Website Critique
USA Today is, for the most part a user-friendly site. Its strengths include a search bar, weather icon and a USA Today icon that’s always clickable, making it easy for the user to go back to the home page. The site puts its most important content high up which is important to keep the reader interested. It also includes the feature, site index, which makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. The headings at the top, home, news, travel, etc., make the website easy to navigate. The site uses different colors to highlight the different sections; this allows the user to see where they are and which stories relate to one another.
A weakness of the website may be its use of art. The homepage includes a lot of pictures which may overwhelm the user. Also the most popular news stories are divided by technology, sports, auto and so forth but the headers are not clickable which I think isn’t user-friendly. If someone wants to ready more stories on technology they should be able to click the header above the story. It would make stories of interest to the user more accessible.
The magazine website, Cosmopolitan, is user-friendly because the navigation tabs at the top of the page are drop down, making it quick and easy for the user to get where they want. The art on the main page relates to stories and the user can click through to get to the story they want, instead of waiting for it to load. Also they include games, quizzes and polls, making the site interactive and fun for users. Also, a lot of things on the page are clickable and there’s less scrolling, making it easier for the users.
A weakness of the site is clicking on a link that comes up when you use the search bar brings you to another page. You don’t want to bring the user away from your page. The link should open a new browser so the user can continue to explore the original site while browsing the site that resulted from their search.
The radio website, hot 97, is user-friendly because it includes blogs from the disc jockeys and pictures so the user can put a face to their favorite radio personality. The poll creates usability and putting the poll on the homepage is something that immediately keeps the user there. It’s interactive. It included a tab called ‘The Click’ that provides links to hot 97 on facebook, myspace and youtube. Now users know their favorite radio station is on their favorite social networking site. Also when clicking on these links it opened a new page instead of taking the reader away from the main page. Another user-friendly tool is the ‘on-air’ navigation tab. It allows you to see what’s been playing on-air and what time. You can even see what they played four weeks ago.
It was weak in its usability because it wasn’t that well organized and didn’t include a search bar, site map or index to help users find their way around. ‘Miss InfoTV News Updates’ is misleading. It’s not news stories on celebrities or musicians, but a blog. The small blue font isn’t that legible, making most of the site difficult to read. It had no color scheme so the entire site looked the same. They could have included a weather icon since it’s a radio station based only in New York.
