Today I thought I’d do another review of websites. This time we’ll be looking at 2 of my favorite sites, Cesar’s Way and the Vancouver Canucks. I’ll follow a similar format to my last website reviews and give a paragraph about my overall experience, followed by rating it out of 10 in the key areas of good website design I outlined in an earlier post, my 4 part series called The Anatomy of Good Website Design.
Vancouver Canucks Website
First of all, yes, I am a Canucks fan, so that’s definitely a huge part of why I picked their website. So here’s what I like about their site: the navigation is very well done, looking through the menus it’s very straightforward how to find the info I’m looking for. The site also has a visually pleasing design that fits the team branding and colours, and features good contrast between the text and backgrounds. All the main parts of the site remain consistent throughout the site across most of the pages. They do have an area in their videos section where the design of the menu and site changes in style, the “Tickets” links all lead to a different sales site, and there is also a link labeled “Fort Nucks” which leads off site unexpectedly, however they do open it in a new window which is the right way to handle a link like that, and that could have been done for the Tickets links. Aside from those issues, this site is overall a well-designed site.
Ratings:
- Organization: 8/10
- Navigation: 9/10
- Design: 8/10
- Consistency: 6/10
- Contrast: 10/10
- Above the Fold: 7/10
- Performance: 8/10
- Layout: 9/10
Cesar’s Way (Official Site of the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan)
Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer shows really helped me through a lot of problems I had with fear of dogs. I’ve learned a ton from watching him on TV and get along great with dogs nowadays. I only recently found his website, but I’m glad I did.
His site’s also got a very good layout and design. The menu is easy to follow, and also features convenient links to all sub pages within the current section right below the main menu, which makes navigating much easier. I haven’t seen this in many sites, but It’s certainly a great feature I’d love to implement in a future design project of my own.
The one issue I did find is that one of the main menu sections, Training Cesar’s Way, does go off site and did not implement a feature of opening this section in a new window, which does pull me off the site. This Training site does have a link at the top back to the cesarsway.com site, but opening in a new window still should have been done, and it’s very easy for a trained web developer to do. One thing that the site could also have benefited from would be something on the home page about Cesar’s philosophy and what a new visitor can expect from this site. Still, my overall experience on this site is very positive and the site is well-made.
Ratings:
- Organization: 9/10
- Navigation: 10/10
- Design: 9/10
- Consistency: 7/10
- Contrast: 10/10
- Above the Fold: 8/10
- Performance: 10/10
- Layout: 8/10
As always, if you have a specific topic you would like me to cover in a future blog post, feel free to leave a comment below. Also, if you would like me to review your web site, or have any questions about your website, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help you out. Your feedback really is important to me and will help me in providing you with the contents you are looking for.
