There are three sets of websites I want you to evaluate. First are e-commerce websites. These include any website attempting to sell products through an online shopping cart. Second are information websites. These websites generally provide information about a business or organization, but are not actively attempting to sell a product directly from that website. Third are business news websites.
Below are a couple of lists of best e-commerce sites to help your search.
http://tutorialblog.org/20-of-the-best-ecommerce-websites/
http://www.internetretailer.com/uploads/2008Hot100List102507.htm
For the information websites, focus your search on Ann Arbor and Detroit area businesses and/or organizations.For the business news websites, do your best to ignore content and focus on design. Below is a list of business news websites to help your search.
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/business-sites
Try to find more than one website from each category. Remember to post your findings in the comments.
Posts
For those of you who want to look at Microsoft Silverlight, my people.emich.edu site is all Silverlight.
ReplyDeleteThe address is http://people.emich.edu/lloesche
The first site that I went to was JD Cycles, the site is done very well. There everything is organized and it doesn't look sloppy or cluttered at all. The site is very colorful and the colors go together quite well. I would say that this is a professional web site.
ReplyDeleteThe next web site that I went to was REI which also had a very similar design as the first one. The page layout, search bar, side menu, and even pictures were almost in the same spot. Everything on the site is easy to get to and has all the info you want to get at at the top of the page.
Next, was the wall street journal I know that it's a news web site but the main page looks cluttered and what your looking for might not be easily assessable you have to look for it. The site does have a quick link bar that it at the top of the page which helps things and does get you what your looking for a little faster.
I think that good design is probably one of the most important because if you can find what your looking for your not going to want to go back to that site. Next would be organization the two shopping sites that I went to were very well organized and were not sloppy at all. No one is going to want to look at clutter and try to find their way through it.
Hello Everyone, I'm Jessica Van Pelt and this is the third time I have lost all the work I had just gotten done typing out so I apologize for how short this will be.
ReplyDelete1. Amazon.com- It’s easy to find what you need and it’s well organized
2. Thesaurus.com – It’s a simple home page and you aren’t overloaded with information. I use this website anytime I’m writing a paper or when I can’t think of a word.
3. MSNmoney.com – Its nice if you want to see the market go down or to check on your stocks. It also gives the news in today’s business world.
e-commerce sites
ReplyDelete• http://www.habitatshoes.com/
Love this site. No frames and easy loading.
• http://www.detroitdiesel.com/
Real industrial and it fits their company
Informational sites (Ann Arbor/Detroit Area)
• http://www.annarbor.org/
Nice bright colors.
Not too much information
easy to navigate
I think this was the site that the links opened in new windows which I like
Business news Sites (Ann Arbor/Detroit)
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/default.stm
Nice large Top stories
easy to navigate
Easy return to home page
Free wysiwyg eidtors
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml#wysiwyg
In my opinion, it is the particular layout scheme that makes each category of website most effective. For commercial websites, using a style of horizonal mouse-over menus across the top, along with sub-categoried side bars makes for the most precise shopping experience. Best Buy, Ace, and Home Depot all utilized this layout. I do think Amazon.com's "Customers who bought this item also bought" scrolling menu is one of the best online marketing strategies yet, forcing a buyer to at least skim over numerous products which with he or she will more than likely identify with and examine further. Companies that do not use flash menus, such as Meijer and Cabela's, really don't seem interactive enough to drive consumers deeper.
ReplyDeleteIn terms business description, from its mission to current company events, VirchowKrause.com has perhaps the best design. Their home page details recent and upcoming happenings within the company. The layout is simple and concise as far as the menu style is concerned, but the site encompasses a wealth of information. Among its subtleties, I thought changing the background and color scheme with a change in section was a great touch. AAComedy.com, Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase's website, also had a simple but well planned layout. They do an excellent job of highlighting upcoming comics, almost forcing a viewer to check the comdian out. Information is well-portrayed regarding weekly events and the company's history. For the business information websites, it seems that simple designs and popping color schemes really help to spruce up the pages.
Business news websites are more difficult to tag with a successful or unsuccessful layout. While I think Yahoo Finance's Market Summary section was among my favorite aspects of news websites, I do not think the page overall draws a user's attention to news stories. In this aspect, I thought Forbes.com outperformed the others. The tabbed screen at the top left provides quick information regarding assorted news and easily catches viewers' attention which I felt helped to locate key and interesting stories. Although it does not display articles on the main page, which would seem senseless on other pages, Forbes.com hosts a terrific news page just from the flash window. Pages like CNBC seem ineffective to me, as no object or story highlights events of the day or draws in readers. The Wall Street Journal, though full of information, comes across as too cluttered to provide information to people looking to scan the day's main headings.
