Week 4 Assignment, Part 1

When I first saw this week's assignment, I was intrigued. I have visited the Apple website a few times as my family and I are Mac/iPhone users. I have never heard of most of the other websites so I checked them all out. I have an engineer's sense of style. I like straight lines and order. Function over form is my main thought process when I design something. An assignment that focuses on aesthetics would be a challenge. Lets get to it!

First off the bad:

http://jamilin.com/
http://gatesnfences.com/ site

Right off the bat these two websites went into my "bad" pile. I'll make a combined set of comments for both since many of the issues I have with them are common to both websites. Starting off, both of these sites are a visual hot mess. As soon as you open the page you are blasted with text, pictures, and colors that make it difficult to understand what the page is supposed to be about. Neither of these websites has a title on the home page. From a branding point of view, that leaves a lot to be desired. Jami Lin's website is organized in such a way that I can't tell if the pictures are Google ads or actually videos that she is presenting. It is interesting that she has a section of her website about clearing clutter buried within the clutter of her web page. The gate company website is slightly better organized to showcase itself as a business website. Unfortunately they aren't taking advantage of the ability to display their beautiful work with decorative gates. The highlight of their page should be pictures of the large wrought iron gates that look to be their specialty. As far as style goes, both of these websites look to have been done at home with a early 2000's website creator program. I would know as I did the same thing for a hobby website back in the day.

Improvements. Easy. Simplification. Both of these sites could improve 100 fold by just deciding what their main focus is and making sure that the focus is front and center for the user where they open the site. If these websites are indeed homemade, they should look into investing into a website development company. 15 years ago, website developers were expensive and much more rare. These days most web hosting services offer some type of development services as well as hosting as part of a low subscription cost. They also have better knowledge and access to current web tools like online shopping and credit card order processing. Even the free tools available within the blogger platform could do wonders to clear up these two sites and make finding the information they have easier for visitors. The easy access that almost anyone has to the internet and the ability to get your business out in front of people means that potential customers are not without plentiful choices. If your website is even the littlest bit hard to use, you will lose customers to another company that is more user friendly.

And thankfully the good:

http://www.headhunterhairstyling.com/
https://www.nps.gov/

After the assault to my senses from my picks for bad websites, visiting the Head Hunter Styling website was a breath of fresh air. It was so clean and simple. Within one click I was able to find out the vital information I would want if I was going to be one of their customers. Since I'm bald, sadly I won't be a customer anytime soon. I do have a wife with lovely long hair and two young daughters so this website is still relevant to me. Because of their presentation, I wouldn't hesitate to forward the link to my wife the next time she is looking for a stylist. They potentially made me a customer even though I wouldn't partake of their services personally. Bravo to them!

The National Park Service website was all business. Starting off right away you were treated to one of the Park Service's strengths, the natural beauty of the parks through their use of pictures. To make the site even better, they have a search box prominently displayed so that a visitor to their site could begin planning their visit right away. While the National Park Service website wasn't necessarily focused on branding, it was organized in a way to give the user a positive experience. It has a very simple and clean layout and the color choices enhanced their use of photographs for the various links directing the visitor to the information contained therein. The NPS website was created by people that knew what information was their forte and kept the site layout focused exactly on that. There were no distractions. The website was a complete package.

I enjoyed this assignment very much. As part of my career, I have learned from every assignment I have had. Even the assignments that I would consider bad experiences have taught me something. Sometimes you learn how not to do something. This assignment taught me both how to and how not to  create a website for my business. I look forward to your comments!