Week 4: Aesthetics, Design, and Branding _ Website Analysis

Does a good website create a good brand or is it the other way around?

Having recently designed a website for a startup, I enjoyed the opportunity to analyze the do's and don'ts of other sites.  I looked at 4 websites total, 2 sites to critique for problems and 2 to critique for successes.  It seemed that both pairs of sites either failed or succeeded based on how they organized and presented the relevant information.

To start, let's look at 2 sites that could use some improvement.  I reviewed the two sites:

www.roverp6cars.com

www.gatesnfences.com

Both of these sites create an information overload for viewers.  For each of the sites, the home pages are structured as if they were a page in a catalog, versus as an effective table of contents or launch point for information.  Both of these sites could benefit from having a more cleanly laid-out, better organized homepage, thus better helping visitors in their searches.  Another issue these sites suffer from is clickable buttons, or an inconsistent use of buttons.  Throughout both of these sites, there are pieces of information, or icons that a user may want to click on and cannot.  This is an issue, especially on the gatesnfences site, where one of the credit card/ payment icons is not clickable.  One of the final issues of these sites again relates to it's lack of organization: lack of a unified brand or company theme that helps tie the information back to the company, and offer it in a palatable way to the consumer.  While both of these sites are able to offer a tremendous amount of products in their relative fields, the lack of brand or even a highly visible logo inhibits the consumer from easily remembering the company or referring it to a friend.  

After critiquing two older sites, I observed two sites that had a more modern, better-organized feel:

www.apple.com

ww.nps.gov

These sites have both succeeded in creating highly organized and organically interactive webpages.  The consumer can visit either site and navigate amongst bite-sized pieces of information, effectively choosing which information to click on and explore in more detail.  These sites answer the issues seen in the older, less organized sites, but more importantly, each site creates a feel that relates the consumer to it's brand.  Both sites amply employ imagery to engage the user's senses; whether its Apple's minimalist layout, coupled with elegant visuals or the National Park Service's interactive, engaging site, each web page reflects and enhances its parent brand.