next, the color scheme of the website is clean and easy to read with white as the background, red accents and black text. At the top center of the screen is the search bar, with the tabs listing the several categories for the many items just below. One thing to notice is that the tabs are not alphabetically listed on the website but that did not seem to be a problem. One thing that I would change about the website is some of the sizes of some of the text or categories on the pages. Although it is a nice font and simple, a large amount of the text is the same size or relatively close to each other, making it a little harder to find what I am looking for immediately.

I used the search bar to find the item that I was looking for on Overstock. The search results popped up with ways to narrow the search by price, size or even brand. I quickly found the item I was looking for and clicked on the image depicted. I was then directed to the item description which included a drop down list with the full word for the sizes, the quantity as well as the colors I could order the item in. The shopping cart button was in the top right corner and was small but like most of the other shopping cart icons on a website. After clicking it, the checkout button, differs from the rest of the site’s color scheme being that it is green instead of the theme of red, white and black.

–American Eagle Outfitters www.ae.com

I frequently look at American Eagle Outfitter’s website for deals on their rather overpriced clothing.  I am a bargain shopper especially during the holidays. Depending on the platform I access their site, the usability varies in level of difficulty. When I first access the site, they always have the most recent news plastered in bold blocks of information on their homepage like “New Arrivals”, “Sales”, or their “brands.”  Currently, each block of information is self explanatory. For example, if I want to shop their “Save up to 60% on Clearance” special right now, I can click “Shop Women”, “Shop Men”, or “Shop Aerie.” They are the 3 most common choices their customers make without thinking.  They have a header of 6 options ranging from “Women” to “Clearance” at the top. If I want to go to the cheapest clothing, I know to immediately click on the “Clearance” link since it simply states where it will take me.  However, they appear just as text, not as button. I believe it is through conditioning of multiple websites using this kind of technique that online shoppers know that text explaining “women”, “men”, “clearance”, etc. will take us to the specified location without necessarily having to have a “button” appearance.  One feature I have always liked about American Eagle’s website is how they always have a photograph of the product that makes it obvious about what the product is, how to wear it or use it, and that you can click the image to look at more information or buy the product.  It does not require a lot of thought. It’s so easy even my older relatives know how to maneuver the site when they are shopping for their nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.  As for the format of the site, the most important information is in larger sections that take up the majority of the site’s visual space.  Product names and prices are significantly smaller than the corresponding photograph because American Eagle deems the visual of the product is more important than the name of it, but the price follows by being larger than the product name.  Their pages are easy to scan with a helpful “Back to Top” feature since their pages tend to scroll on for what seems like forever in the internet world.  The most important information is easy to scan through quickly and the more detailed information is on single product pages where you see the image, product name, price, size information, and availability. Unnecessary information is never immediately displayed when viewing their products.  The user must work further into the site mapping to see more detailed information.  If I am in a hurry, I scroll quickly looking at contrasting colors that will cause me to pause and look at an item I may like.  It is easy to go back to a previous page without having to start back at the top again.  (This is not the case in their app on the iPad or iPhone.) Overall, I think their main webpage is easy to use, but their apps are much more difficult to maneuver and have significant bugs.  The website usually loads quickly and is not flashy so it is easy for the eye to flow through the information and not become over stimulated. Important information is bold, large, and easy to find. Hovering over bits of information all over the site makes submenus appear.  The site is layered, but the layers do not need to be accessed in order to work through the website to achieve the ultimate goal of making a purchase.

–Katie Carlton

Jennifer Hoffman
http://www.modcloth.com/

The site I am reviewing is for Mod Cloth, which sells clothing, bedding, room decor and more. This site fits the “Don’t Make Me Think” criteria. The buttons that you are meant to push to navigate through the site either hightlights when the cursor is hovering over it, or is within a bound box as a button, just as the book describes. Everything is laid out very simply, with headings such as “Dresses” “Shoes” and “Home & Gifts” to name a few. When you hover over the headings you get a drop down that lays it out to more specific categories such as “Graphic Tees” “Leggings” and “Bedding”. This organization makes it very easy to browse their products and to find exactly what you are looking for.

When you find the product that you want, it is very easy to add it to your “bag”, as there is a large pink button that says “Add to Bag” and even directly takes you to the bag to view all the items that you have saved in it. To view your bag at any given time, there is a small icon shaped as a tote bag, on the top right of the screen, right next to a large button that says “Check Out”.

Over all this site is very easy to navigate and is well designed to make saving and purchasing your items fast and simple.

The website i choose to review that i feel would be competition for my groups fusion restaurant website is P. F. Changs. i feel that this would be a good compareison are website as it combines chinese food with different cultures of food just as are website combines ice cream and potatoes. The layout of the website is fairly simple everything on the page is very easy to get as far as the menu tabs and others on the top off the page. The navigation i feel could be a little better because if you would click the menu page it brings you to different menus instead of the menu itself, as it is with all the other tabs as well. I also feel that the layout as far as the color palette goes it is very bland and could use more then just the two colors it has which makes the website unappealing to the user i feel. I feel a more brighter color palette would have been a better choice to give it more life. i feel the texture of the website works very good with the website the text and the way things are arranged works very well i think. over i would change the color and the navigation for the different tabs but everything else works very well.