Author: cmsst232

I chose to review ebay.com. Again along with amazon, it is a great site with useful tools to decipher through what you are trying to look for. The drop downs that relate to different departments are super helpful. I think the colors of the site actually make it easier to find what you are looking for. There is less going on and it uses simpler colors. It is interesting how the site has the departments listed on both sides of the search tool bar. I think that is a bit much and would make it less cluttered even if they took one of them away or made the homepage dedicated to departments and searching for items. I also think its great that ebay uses paypal. Thats a huge thing that amazon does not have. Overall,  Its a great site and has it credentials.

For my final review I think choosing the site honeygrow.com is the best choice. What Honey Grow specializes in is stir-frys and salads. The way that the site is set up is that it has a nav bar up top, had a few photos as you scroll down. The color, I am a fan of. Im a huge fan of simplicity and I think that this website does it really well. The photos make the color really pop out and give it texture and depth. The navigation is very easy to use. There are many options in the nav bar and when you scroll over to the location it automatically drops down so you can see where to visit it. I think that the effectiveness of this site really draws you in. The homepage is their menu which makes you hungry and then when you scroll up to the nav bar, the locations automatically drop down. Thats super effective and draws people in to go visit it. I think that comparatively to our site, MASHED.COM, it has actually a lot of similarities. It has the same kind of simplistic design and also stands out with our photos. I think that what makes our site stand out, is the simplistic designs and the homey feel to it we draw people in.

For review 1, I chose to review amazon.com. This website is fairly easy to use but can be cluttered at times. From what I understand, when you search for items on this website, they start to show items that may be related to what you are looking for even when you are not searching for them. While this is a useful tool, it tends to create a cluttered page full of items that can be slightly overwhelming. I think that for an elderly user, this could be slightly confusing and distracting for them. I know that for even me its hard to sometimes decipher through all of the clutter. Other than that, everything is fairly simple and easy to use. The dropdown between departs when searching for a product really helps especially when you are looking for something super specific.

Explore each of your choices, then describe and compare the two sites use of Balance, Unity, Emphasis, and Layout. How do they use these principles and implement Krug’s five important “things” to make sure users see and understand the site? Is one site more effective than the other at drawing your attention, and why?

 

For this site review, I chose BRGR and Burgatory. Burgatorys layout and design I think overall is better than BRGR. Burgatorys website has a great layout of balance and unity. Things are evenly placed on the nav bar and as you scroll down theres not too much information. The layout is really key to their site. They also emphasize the different names in their nav bar which is really cool. They absolutely thought outside the box to rename what most restaurants would use in their nav bar. BRGR is a little different. They were a lot less creative in this process. Its a little hard to figure out where the nav bar is until you are on the site for a second and it only scrolls down the site for you. This is interesting but not that great. I created an off center feel to the site and the emphasis felt like it was lacking. It was hard to bring it all together. I honestly think it would have worked better without any nav bar and the name being huge and in the middle of the top page.

 

The five important things I see is the Site I D, the page name (whatever page you are one), the major sections of the site, local navigation, and where I am on the page. I think overall Burgatory is the winner. They create an experience on the site yet you still know exactly where you are and what you are doing the on the site the entire time.