Ecommerce Website I visited:
ReplyDeleteI visited zokacoffee.com. This site was nicely put together. I could spend a lot of time navigating easily through the website. They made the info appealing.
Information Site I visited:
www.AnnArbor.org
This site was easy to navigate as well. It had tabs for each subject to click on and a calendar of events. Everything was laid out nice and easy to follow.
Business Site:
Ebizma.com was not a business site, but a site that listed all the best business sites. I thought the site was very efficient at just listing the sites that are relevant and nothing else. I visited Yahoo.finance.com also. I use this site a lot since I am a business major and used it for accounting and finance classes. This site is easy to find information on stocks your looking for.
E-commerce sites:
ReplyDeleteI first checked out the Chocolate Café (http://www.meiji.co.jp/sweets/choco-cafe/). Unfortunately, I didn’t particularly find the design as appealing as the chocolates offered by the company. The site took some time to load and it was also extremely busy. I think it’s good that flash was implemented – I’ve noticed a lot of companies switching over to make their site seem more personable and engaging to their audience – but they seemed to have overdone it just a bit on the main page.
Once you got into the content out of the main page, it still seemed to take some time to load. Each page seems to have just a little bit too much going on, which is a bit distracting. Of course, it’s also very good that they offer so much information about their products, but maybe all on the same page isn’t the best. Their slide-menu bars on the product page, however, are excellent. And it’s likewise a good thing in the growing global market for Meiji to make their site with both native Japanese and English. I know, if I were personally on my computer when checking out this site, it would freeze – and that’s never a good thing. But it’s not terrible, either, and pleasing on the eyes when focusing on one aspect of it.
Information sites:
I looked up the International Foundation for Research and Education on Depression (iFred) website (http://www.ifred.org/). This site has a very clean design – it utilizes empty space along side its content, which I think more sites should do. It’s quite contained in it’s own little space and the colors aren’t offensive and an eyesore – just enough to make it pop. The ability to search the page is also a very nice little feature- for those not sure what they’re looking for. And I also really liked the fact they not only included information about themselves, but also the latest news, as well.
Business site:
I checked out Entrepreneur.com (http://www.entrepreneur.com/) for my business site. It wasn’t a real ‘business’, per se, but it would certainly help those who want to make a business. The design of the particular site is a little cluttered at first glance, as there’s a lot of information they’re trying to show to you. There’s a lot of clean links and the layout seems to be pretty common – header with three middle pieces and then footer – but they almost seem to be trying to do a little too much. Not the worse website I’ve seen, design wise (the colors are complimentary and I love the little ‘tip’ offered in the corner), but they’re trying to info-dump the viewer just on the first page.
http://www.newegg.com/
ReplyDeleteI find the website easy to navigate because of the drop-down menus and the search system.
http://www.t-mobile.com/
The page is very clean looking, and the shopping system is also very easy to navigate.
http://www.metroairport.com/
I find this page pleasing to the eyes and easy to navigate.
http://leisure.canton-mi.org/
This site looks nice and clean, but the menu is a bit hard to navigate.
http://www.msn.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
These sites have a lot of information available at the top of the page, and are less crowded than most news sites.
There are many great designs for e-commerce websites that are out there. Here are a few that I have found, and why I feel that they are great designs.
ReplyDeletewww.clientready.com
This site is a good design because the colors used are not straining on the eyes and the information is easy to access and find what the user is looking for.
The information site that I visited was
www.novi.org. This site was very organized, and with the amount of white space that was on the page made it easy to find what I was looking for, and the site was not too cluttered and what a resident of Novi is looking for can be eaisly found which would reduce user stress.
The business site that I found and visited was forbes.com
This site is user friendly and easy to navigate. I found the colors very sensitive on my eyes and again, with the amount of white space used, the design seems uncluttered and easy to find what I am looking for in the area of news articles and other information that is going on in the financial markets.
For news I like to use Yahoo, it doesn't seem as cluttered as other regular news sites are. They start with the top stories at the top of the page and those take up more space and then below that are grouped news top stories you can see. They have a lot of menus at the top of the page so you can find more stories if you want more information. The menus put the stories into categories so you find the type of news stories you want to read about. They also provide links for the popular searches and a search box right below the menus.
ReplyDeleteFor e-commerce sites I like to use ebay and amazon. They both allow me to customize and save searches based on things I like and use. They both have a page built just for my account that I can set to my preferences and watch items. They put everything into categories to help people find items they want faster and they also allow items to be listed in several catergories so you can find items like attachments by looking for the bigger item. You can customize searches based on several factors like: price, how long its been posted, and what it's condition is.
