Good and Bad Web Sites to Discuss

After searching online for nearly two hours, I found two excellent Web sites that I would like to share with the class. The first site, http://www.pinarello.com/eng/about_dealers_italy.php, an online gallery for the Italian bicycle manufacturer Pinarello, is catchy and easy to understand. It exemplifies two of the important principles of creating a good site: repetition and contrast. The graphics at the top of each page are the same and the color of the text contrasts nicely with other colors in the site. The second site that I am impressed with is the Web site for Jelly Belly jelly beans, http://jellybelly.com/Cultures/en-US. This site is simple and aligned properly. I found that there were not many examples of sites that were consistently aligned.

In my quest to find decent Web sites, I also found many sites that were horrendous. Http://www.pets4you.com/, an informational Web site for pet owners, was disorganized, misaligned and cluttered with advertisements. Some of the text was aligned center and some was aligned left. Another Web site that is hard to follow is the online edition of Conspiracy Digest, http://www.conspiracydigest.com/. The graphic at the top of each page never aligns with the rest of the text, and there is no repetition for clarity.

The assigned readings for class gave me a better idea of the elements that make a Web page eye catching, easy to follow and interesting. I better realize that many sites are sloppy and disorganized, but with a little work, could look exponentially better.