1. www.atlantictelecom.com (a company I used to work for)
Overall presentation: The website has been updated drastically since the last time I looked at it. While it appears much more up to date than it used to be, the large amount of text on the opening page turns me off.
Usability: The usability on the site has been improved. Although all the text on the front page irritates me, it is organized in a way that information can be found quickly and the links along the left side of the page are very user-friendly.
Organization: The organization is decent. The company name is the largest and most prominent graphic on the opening screen and topics are headed by large bolded titles.
2. www.core-techs.com (another company I worked for)
Overall presentation: This website is pretty visually appealing upon first glance, the details on the opening page are divided into sections that make it easy to locate what you're looking for.
Usability: Similar to the Atlantic Telecom website, this site has a menu on the left side that makes it easy to locate the different areas of the website.
Organization: Again, the company name/logo is the most obvious graphic on the opening page and the menu is well organized.
3. www.abc.go.com (I visit this site a lot to watch online episodes of Lost)
Overall presentation: Considering the volume of people that visit abc.com, it's necessary for them to have a very attractive site. The opening page is visually appealing and grabs the visitor's attention with the videos that automatically begin playing upon opening the page.
Usability: The menu along the top of the opening page makes the site very user friendly. It can be somewhat confusing at times to find what you're looking for, but that's more due to the amount of content on the site than bad organization.
Organization: The overall organization of the site is very good, but constantly changing. Currently there are clips at the bottom of the first page that feature many of ABC's most popular shows and the links along the top, with the "free episodes" link being the only one is red, is very focused towards making things easy for visitors.
4. www.xkcd.com (webcomic site)
Overall presentation: This site is very simple and that works to its benefit.
Usability: This site is extremely easy to navigate, especially if you're just going there out of boredom to look at some jokes, since they are directly on the opening page. If there's anything else you want to look for, the menu at the top of the page and the search bar at the bottom makes that very easy.
Organization: There isn't a lot of content that needs to be organized on this site, unlike abc.com, which makes its organization simple and effective for it's purpose.
5. http://amos.moravian.edu (need I say more?)
Overall presentation: This site is visually attractive, but unfortunately, that's about the only thing it has going for it.
Usability: The opening page of the website is easy enough to figure out, but after logging in, the site becomes pretty impossible to navigate. The tabs across the top of the page make it appear like its easy to find what you're looking for on the site, but after clicking each tab, the organization of the pages you get linked to make it pretty difficult to find information.
Organization: The organization of the site is good up until you get to the tabbed pages. From personal experience, I know that it takes me at least 15 minutes to find information on amos that I'm not already familiar with locating.
Labels: art 346, critique, links, organization, presentation, usability, websites