Website Review
Best Website: Pitchfork.com
Once in awhile you find a website that you keep returning to...
Web designers take their time creating pages that will entrance their viewers. Yes, this is intentional! Once in a while you find a website that you keep returning to. Sometimes it is for the content. But for the most part, you realize that you are actually captivated by the layout, colors, and functionality of the pages on the website.
A domain that has kept me looking for ideas, and inspiration is pitchfork.com. I am still not sure how the designer did it, because this site is full of information. I can imagine that it would make me go insane trying to organize all of it. But this site makes it all work.
Here is a brief review of why it all works...
Content
As soon as the front-page loads, you will note that pitchfork is an entertainment news website. This means it is their business to keep you excited about the information they are presenting, from clean photographs, to information layout! Yes, yes, yes to the content being relevant. A google search reveals that, this website is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Hence, the domain name is arguably suitable as well!
Navigation
Pitchfork has a main top-menu navigation bar, which is consistent throughout the domain. This menu contains links to the main features of the website i.e. information that they promise to deliver to the public. In addition, pitchfork has a well-organized footer menu. This menu is secondary to the top-menu, and complements the website. All the relevant pages, that one would look for having skimmed the website.
How else does one navigate?
This website does not limit itself to the menu items. They make good use of "read more" tags. These allow them to give the reader a snippet of the article, and an option to continue reading on a separate page, that will give you access to related information. This option is absolutely necessary since, pitchfork has a lot of information to offer.
Information Architecture
This deals with how the site helps the user to adapt to the various resources it has to offer. Well, pitchfork makes good use of symbols and familiar structures to help the audience read not only the content but the website itself. Pitchfork makes use of familiar icons on their meta tab to let the user know the various social networks one can connect to for updates. Furthermore, they use very familiar audio icons to reveal their hidden audio player for interested users. It is this kind of unambiguous language that makes the website work very well.
The stories on the frontpage are organized under very distinct sections or divisions. Making them easy to read, and pick out from other stories. Finally, pitchfork makes good use of images to convey information. An image with a short tag tells the interested reader what information they will have access to after clicking the image. While the image attracts the reader to their favorite artists, music, or some other topic they may be interested in.
Visual Design
The main colors on the domain are black, white, and red. However, the designer made good use of their choice of black and white as main colors by also adapting grayscale to the color scheme. The images add a different dimension to the colors, and keep the pages vibrant without stealing attention from the pages. Thus, the aesthetics help the information to be more readable.
Overall Functionality
The links on the page all seem to work. The added elements run smoothly e.g image galleries, music players, and videos.
Overall Experience
The website more than provides the relevant information that a visitor would be looking for. Visit Pitchfork.com to get the full experience.
Worst Website: Ohio Academy of Science
I have never had to remain on a page that I thought did not look good or did not have relevant information for longer than it took for me to realize all the above to be true. As such, it took me a while to find such a page or domain. Moreover, I would like to think that the page I have picked has a lot of room for improvement rather than that it fails on all aspects of web development. Of course, I speak as a learner rather than an expert of web development.
Content
The content on this web domain is certainly relevant. To the extent that I was willing to read it of course. I would also like believe that my observation is true because the powers that be, allowed for the page to be published. Flawless logic!!
Navigation
This page has a good top-menu bar. However, allowing the menu items to run-over to a second line makes the menu feel cluttered and not so easy to read. Furthermore, this breaks the gradient effect that the designer tried to employ to the page. They employ buttons on some pages to help the user get to relevant information, such as; submitting an application to join the academy. I would like to credit them for leaving breadcrumbs on. This is another means for a user to navigate. Also, it is a familiar system since this is kin to the pc's path. If a user uses this method of exploring their folders, they may feel comfortable on this page. However, it seems to take away from the menu, and other navigation systems than add to them.
As the designer of this page noted, footer navigation is not a requirement. But, it certainly can help to direct the website user to other information on the domain, once they reach the bottom of a page. Neither are sidebars, which when used well make the user-experience invaluable. The side bars on this domain are not dynamic at all. Nor are they visually appealing.
Information Architecture
Eish... Any critic that begins with this expression is bound to be damaging. So the content is all there. However, the designer could have been more strategic in how they present it to their audience. HTML 5 is designed to allow the web developer to have more flexibility in designing their pages. Some features of documents should not show up on webpages, unless they absolutely have to. On this site's About the Academy page, under objectives, the designer decider to list the objectives using bullet points. Although this is allowed, it makes the page feel dull and as though there was not much thought put into not only this section of the page but the entire page.
I believe my attention is drawn to the side bars again because they provide relevant information. Despite having criticized them for being uninspiring,they have been strategically used to provide access to some useful news updates.
Visual Design
The main colors on the page seem to be black, white, and blue. Given the mission of the website and organization, these colors are a good choice. However, the black and white are more prominent than the blue. Given the psychological effects of this color, I believe the designer could have used it differently on the page.
I give them full credit for realizing and exploiting the access to grayscale that is a result of choosing black and white as the main color palette. The color choices make the site readable but it could be improved.
Overall Functionality
The main links on the site seem to work very well. At least they got this part right.
Overall Experience
All in all, the site provides the relevant information about the academy. For a better understanding of this critic or to criticize my lack of knowledge, please visit The Ohio Academy of Science.