Sunday, June 15, 2008

Research 2

Evaluation:

URL of website: http://www.trekbikes.com

The homepage of this website has an attractive image as its focal point. This will let the audiences know that this website is all about mountain bikes. The fonts in this site are clear and consistent thus audience can find it pleasant to read as it’s not eye staining. The target audiences of this site are adults, as mountain bikes are mostly purchased by adults. The background is simple giving the audiences a pleasant impression.

The navigations are clearly stated what kind of bicycles that TREK provides. The title in navigators are short and simple. This site provides information that what kind of people needs what kind of bicycle.
Audience can thus find the kind of bicycle they want easily. The images of TREK’s bicycles are all provided in the site.

The website provides a interactive gallery for its audience, when you click on one of the bicycle model, a window will pop out and show audience the image of the bicycle as well as the information about the bicycle. When the cursor is move to another model, the image and the information of that model will change instantly. Thus this will save the time as they no need to wait for it to be loaded.

There’s also no scroll bar in the site, thus audience will not find it a hassle to scroll up/down or left/right.

The only bad thing about the website is that the price of the bikes are not stated. Thus people cannot purchase the bikes online. Only through the "Trek Distributors", they can make a call to the various distributors at their area to check the pricing of the bikes.


What can I apply to my website
After doing researches and evaluations about several websites. I realized that consistent and clear fonts are very important. The fonts determine a lot about the website, if the fonts are inconsistent audiences will find it difficult to read. So I will make sure that the fonts in my site are consistent.

I will also put attractive images in my websites to attract the audiences’ attention, allowing them to have a longer stay in my website. I will make sure that the titles in the navigators of my site are short and simple, thus easy to understand.

If I'm selling things online, i will make sure that the prices and currency of the items are up in my site. I will insert a currency converter in my website so that the people can just do the conversion on the spot, which will save a lot of their time.

Rating given: 7.5/10

Friday, May 9, 2008

Research 1

Evaluation:


URL of website: http://www.hrodc.com/

This is the lousiest website I ever came across. The website left a kind of messy impression for its audience.The title of the website is not big enough.The target audiences of this website are university students.

First, look at the up/down scroll bar of this website, the size of the scroll is so minimum, meaning it’s a very long web page.There's also a left /right scroll bar in some of the web pages. Audiences will find it a hassle to scroll the page in a up/down,left/right direction. The home page of this site is so long and wordy this will takes a longer time to load.

The size of the table cells in the first table is inconsistent thus resulted the table looks messy. The types and sizes of fonts used in this website were inconsistent throughout. In addition, the inconsistent tables’ colours and the background colour do not combine very well. For example, the dull red table cannot mix with the black background colour of the site because both are dark and dull. Also some of the words were hyperlink-ed while some were not.

More than a couple of headings in the navigations bars are too long and cannot be seen. The navigation bars should not be red because as the cursor move to one of the bar, the bar will be highlighted a brighter red but it’s still not contrasting after all. A few web pages of this website consist of two rows of navigations bars and both rows consist almost the same headings, this will lead confusion to the audiences.

Lastly as the home page was scrolled further down there was a huge empty gap in within, this will mislead the audience that it’s the end of the page but in fact is not.

Overall this website is a long, wordy and a misleading one. Audience will find it boring and had a hard time locating the link they want to go or the information they are finding.

What can I apply to my website
If i am going to create a website,I will make sure that i will have a big and outstanding header that will catch the audience's attention. The colours combination in my website should be contrasting. For example, if I have a yellow background thus i will need to make sure my fonts is of a darker colour like black. I will have short navigation headings or even if the heading is long i will make sure it can be seen clearly. The fonts as well as its size must be consistent throughout. Hyperlink be done if necessary. At the end of every webpage, i will state "THE END OF PAGE" so that audience are aware of it.
I will definitely want my website to look neat and presentable allowing everyone to find his/her information within a short period of time.

Rating given: 4/10