Week Three - Aesthetics, Design & Branding (Part 1)

What Works and What Doesn't

What Works
Three websites that I believe get things right are Apple, Toyota and Swagelok.

Apple has always been a design leader and their website is no exception. What I think they get right is:
 1) With Apple it's all about the brand
 2) Its very easy to find what you are looking for. Navigating  to the product you want takes only one, maybe two clicks
 3) White the page length seems a little long and requires  lots of scrolling, the huge images and simple text make it  easy on the eyes.

Toyota is another example of a company with a well executed website. Their website has the advantages of:
 1) Repetition: they use consistent branding and navigation on  each page
 2) Similar to Apple's page, there is a very pleasing ease of  use due to clear navigation and many ways to get to the  information you are looking for
 3) The use of white space and alignment make the page  aesthetically pleasing

I found Swagelok did some things well. Although not as simple as the previous two pages mentioned, they did have elements that make a  content heavy website work.
 1) Their home page works. They explained what their company  did on the top of the  first page! I thought that was very  effective for a company that is not a household name like  Apple or Toyota. 
 2) Navigation was clear and simple with each page you  navigate to giving further related sub-navigation
 3) Each page required minimal scrolling to see all the  information


What Doesn't
There are many ways to create effective websites, and just as many ways to mess them up. There are three websites that I identified as having design elements that could be an issue for visitors or potential customers. Those were the sites for Tech Welding Products, G Force Race Cars, and Paul Wheaton's Permaculture Articles. 

The first site I looked at was TechTorch. I was instantly overwhelmed. There was simply too much going on. I felt the layout was a little awkward and the proportions were off. The font sizes varied too widely and was too small in comparison with the featured products' photos. There was also a complete lack of branding. I believe the TechTorch website would be drastically improved with: 
 1) Include branding and logos
 2) Better navigation. Such as moving the company history and  testimonials to their own page (return visitors and regular  customers don't need to see that info every time they access  the website)
 3) Improved font size consistency

The second site I found that could use improvements for customer ease of use was G Force Race Cars. While their page is far more aesthetically pleasing, there were still issues with their page that are worth correcting. 
 1) The home page is too similar to the news page
 2) Page length is consistently too long
 3) The *Featured Products* animation is incredibly  distracting and has no apparent purpose 

Finally, the website that I identified as having the most significant issues is the raising chickens website called Paul Wheaton's Permaculture Articles. This particular page made me want to run away as fast as I could. I was extraordinarily distracted by his lack of capital letters, which given the constant use of the technique was likely intentional, but it bugged me. Also, I want to know... what the heck is permaculture? The website to asssumes you already know. I did find that "raising chickens" was just a sub-page of a much larger website www.richsoil.com which, at first, appears to be a more organized site, but the issues run consistent in all the pages I visited. The main issues I identified were:
 1) No visible "Home" or introduction to the page ~ the  articles  just start with no additional information for his  visitors.  I  felt like I was reading insider information  and newbies weren't welcome
 2) It is not aesthetically pleasing at all
 3) The pages run WAY too long