Category: Site Review

For my second site review I went with the website Redis.Agency: https://www.redis.agency/?ref=onepagelove. I. chose this website as it was the most unique website that I have ever seen. With the creative usage of color where there are only 4 colors, red, white, black, and green. Using black as the background and using the color red a few times, giving it more emphasis when present. The color white is used on the type and the color green is used around the border of the page, giving it a sense of contrast from the red. One thing I found very interesting about the page was the concept of infinitely scrolling down or up, the page is set up to never have an end or beginning as it keeps going in a loop. It was very confusing at first as it looked like the content was repeating until I hit realization that it was a loop after scrolling for a few minutes. I think the website was done very well and the concept of scrolling for ever is unique, however it would be nice to know that it is scrolling in a loop as it can be confusing at first. Another thing that the website did well was the usage of simplicity as the background is pure black and the text being in the center and being the color white really makes the text pop and show importance as it create contrast.

For my first site review, I decided to go with the Nike website and the product that I put on the cart were a pair of soccer cleats (Nike Tiempo Legend 9 Elite). The overall process was very smooth and simple, which was expected from a big company. The way that the website is designed creates is very nice from a design point of view, where on the middle top of the page it has different options, splitting up genders and ages, and once hovering over select gender or age, a set of drop down options appear, allowing the viewer to select the desired products. On the right side of the page it has a search option, a favorite item viewer, and the cart. The cart system was done well, allowing the viewer to see how many items they have in the cart with a number in the middle of the cart icon. However, I did see a possible issue with the cart icon, where it could be mistaken for another icon from the view of a newer user of the internet as it is not the iconic shopping cart icon, instead it is a handbag icon. From this website, I find myself using the simplistic style of the website in my homepage as I find it very appealing.

Zack Rush

Web Design

            The single page website that I chose is pasteapp.io. This website is about a new application for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that saves anything that you copy. Say you copy something from a website, and then you must use it again at a different time, it is already saved on the app so you have access to it. Let’s look at the design of the website to see if it has visual appeal and to see if it is easy to navigate. The color of the website has a simple layout of a white background. I like that the text clearly contrasts the color of the background. The important headings are bold, and the subtext is just black. There are hints of color with the use of images and gradients that the website uses. The site does a good job of not blinding you with color and makes it flow very well. Regarding the use of texture on the site; there isn’t much to see. The part that has a visual texture is where the section “Designed for Productivity” appears. That section has a gradient that goes underneath the text. It gives a little bit of texture for the site, but nothing significant. Regarding the flow, the website navigates from top to bottom. It is divided into sections that are really big. Whenever you scroll down, there are sections of text that explain the product. I feel like it can get a little confusing whenever you look through the site because there is not a lot of organization. You can understand the content, but I feel like I was scrolling up and down through the website trying to find what I wanted to learn about. It was a lot of back and forth, with scrolling up and down and everything seemed to start blending together. I could tell that information was sectioned off, but it took a moment. I wasn’t exactly sure at first glance. I feel like there could have been a different color than black for the topics and then it might have been better to navigate. The website pasteapp.io wasn’t poor, but it needs improvements, in my opinion.

The site I chose to do is “Creative South ’23”. The thing that caught my eye was the colors of this page . They seem kinda retro and ultimately are eye-catching. The next thing I noticed was the title of the page says “Pure” and it has this ombre 3D text behind it. When you move your curser the 3D text behind it moves with the curser. I personally love this because it is fun to play with and creates a type of texture instead of being flat. The website has an easy straightforward function with scrolling and maneuvering through the site. When scrolling down the site shows the different artists and they are encased in different glasses. Hovering the cursor over the glasses they kind of tilt up to show you that you can click on that object. All in all, I feel that this site works really well, as well as standing out with its different little motions when going through the site. Another way this site adds character is how it uses color and it keeps the same color theme throughout the site.

