I chose the website “Sim Sim Falafel”, is the website to analyze for this review. The bright colors caught my eye while I was scrolling to find a website. Once on the page, the user can immediately interact with the page. Moving the cursor, the food images change size. Going further into the website, the elements are separated with an appealing grid layout. Another interesting point, the logo moves with the user when scrolling, moving to different parts of the screen.
This particular website does not scroll left and right, only up and down. I believe this is just a small restaurant website, so it may not be necessary for them to have tabs and a number of other elements. The simple animations are clean and smooth, almost making up for the lack of other things to click and play with.
The grid layout and make the website easy to look through, and I like how the user can scroll, but it’s more of a snap-to effect. In a way, this one page site almost acts as seven. I do like how the sort of separate pages are a single block of color, however there are some issues with it the further down the user scrolls; I will explain in my next paragraph. I also like the typeface used for the titles on the site. It is simple and the font demands attention. The same typeface is used for the other information about the food (however I am only guessing, I cannot read the language; German?).
Alright, so there are a few improvements to make the site stronger. I can appreciate the direction the designer was going in. Bright colors made the site seem fun and exciting, and the images were high quality and cut well. The title screen is very appealing with the motion effect. The typeface and fonts are also appropriate for the content. There are a few other sections where the images and bold color are compatible, however there are a few that are difficult to read. It also seems as if the designer got lazy the further down the website goes. The bottom of the page has what seems to be a Google Map attachment. The cursor changes to a hand to drag the map, but I could not get this feature to work. Not sure if this is a bug or an operating system issue? I wished the food images were throughout the page, there were less and less the further I scrolled down. I’d also like implementing the motion effect that was at the top of the page in other spots. My expectations were set high with that title section. Also, even though this restaurant may only be a local shop, I still feel some sort of a translate button may be helpful.
All in all, since this is a site for a small local business I believe the layout and design as a whole is acceptable. As said in The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, “There’s a strict usability angle, which focuses on functionality, the effective presentation of information, and efficiency. Then there’s the purely aesthetic perspective, which is all about the artistic value and visual appeal of the design”. I would give Sim Sim Falafel a 7/10 on usability and for aesthetics; I feel the usability is also effected by the aethetics. Changing a few of the background colors where it is hard to read the black text, such as the dark purple, would help the usability. I would also maybe change the map attachment to something the user can click rather than drag. The map would be opened in a separate tab.