Review #3

For the third review, I looked at the latter two of three given websites, no9park.com and sixpennkitchen.com. Both websites are for respective restaurants, and upon first glance looked very good. I took time to review both websites page by page, looking in depth at their styles in terms of Unity, Balance, Emphasis, and layout. Both websites work considerably well in terms of unity, with all themes, pictures, text, etc matching up. Neither site overcomplicates things, which works to their advantage. We are taught not to overcomplicate things for the sake of making them look “prettier” or to even try and dazzle the viewer. Each website attempts to these things to their advantage to grab the attention of their viewers and customers, and they work very well. We as humans tend to find things that work, and then stick to that thing. When something works, there is a natural sensation for us to stick to it and not search further for other outlets. As someone who has never visited either restaurant in person, I can tell just via the websites that their simplicity along with their calm color schemes would prompt me to look no further in the search for a quick bite. There’s no part in particular that stands out, giving both sites a good sense of unity. When it comes to balance, the SixPenn Kitchen uses a block layout with no option to scroll, their homepage is solid and very balanced. No9Park is balanced decently well, but their navigation bar runs along the left side of the page, with pictures and information in the right column. As you scroll down, the navigation bar doesn’t scroll with, which bugs me. After you scroll until the navigation bar is out of site, the website becomes very unbalanced and leans more towards the right side. It’s small inconveniences like this that may throw users off, causing them to change sites or even get temporarily lost and frustrated. It seems ridiculous, but it’s something that has been proven time and time again. When we go to a website, if it doesn’t immediately load then we can get frustrated and automatically start to refresh or restart. We as human beings are naturally very impatient with small things, especially technology. When looking at emphasis, both pages are very even. The only common emphasized thing on each page is the logo of each individual restaurant, which is what the user should be viewing when looking at the pages. No9 has a huge rotating slideshow at the top as well, which is another point of emphasis. The slideshow displays images of meals prepared by the restaurant, something users may like. Finally, there’s layout. This to me goes hand in hand with balance. No9Park is a dark layout and theme, very simple, with rotating pictures of different dishes and other various things on their homepage, with an equivalent theme on each page. The same can be said for SixPenn, using a cool blocked layout and theme to make everything easy to view. When picking which site is better, I am biased, but I have to choose the SixPenn Kitchen website. I am a sucker for the block layout with no scrolling, it makes things easier for the viewer to navigate, and confuses the audience less. Their is also a better overall color scheme, incorporating a cool orange to make different things on the website pop out at the viewer. Hats off to the SixPenn website design team, overall a very well done website.