I picked the site “Grand Leisure”. I remember seeing it and thinking it was corny the first time you mentioned One Page Love. In scrolling back through, I realized that it kind of stands out from the rest, in that it almost looks like an artifact of the past more than something that takes advantage of new wacky web effects. All you have to do is scroll and it takes you through, simply put, displays of grand leisure. I think the ease in understanding comes from that “just scroll” approach. There’s nothing else you could look at if you wanted to. I’d say this site is very well-designed. But, as I find myself saying a lot in these classes, don’t really get the point of it.

For the website I chose it was called “Creative South, Pure Imagination.” The color and texture of this website was very bright and curvy. It had some little illustrations and movement when the mouse was moved with the title. How one navigates to one section to another is by scrolling up and down for three different sections. The design elements I think that are easy to read for this website is that the wording is big and bolded, and it is spacious where everything isn’t crammed. I think the design of the website is well done. Its colorful and bright and overall, I think it all goes well with the movement of what is put into the one-page site.

The product I chose for the review site is a table lamp. The products site was Amazon, and it is smooth to find the product that anyone will want. The website has a search bar which makes it even easier to find what anyone needs. The process doesn’t make me think much since its so easy to find the product I am searching for. Sometimes advertisements come up on different websites as well and that makes it sometimes easier to specifically find the product I might be looking for. Even once the product is in the shopping cart, it would show you other options of the product that are similar if I wanted to buy something else too. The shopping cart I think will confuse people sometimes because of the taxes that are added towards the end. This is because in the beginning it doesn’t show how much it is total and if you are using a credit/debit card it will say the full price is red which may be confusing to others. But other than that, I think amazon is a good and easy way to purchase any items for anyone that they are specifically looking for in the world.

The site I’ve chosen to review is called IMLeagues.com. It’s the site this school and a lot of other colleges use to organize intramural sports.

About half of any given page on this site is advertisements. In most circumstances, one could find this unsightly or inconvenient. I like to imagine that IMLeagues was made by a few college fellas that wanted to give some structure to the hectic world of intramural sports. I wouldn’t be surprised if those fellas weren’t even web majors. Just guys that took advantage of the platform.

After initially logging in, the home page of the site becomes your university’s home page, because why would you care about other schools’ intramural sports? From there you can select what active sport you want to take your talents to. When you do that, you’re taken to a page that offers the league’s rules and important dates.

I like how teams and their records remain a constant within a given sport’s family of pages. They’re off to the left, and each team’s name is a link to their roster. It’s the most universally applicable information, and it gives you a way to access the less universally applicable information at any time.

I like IMLeagues. I don’t use it any other time during the year than the month flag football takes place. But during that month, it’s a very valuable resource. As someone who watches real football film for real football games, watching the guys in this league pore over this site – clicking every link, digging to the bottom of every page – is like looking in a funhouse mirror.

Intramural sports are simple, but they can be as infinitely complex as someone is willing to make them. IMLeagues is the same.

My eCommerce site of choice was Fanatics.com. I went on the website to buy a hockey jersey. The homepage of the website is very clean, meaning that at the top of the page it has a search bar that you can easily access to search anything you want. I was very fond of the fact that it also has logos of the different sports leagues that you can click on. Further down the website, it has big pictures of different sales that are going on which were very appealing to the eye. Since I was looking for a hockey jersey, I clicked on the NHL logo at the top of the website. Whenever I clicked on the website, a menu popped up of the different teams. I was looking for a San Jose Shark’s jersey, so I went and clicked on the logo that was labeled San Jose Sharks. Seemed easy enough so far to click on logos that were familiar instead of just clicking on text. On the left-hand side of the website, there was a filtering menu that let you choose the type of product you want and the player you may be seeking. I sorted through the jersey’s and chose one to put in the cart. Something that I did not find to be visually pleasing was the lack of images for sorting out product. There is only text, no visual cues for the list of items available. Once you read through and focus on the item that you want and click on it, there are then different images that they use for the product. After you put it in the cart, there is a shopping cart logo up top, and you would click there to find what you clicked on and added. My user experience from this website overall is that it clearly showed where you could find all their products. You could go from a list of leagues to a list of teams and then to finding exactly what you are searching for. The only time I was thinking was on what player I wanted to get. It was very easy to navigate through the website.