For an information site I looked at http://www.simon.com/mall/default.aspx?ID=1231. This is the website for Briarwood Mall. It lists the information about the mall such as: hours, stores, sales, and a directory.
First site
ReplyDeletehttp://www.azcentral.com/
second site
http://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml
and third
http://www.bnpmedia.com/
E-commerce sites: The site that I use a lot is tigerdirect.com This is because it is easy to search for product buy name, model number or type of product. I find the it very useful and userfriendly.
ReplyDeleteInformation sites: I like to use Google news. It is customizable, and personal. You can use your logging and make it look like a portal to the rss news feed from around the work. The website itself is very userfriendly, but it is lacking style in my opinion.
for an e-commerse sight i like amazon.com amazon has a clean layout and looks they use colors of the product to their best advantage and draws you in. my favorite feature they have would be the fact that they will save the items that you put in your shopping cart. For e-commerse websites the best quality they need to have are the most popular products up front and readily viewable. also the sight must be easy to navigate and find what you are looking for without having to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to get where you are trying to go.
ReplyDeleteFor an unformation website i like the layout of www.martecgroup.com they are a research and consultation firm. Right on the front of their website it gives some of the achievements they have acomplished as well as some news. if you are going through the site it gives names of the partners as well as directors and a way to directly get in contact with them. also it gives you a list of the clients and sectors that they serve. as well as the ease and convenience of the website i like how the layout is with the simple colors.
For a business news sectors
wall street journal, i like the layout they give, however they need to remove some of it. the website looks to busy for me. if a person who isnt that into some of the top stories they are giving and used to how it looks they will be easily distracted and might be turned away. i know i was until i got used to how they did things. my only suggestion for them is to make the website with less "stuff" it is cluttered and busy.
For e-commerce website, I recommend www.amazon.com , it is well organized, easy to find stuff you need and easy to use. It has one click button to buy the stuff directly without multiple steps, it is very convenience.
ReplyDeleteFor business or organization informative website, I like http://people.emich.edu/lloesche/IS%20247/Templates/ChetTemplate/, which is our group project this semester to our sponsor. It has a very simple and clear design. The font color makes the information easy to read. The dynamic slideshow is not only for decorating the webpage, but also for promoting the service Moravian provides.
For business news websites, I used the most one is http://finance.yahoo.com. The website has the most updated business and financial news in U.S. and outside of the country. It has the changing information of stock price. The expert opinion is a free section for you to reference and analysis resources for up-to-date marking phenomenon.
Todd Waltz
ReplyDeleteI went to the furioustees.com site and at first it was a little overwhelming but after you understand what they are really selling it becomes easy to navigate. They bascially show you what shirts they have and you click on ones you might be interested in which is simple enough. Menu Bar at the top is easy to locate and understand. I know where i will be going after i click on the pictures which is always nice. Furthermore they dont have millioins of ads or pop ups (or flashy things) coming at you which i really enjoy. They do have a swear words on the main screen which i feel might turn some people off.
For the second site i went to golfballs.com assuming it was selling or getting me interested in golfballs. Right from the get go i see multiple golfing products which are ok i guess. I really like the menu bar on this website though because with golf there are so many things you could buy and they have nearly everything you would want in the menu on the left. I also see special features and good deals which was easy for me to find. If i was looking for anything golf related it would be easy to navigate to find a good deal.
For the business site i went to the wall street journal website and at first it seems crazy. There are so many menus to look through which might be hard to find a certain article. I do like the style of the page for the most part having an in depth menu on top and all the information toward the bottom. I was getting excited about the breaking news bar at the top of the screen but was dissapointed when i saw it was just an advertisment. Scrolling down farther i notice that there is so much information on the page it seems hard to follow.
Google is the holy grail of all websites. Simplicity and usability at its best.
ReplyDeleteAmazon.com remains my #1 retail site for its product selection and ease of use.
Newegg.com is complex at times but, if you know specifically what you are looking for, you can find all of the information that you need.
The best "news" website I have found is more tech oriented - Gizmodo OR TechBlog.
For E-Commerce Websites I really liked Amazon.com because it's very well organized into categories so it's nice and simple to find exactly what your looking for. I use amazon quite often to purchases textbooks and I find searching online is so much easier than going to the store and searching around there.
ReplyDeleteFor an Information Websites I really liked Dictionary.com. The reason I like this one the best out of all information websites out there is because it's easy to nativage and you're able to find everything you need. I really helps me with completing homework, exams, or writing papers because I have any information need right in front of me.
For Business News Websites I really liked the Wall Street Journal one because it really popped. I liked how they put the background black and the text in a white box. It really helps to have the information pop out so it's easier for you to read and that's the first thing that catches your eye.