Week #3 Principles of Good Social Media Design: Comparing Websites

 

Good/Bad website designs

 

What was done poorly… 

http://tectorch.com Is not a good design layout.  When you first visit the page you are greeted with the history of the company.  It is a lot of information to scroll through before you reach the actual products the website is offering.  Next, you have what welders have to say about the products.  This should go at the bottom of the page after the featured products.  Finally, the page should be laid out more to where you can click the links to get to the history of the company, or any other sub category so everything is not thrown on to one page and the shopper has to decipher the page to get what they want.

 

http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp  is not a good design layout either.  There is way too much information with barely any breaks in the text.  Each category should be given its own page and a link to.  There is no structure to the page, just the author’s opinion on raising chickens.  It is not pleasing to the eye, and it takes effort to figure out what you are looking at.  Although there is a lot of good information in this website, but to a beginner looking for information on how to raise chickens, this is very difficult to get through.

 

What was done correctly…

 http://www.gforceracecars.com/ is a pleasant, well structured website.  I like how the page does not take up the entire screen.  It does not have a cluttered look to it, and there is not a lot of information jumping out at you.  I like how there are links at the top of the page and to the side where you can be directed to other pages in the website.  I also like how the author sets up the main page of his site like you are reading chronological newsprint articles of drag races and competitions.  The articles are not that long, and they are accompanied with pictures and videos.  This is also a business site as well as an informative site, because there are links you can click on to take you to their store and buy drag racing parts.

http://www.ford.com/ is another pleasant, well structured website.  The main page is setup easy and is only one page.  It has a nice balance of text and the picture.  There is not a lot of information thrown at you on the page.  Everything you would want to find out about the vehicles and Ford in general has their own clickable link to take you to a specific topic.  This is a simple, easy to navigate site.  At first glance of the site, I would probably stick around and explore the site if I was in the market to purchase a Ford, because of the easy usability of the site.