My review is about the ThinkGeek.com website which is under Gamestop. I personally appreciate the website and how easy it is to navigate to the products I want. Making the shopping process so much easier for the consumer. Now there are some problems with it, for one, the picture on the site is too big and takes away from the products at the bottom which requires scrolling, to the average consumer, they would have no idea where to go once launching the page. Furthermore, the site coloring is not right as well, I get that this is a different company than Gamestop or in fact is a company under Gamestop, but Gamestop colors are red and black, while the ThinkGeek site is green and black. I believe the colors of red and black are more appealing to gamers and more eye-catching for the average consumer. Those are my only problems with the site, the website as a whole is a 7/10 website as a whole with the layout, navigation, and lastly ease of use. When you add a product to the cart, it is also easy to order the product of your choice.

After reading Chapter 1 of “Don’t Make Me Think”, I learned a lot about the strategies eCommerce sites use. I explored these this weekend when I visited Lego.com.

I was looking for the Rapunzel tower build from Tangled. When I was first brought to this page, I was greeted by a Lego City Stuntz set. This took up about the top third of the page, and it had a “shop now” button that would take me directly to all Lego City sets. Underneath of this was a featured set of products labeled “Recommended for You”, but I think they were just the most recent products to be released. However, the first one in the lineup was a Lego Star Wars advent calendar, which is something I could potentially be interested in purchasing.

Scrolling down the page, underneath of the recommended sets were Bestseller, Fun Family Builds, Offers and Promotions, and Featured Sets. All of these were great and eye catching, but I was ready to look for the tower I came here to find.  Above the Lego City Stuntz set, there was a yellow bar with the Lego logo in the top left corner. Over to the right I found the search bar. I pressed it and all I typed in was “tangled”. The very first search result was exactly what I was looking for. I gathered that since it is the only Tangled set, it was followed by other Disney sets, most likely some the website would tink I could potentially be interested in. It made me laugh because the set immediately following it was a Minnie and Mickey camping set, which I got as a gift for my birthday this weekend. It must know me scarily well or something.

I could have pressed on my Tangled set to look at it more closely, but since I knew I wanted it, I simply hovered over the product and was able to select Add to Bag (or Add to Wishlist). I clicked “Add to Bag”, which prompted another screen. Here, I could select “Continue Shopping” or “View my Bag”. Since this was all I came to buy, I selected “View my Bag”. I thought it was very helpful that it gave me that option, so that I could go directly to checkout. If I did not want to select either of those options, I also could have closed out of that pop up with an “X” in the top right corner. But now, I was at checkout. It was time to whip out the credit card and give my money away to Disney Lego for a birthday present from me to me, just what any twenty-one year old would want, right?

I could see the contents of my online shopping cart on the left side, and on the right side I found the checkout options. There was a spot where I could add any promotional codes I may have, but unfortunately, I did not have any, so I clicked on “Checkout Securely”. I do have an account but in the spirit of simplicity, I chose an option to checkout as a guest. I added in my shipping information. I then proceeded to add in my contact information, along with my payment information. It was all very straightforward and I could see all the steps at the same time, which I appreciated.

I was able to checkout securely and purchase my Tangled tower with Rapunzel and Flynn Rider. What else could a girl ask for? It was all very simple and I loved the website, it was so bright and colorful and featured so many things on the home screen but when it was time to find what I wanted, it was very simple and even gave me suggestions of products after the one I was looking for, without taking anything away or seeming too excessive. All in all, I would totally recommend this website to shoppers and will continue visiting in the future.

The website I chose to do is rightstuffanime.com. I’m a huge manga collector and sometimes, Barnes and Noble doesn’t have the book I’m looking for, so I head to right stuff anime to buy manga. Although I use it mainly for manga it offers multiple other products like CDs, figures, games, and apparel.

