La Gourmandine is an authentic French bakery with locations in Lawrenceville and also Mt. Lebanon, PA. I believe that this bakery could be considered competition for our fusion restaurant, The Eurobean. La Gourmandine has a sleek and clean website, with a very limited palette when it comes to color scheme. However, the colors and fonts used on the site give the appearance of a modern and an upscale type of bakery. The navigation and layout on the page is very similar to ours and also easy to use, with an about us page and also hours of the bakery located on the site as well as social media information. Additionally, the site features a drop down menu with rollovers that make it very easy to know when you are able to click on something. Similar to our website, La Gourmandine has up close photographs that make the viewer’s mouth water. Compared to La Gourmandine, The Eurobean is a fusion bakery, showcasing all of the essential breads, soups, sandwiches, and pastries that different countries have to offer. Our website uses an inviting blue color, as well as a sleek and simple logo that is also playful with the coffee bean illustration. The more relaxed font and color scheme make the customers and viewers on the site feel that it isn’t expected to be high end or top notch, that they can come stop by for a quick drink or snack on their casual stroll through the neighborhood. I think that the way our site is laid out is very user friendly and the navigation through the pages is simple enough for any user to understand. The Eurobean homepage displays a carousel of photographs of items you may find in this fusion bistro. These user friendly features and eye appealing layout and photos on the site will make The Eurobean stand out over the rest as a fusion bistro.
Delaney Hoolahan Review #3
After reading through the book and coming across Krug’s five important things, I was able to then compare two restaurant sites, www.peterallens.com and www.no9park.com, and take note of the balance, emphasis, unity, and layout. Krug emphasizes the importance of creating clear visual hierarchies on every page, taking advantage of conventions, breaking pages into clearly defined areas, making clickable links obvious, and minimizing noise and distractions. When visiting www.peterallens.com it was easy to see that this site had structure and organization. Peterallen’s website displayed a strong emphasis on every page including a video featuring a food or drink item to catch your attention. Every page had just enough information and no distractions or useless details. The menu bar used underlines that would appear when you hover your mouse over a word, as well as highlighting the word in red making it easy to find my options and know when I was able to click it or not. Having clean and crisp images with minimal text gives the site a nice balance as well as the color scheme throughout the entire site. Not only is the layout clean, but it is easy to navigate, using only the necessary amount of buttons to make your way through their website without any trouble and a minimal amount of back and forth clicking. Within every menu whether it be the drinks, dinners, or desserts, the page is clearly defined into different sections to make it easy for the viewer to narrow their search and save time. Compared to Peterallen’s No.9 Park has a bit of a different layout but has some of the same balance and emphasis qualities. Along the left side is a menu bar of clickable links that would navigate you to pages such as reservations, gift certificates, and private dining. Like www.peterallens.com, No.9 Park uses Krug’s five important things to model their site, promoting their food selections through photographs that grab your attention at the top of the page. Although the layout of the site seems clean with minimal noise, I found this site more difficult to navigate. It was difficult to define different sections and areas as well as the text not being centered within the box. The color scheme of this site was not as pleasing or attention grabbing as Peterallen’s. However, the menus on this site, like the other, had little to no distraction and got right to the point. The food item itself was listed on the page with a brief description to give the viewers a little more insight as to what the plate had to offer. Overall I think Peterallen’s website is better in comparison to No.9 Park. This site followed Krug’s five important things as well as having a stronger layout and better emphasis with the videos of every food and drink category. This website caught my attention and was easy for me to navigate the entire way through.
Review 2 by Delaney Hoolahan
After exploring The Principles of Beautiful Web Design and Don’t Make Me Think, I was able to further analyze the web site http://change-the-world.unltd.org.uk/. Live to Change the World is the title of this single page website. Throughout the website, Live to Change the World takes you on a journey through their past, what they know now, how they are implementing their idea, the social impact of their idea, and what is to come in the future. In this one page website, the colors are bold. This site has a space theme at the beginning, then takes you down to the sky, and then eventually to street level. It is easy to navigate this site as it allows you to scroll up and down throughout your experience. If there is a specific section you wish to view, a menu bar pops up at the very top of the site allowing you to be one click away from the information you wish to find. The use of the large bold headers, the font colors that stand out against the background, the graphics and even the charts help me, the user, to understand and differentiate information that the site is trying to present. I like how the blank circles turn over into photographs when you scroll through the site. This feature helps catch your eye and draw attention to what they are intending to show you. I also like how the line and pie graphs pop up as you scroll down past them. This forces you to stop and read how the information is distributed. In my opinion, Live to Change the World is a successful one-page website that is easy for users to navigate and the bright colors and detailed textures draw you in and keep your attention throughout the entire site.
Review 1 by Delaney Hoolahan
Becoming the ‘broke college student’ in life is like a right of passage. It is a cliché that we all are a part of, at some point, whether we’d like to admit it or not. As college students we are inclined to find the cheapest price on the market for any book, movie, or latest app. Like second nature, we gravitate towards Amazon.com. Amazon is the largest internet-based retailer in the United States. Amazon.com offers a wide variety of products including books, movies, phone cases, toiletries, beauty products, groceries, pet products and more at prices that college students can afford. Because so many people visit this site it is so important that Amazon.com is easy for users to navigate. As I searched for the movie Interstellar in the search box at the top of the page, Amazon provided a drop-down menu to choose what category I was interested in searching; I chose Movies & TV. This action was extremely easy for me to navigate. After all of my options appeared on the screen, I noticed a filter feature on the left-hand side where I was able to choose options such as the format preferred, the release date, and genre of movie. This section was optional to use if wanting to narrow the search. When I decided what movie to choose, I was directed toward a page where I was easily able to add the product to my cart. Also on this same screen, I was given suggestions of movies similar to Interstellar that I may enjoy. Although a virtually seamless web design, Amazon could improve on their site in a couple different ways. It is nice to have suggested items when you visit the site, but what if amazon provided alerts? Become notified when your new favorite book has reached the site, that way you can be the first to know and order as soon as possible. Another easy fix would be the sign out button. It is not that easy to find, after a few seconds of hunting around the user becomes frustrated. It should be a simple step that you don’t need to think about, perhaps locate the sign out option at the top right of your page like most sites, and not in a drop-down menu. After reading Don’t Make Me Think and The Principles of Beautiful Web Design I quickly realized that Amazon.com was a user friendly site that was easy to navigate for people who know what they’re looking for. The logo was at the top of the homepage and at the top of every page increasing Amazon’s brand recognition. The search bar and drop down menus were located at the top of the page leaving most of the space on the webpage to content; content is king. If you make an account for this site, you can view your current account and are also able to view your shopping history, make a wish list of items you may want in the future, and save and compare prices of items with the cost of what Amazon offers. Now that I am educated and know what makes up a good website, I will continue to use Amazon.com because it was quick and easy to narrow my search and find exactly what I was looking for.