Journal 5

Journal 5 - Web Site Review

The web site I chose to review for this week's journal was found off of Websitesthatsuck.com, so, understandably, it's pretty awful. The first thing I noticed when I came to this site was the background. It's full of clouds -- which is very distracting to the viewer. Personally, I think the choice to have a 'cloud' background also detracts from the site because it makes it look much less professional. When in doubt, keep it simple. Next, when you first open the webpage, you have no idea what type of site it is. There is no title or header explaining the site's purpose! Instead, the first object on the page is the weather. Is that why I came to this page? To check the weather in Ottawa? I don't think so. Now I don't mean to completely discount this. Having a weather update can always be handy and necessary information. But I would recommend they try moving the updater from the top and center of the page. Maybe put it off to the side, or put a link to the weather down below. That would make much more sense than having it front and center, since this is not a forecasting webpage.

Just below the very oddly placed weather updater, is an even more randomly placed logo that says 'No Texting -- Hands Free Only." We still don't know what this web site is for, so this logo does not make much sense. Is it a taxi driving service? A web site against texting and driving? We just don't know. As you scroll down, however, you can see that it's a site for a driving school. This is poorly designed though. The viewer should not have to scroll down the page to find out what the web site they are looking at is about. Instead, it should be apparent immediately upon opening the page. This web site needs a heading that clearly states the title.

The next problem is the quality of the pictures on this web site. Both images appear to be very grainy and low quality. I would recommend they change these to high resolution pictures -- by updating the quality of their pictures, they will update the quality of their website. Also, the organization of the web site is really poor. You have to scroll down a ways to get to the site's mission statement, history, contacts, etc. This is not helpful at all. I would guess this web site loses a lot of potential customers because they cannot find where the links are to more information. In addition, the layout and design of the site is very distracting. Not only are random sentences moving across the screen in a continuous scroll, but the text varies from a bright blue to a bright red, in on and off patterns. Both colors pull at your eye, so it becomes a competition for which sentences of text you will actually read. In my opinion, all the text needs to be one color, or at least similar shades of the same color. This would help calm the site down a bit.

Overall, this site needs some major fixing up. A driving school is an important web site, and I am sure for the people living in Ottawa, Canada, they would like to be able to use such a site. But until the web site is cleaned up, I would not recommend people try and go to it. Even if you have an extra amount of patience, it is not easy to last very long on this web site. If you're looking to learn how to drive, go somewhere else!

http://www.drivingskills.on.ca