I chose to review the websites for MadMex and Six Penn Kitchen. When first reviewing the sites I analyzed and compared the aesthetics of the sites. In my opinion, I favor the overall look of Six Penn’s website. In terms of balance and unity the site does a great job, for instance you can view all of the important information without even scrolling. MadMex’s website lacks unity and balance because of the negative space in its homepage. The introduction on the first page exceeds in length the size of the image to to the right, and throws of the unity and balance of the page. Six Penn’s website has a much more balanced and cleaner layout than MadMex. The images on Six Penn’s site stand out more because of the simplicity of their layout and the background color choice. MadMex uses a multiple earth toned colors that make the site more chaotic. Six Penn’s color choices most definitely help to emphasize the images and information on their site.
Krug has five important “things” to make users see and understand a website. The first thing is to create a clear and visual hierarchy on each page. Without a doubt, Six Penn Kitchen does a phenomenal job at creating a simple layout that highlights the important information while making it obvious what is clickable. Six Penn Kitchen’s website is made very easy to navigate for users. MadMex is fairly easy to navigate, but in comparison to Six Penn’s site there is definitely room for immprovement. MadMex could benefit from emphasizing key information with a more simplistic layout. The next thing Krug lists is to take advantage of conventions when creating a website. MadMex does not take advantage of conventions; I feel that they could have used better styling to make links and things that are clickable stand out more. Six Penn does a great job with the convetnions of their website. The colors and styles used, especially the navigation bar at the top are the first thing the eye is drawn to. The next important thing is that pages are broken up into clearly defined areas. Six Penn does an excellent job at this because each page is clearly defined. Not only is the site well organized to begin with, but it also uses stylistic techniques to section of information, like dotted and solid lines. This consistently keeps the whole site well organized and clean. MadMex on the other hand could do better with its organization, and needs help in styling to keep the sight organized. Important information does not fit all on one page, and the site has a lot of pop ups which adds to the chaos. The fourth thing that is important is to make it obvious what is clickable. I think that both sites do a good job at this. However, Six Penn takes the lead once again just because the stylistic quality is better. One thing I do not like about MadMex is that the text in the navigation bar is the same color as the site’s background making this information fade into the background. Lastly, the fifth important thing is to minimize noise. My feelings on which site did this better should be clear at this point. However, just to clarify Six Penn did a much better job at minimizing noise by keeping a well organized, consistent style pattern, and well sectioned site. MadMex uses too many colors and the content does not fit the page well.
I find that Six Penn Kitchen catches my attention more than MadMex. To summarize, the main reasons is that Six Penn uses a more appealing color scheme and styling, is more organized, and did a much better job making the site simple to navigate. Also, I personally feel that Six Penn Kitchen’s website has a much more professional look. I think MadMex should consider improving the style and organization of their site in order to more effectively draw customers’ attention.