Big Websites: The Excellent and the Not So Excellent

Websites

A. Excellent: http://www.cascadebreweryco.com.au/

B. Poor: http://heaven.internetarchaeology.org/heaven.html#bottom

Reasons:

1. There is not an option for navigation with this site.  The website visitor is unable to select any options at all on this web page and therefore, they have no control.  Most websites have several navigation options such as logging in, main menu, etc.  This site was a never-ending page of graphics that the website visitor had no control over; the visitor was not even able to select any of the objects.

2. The flashing lights are horrible for several reasons.  First, this site has the ability to cause seizures for people who are sensitive to bright flashing lights.  Also, the flashing lights are very nauseating to the web site visitor.  The flashing lights do not even flash in an effective manner.  This is because there are spots on the web site that have brighter flashing lights than others.  The spots with the brighter lights are very distracting and grab the visitor’s attention in a negative way.

3. There are way too many animated GIFs.  The animated GIFs do not really serve a purpose except to distract the web site visitor from everything else going on the website.  The animated GIFs also distracted the web site visitor from other animated GIFs because there are some spots with multiple animated GIFs “playing” at the same time. These GIF's should be reserved for the company's Twitter page as it's a more effective model.

4. This website is too limited for several reasons.  The first reason is that there is not any user navigating.  The next reason is that the only thing that goes occurs on this website is an animated short story.  The story is the same every single time a person opens the page.  This is a horrible design because a website is supposed to have many options for its visitors so they continue to stay on the website.  No one is going to watch the same story over and over again.

C. Poor: http://www.leoneck.ch/en/

Reasons:

1. The pointer becomes a cow head.  This is very annoying to a website visitor because it is harder to make selections with a pointer that is large.  Also, the website visitor may continue to forget that the cow head is the pointer so they may struggle to find their usual arrow.  Another bad thing about a cow head pointer is that it blends in with some of the other items on the web page.

2. The website’s text is very hard to read.  There is a lot of text written in grey and it blends into the very distracting backgrounds.  The text should be a different color so the website visitor can see their options more clearly. 

3. The website’s backgrounds are too distracting.  Website owners love that people waste time on the internet, but the backgrounds will deter them from doing it on their site. It is hard for a website visitor to see the text as well as other items on the web page because the background has to styles.  The background incorporates 3D images, painted images, and a whole set.  All of these items in one background make the foreground hard to see.

4. It is hard to find some of the selections a website visitor can make.  There are a lot of “links” a viewer can click on but none of them are easy to find.  The visitor has to move the “cow head” all around the page to find more options.  The website should make options more visible.