Ethan Allen’s website has a very clean and stylistic design. It is extremely functional and allows easy viewing as well as good presentation. The website is a good example of how to use correct design principles as outlined in our book.
The time it takes for a viewer to lose interest in a web-page is 15 seconds if the website does not hook the viewer. At two minutes a website can lose even an interested viewer unless there is lots of relevant content and streamlined function and design. Ethan Allen’s website uses its design well. Easy navigation bars, eye catching art on the home page, moving pictures, high contrast typography and a clean design make the website appeal to the eye and the user’s intuition. The design is planned and executed well.
Upper-middle class families in the suburbs are Ethan Allen’s target audience. They are the group that has the affluence to purchase Ethan Allen products, and love the brand name as well. This is no secret to either party and Ethan Allen tailors the design of their website (it goes without saying their furniture too) to impress the consumer interested in stylish and contemporary design. Presentation is everything when selling a brand and the website is just a part of the whole. In this part however, Ethan Allen succeeds.
Café 360, while offering delicious food at a good price, does not have an aesthetically pleasing website. The colors are incongruous and the elements are cluttered everywhere. The design principles we have learned are, for the most part, not implemented.
The website tries to force everything down our throats all on the first page. Lots of pictures, text and lots of different fonts and style make the website appear that there was no central style concerns when it was being created. The book says never use more than two different fonts, I counted eight on the first page alone, which is not counting all of the different colors and sizes that are used. The animation at the bottom is distracting and doesn’t add anything. The whole thing is just a mess thrown together.
The audience likely to see the page are young urban people who probably won’t care for the design of the layout so much. They will care more about the hookah, menu and atmosphere the restaurant provides. As a local business with an established customer base, the website really doesn’t need to be fancy. It just does what it needs to like supplying location, menu, and a few pictures to those interested. Unlike Ethan Allen it is not trying to sell 800$ coffee tables so the website is understandably less maintained.
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