National News - NPR

When looking for a site to choose for this blog assignment I settled on the NPR (National Public Radio) website. Having glanced at a few other sites before coming to this one, I notice that most of the national news websites basically have the same layout design (this one included). There is a header with the logo on the top left, a navigation bar under the header, a side bar with sub-category links, and snippets of articles and headlines on the rest of the page.

The color palette is basic with white, light and dark blue, and gray as the color scheme. Considering it's a news website, I suppose these colors give a serious air to it, but personally I think it comes off as kind of cold and impersonal.

The home page is content heavy and I find that my eye gets lost even when I'm not skimming the page. The page is also long from all the headlines and links, but taking into account the fact that it is a news site and all, I guess that's the only way to get every bit of news on there. I noticed that there's only one drop down menu out of all the links on the page, but when you click one of the side links, sub links appear below it. I think this is a good way to not make a mess of the nav bar by having a drop out menu obscuring the text of the articles.

There really isn't much to talk about with this site; every page has the same ldesign, but it doesn't need to be flashy to present the news. In fact, if it was flashy it probably would be thought of as a big joke, so I guess in this case bland is good.

Airport - Blackpool International

The Blackpool International Airport website is certainly not an artistic one. It has a basic design with navigation across the top and along the left side, and content filling the rest of the page. Even the rollovers are basic with the text only changing from white to orange. Once you click one of the side links to another page, there is a change, in that there are more sublinks under the main link for that page. However, nothing happens when you rollover, not even a color change, which I find a bit odd.

There are quite a few links on any given page that can show you different forms of transportation from the airport, or tell you the different airport facilities that are there etc. There are three main categories located on the top right of the header which links to Car Parking, Flight Info, and booking flights. Since those are the three things I think about first when I want to travel, it's a good move on their part to have placed the categories in a position where it can be viewed easily.

This site is very informative, but no overly wordy to the point where I'd get bored and refuse to look at any more on it. There is one spot on nearly every page that has an advert offering discounts. I'm glad it's just the one spot and the adverts rotate out depending on the page you visit. I would hate to visit an airport website and be bombarded with ads constantly.

So, although the website is fairly basic, with hardly anything flashy (the adjective, not the program), I do think it's functional and straight to the point. It looks professional and that's one of the more important things.

Clothing Retail - New York & Co.

I chose New York & Co. for this post. The first thing I notice, aside from the basic ads that grace the page (just like every retail website known to man), is that they use a basic color palette of black, white, gray, and red. It's simple, but elegant. I'm glad that this website doesn't have the glaring white background like so many retail websites have. Those tend to hurt my eyes, so kudos for the black and gray.

Navigation is easy to use and all the necessary links are displayed in plain sight at the top of the page. Each link, aside from the Home link, have semi-transparent dropdown menus which allow the user to choose what category of clothing etc to view. When you pick a category, for example: sweaters in the Apparel section, it takes you to the sweater page and there it's much a like an online catalog (which is what these retail sites are for anyway). They show you a picture of an item while the name of said item and the cost is displayed directly under the image. It's simple and to the point, which I like.

They make a point to show images with words like "1/2 off", "20% off", and "buy one, get one 1/2% price" which is a fairly obvious marketing device to entice people to either buy their clothes, sign up for the mailing list, or sign up for a credit card. Honestly, I hardly ever pay attention to these things as I'm much more interested in the clothes instead of the ads. The site is very good at emphasizing words to grab the users attention too. And the fact that a lot of the key words are in red or bold helps out a lot.

Judging by the site alone, I would definitely be tempted to shop at this store. If only the prices were a little bit more agreeable.