Making A Site Look Good

One of the most important things about a website is how it looks. The colors, the layout, the sidebars, everything visually appealing to the viewers eye. If your website isn’t appealing, or if it is under-developed, users will be frustrated just looking through the site, and will probably look elsewhere.

One site that I access multiple times every-day is ESPN.com. I continue to go to ESPN.com for all my sports needs because, not only do I know that they will have all the information that I need, but visually, the site is appealing, and it is full of tools and applications that make viewing the site easier and better.

The site is layed out in a two color color-scheme of black and red. ESPN usesblack and red as their “trademark” colors. They use black and red on their virtual sets for TV broadcast, and for the bottom line they run on TV. for a while ESPN changed their colors allot, but for the last couple of years, they stuck with black and red, so the colors would become identifiable with their product.

ESPN.com not only has a good color layout, but their man page is layout like a magazine front page. A main article with a large picture, sidebars on the top side of the screen, and as you scroll/scan down the page, polls, captions, and links to other pages and tools appear, just like magazines hint to articles in other sections and what not.

Another site that I use allot, which is a complete contrast to ESPN.com is laxpower.com, which is a up-to-date, complete database and news source for everything involiving high school and college lacrosse. As a former “elite” HS lacrosse player, I would go here everyday to check the stats that the site keeps on every team in every league and state. I played college lacrosse for two years and would use the site all the time to see national rankings, forum posts from other lacrosse players, and just about any other piece of info about the current lacrosse world.

Although I visit laxpower.com all the time, I do so mainly just because of its content. I have had to ignore the fact that the site is visually unappealing. The site doesn’t look like its design has been updated in 5 to 10 years.

The site’s main colors are grey and green, but there is not allot of green on the pages. the sidebars are also grey and have black color font which is not appealing to the eyes. All the links are typical-blue, and the site doesn’t use allot of tables or boxes to organize its info on the main page.

When you get into the site deeper (all the statistic pages) it looks like your just looking at a basic stat sheet, with old-style typewriter font.

Check out these two links. The first being a standings of every team in Division 3 lacrosse. it is tough to read and not appealing. Now go to this ESPN.com site for standings for mens basketball. The way ESPN lays their information out is less stressful on the eyes of the viewer.

The third website I will discuss in called TheDCscene.com. This is the website that I worked for this summer, and is run by NBC universal. It is a younger website with less people working on the design and less overall funding. It starts out with a black welcome screen, that makes you click to enter. it has pictures of things and DC and casts a good image of what the site might contain.

The main page is really nicely laid out with 8 different tables for each section that the site covers. with in each table is a picture of the main article, then a list of five links about other current articles in that subject. The site is loaded with pictures and color because the site is designed for people ages 21-30, so the site needs to look fresh. The problem I have with this site, is that since it is owned and managed by NBC universal/ NBC4 in Washington DC, the sidebars are peppered with buttons going to places unassociated with the DCscene. It might make overall searching better, but who goes to a entertainment guide, then clicks to go to a place about home & garden?

On the other sidebar of the screen, the page is loaded with ads for different products, always blinking and moving. I feel like that brings down the class of the site, but at the same time, ads help pay for the production of a site.

Overall, I think that site design and visual appearance is almost key in creating a site. As I explained, a site doesn’t have to look amazing if it is certain that the info it has is deep enough and important enough to viewers that their appearance wont scare them off .(Laxpower.com)