When you first open the site it usually always has a pop-up that offers 10% off your order if you give them your email. The homepage of the site shows the search bar promptly placed in the top middle of the site and under it has the different categories of items you can shop for. It’s nice that when you hover your cursor over each category, it underlines that subject so you as the user know for sure that you can click on it. Under the categories, it has a small slide show that shows the deals for the week or weekend and then offers new items coming. As you scroll down you can see other featured and popular items. If you scroll to the bottom they have a plethora of different links that are categorized with “Let us help you”, “Get to know us”, “Just the FAQs”, and “The fun stuff”. I feel this is important to a website because if customers have questions on returns or other items they can easily scroll down and find where to go. 

The color scheme of this website is red, white, and blue, although blue is less predominant than red and white. While clicking on the manga category it has a drop-down menu that allows you to choose whether you want to shop by genre or book categories. This is a good thing to add because shopping online for books can be difficult and overwhelming, having it already broken down can help the user ask fewer questions and be easy to follow. I then chose the manga and it loaded up a page where you can look at all the different options they offer. It states how many products there are and on the left side, it allows the user to narrow down their search. For example, it shows different authors, themes, what’s in stock, and other deals they are having. Above the books it also allows the user to choose how many books are shown on each page and how you would like it organized to allow the experience to be easier.

While looking at the books it first shows the front cover of the book and has the title right below it. This is useful since many people like to skim over a page and it’s easier for them to look at pictures than read the title. Below that it shows the rating of the book, then shows a retail price and what the site’s price is. This is a good decision because it makes the user think/know they are getting a good deal and they are saving money by buying off this site instead of competitors. However, with the rating, it seems most books don’t have a rating and it might be more beneficial to remove the stars to create more space. Below the price it allows you to select the quantity and add it to the cart, right below that shows whether the item is in stock, some items are out of stock and expecting more, and pre-orders with the date it will ship out. Once you click add to cart, it has a pop-up of what you added with all the item’s information and then provides two separate options of whether you would like to view your cart and check out or continue shopping. The view your cart is a red button which matches the color scheme and the continue shopping is a white button with a black outline and has its letters the color blue which also matches. If you hover over the red button it deepens its color to show you on top of it and for the white button, it flips the colors making the button blue and the text white. 

If you decided to keep looking and chose to continue shopping, it takes you right back to where you were while browsing. In the right-hand corner of the site, it shows a picture of a shopping cart and the number of items you have. This is a good design because it saves on space as well as is easy to see. Also, it would take more time for a user to read out the shopping cart whereas having a picture clearly states what it is. Also what works is if you hover over the shopping cart it has a small drop-down menu of what’s inside. This also saves time for the user instead of clicking on it. When you get to the checkout menu it gives the description of each book you selected on the left and on the right it gives you your subtotal and allows you to enter any promo codes. I appreciate how this website allows you to put in the promo code before you move to your payment to see the total before entering your card information. Afterward,  you would enter all your personal and shipping information. 

Furthermore, rightstuffanime.com proves to be user-friendly. Although it has a ton of products, it makes browsing its website easy to understand for all ages. The navigation element is made with the options of different categories and labeled icons. Most sites like this can be overwhelming and this site tackles that with clearly labeled icons and a clean crisp look. It doesn’t have any weird or super bright colors and doesn’t have any distracting pictures plastered everywhere. 

As our restaurant does kebab and barbeque, I figured a natural competitor would be none other than Mike and Tony’s Gyros. Overall, the website is well laid out. The food is the first thing you see when you land on the webpage, and it scrolls to show off different parts of the menu. The color scheme is simple but effective, using the standard red/white/black that many restaurants choose. The navigation is very visible and easy to understand, and the homepage uses awards and images to build consumer confidence in the final product. It also shows off all their locations. For the most part, everything important can be accessed right from the homepage. This means that any user interested in finding a location does not even have to click to find what they’re looking for. This is something that their site definitely does better than ours, as ours is simple to navigate, but the content is split into separate pages. I do think we made the right choice with the layout of our pages and our color scheme, however. We chose the red and white because it is effective and simple. Our navigation, like Mike and Tony’s, is visible as soon as you land on any page of the site, and they are clearly labelled. I think it is a site that if not standing out completely, is definitely competitive, and I think our design elevates it beyond.