3 Sites with Attractive and Usable Forms

EE Harbor   - http://eeharbor.com/

This site is for EE Harbor which is a company that generates Polls for other peopls's websites, at a cost. So I guess polls is their area of expertise anyway, it better be good. I like the simplicity of their register form and the fact that it took you to a page that blocked all distracting things out and let the user just focus on the few questions needed to register. Simple and Clean look.

 

2.  SVN2GIT   - http://www.svn2ftp.com/

SVN2GIT is a hosted source control system company... whatever that means, but what I get from reading that is that their website better be pretty good because they work in the techy web field. Their whole website has a really modern feel to it. I loved the contact form because it was so different from anything else I'd ever seen. Their main menu is on the left of their index screen and its all based off of the index page, no other pages. So when you click on contacts, the contact form pops up on the right of the screen you're on. Love it. And the background for each form box is like yellow legal pad paper. Pretty cool. 

3. Barnt & Arnst    - http://barntarnst.com/

Barnt & Arnst website is pretty cool. Looks like they mainly use a one long index page theme where you can scroll on down forever. Their contact form is at the very bottom of the page, built right in. No links or clicks necessary to get to it. I love that you can just click right onto the page in the form 'boxes' to contact them. 3 fields and the only link you have to click on is 'send'. Clear, concise, to the point.

3 Sites with Responsive Navigation

1. Rodeo Drive - http://www.rodeodrive-bh.com/

I felt this site's design was really cool and original. It captures your eye right away. Especially with some of the page to page effects and how the nav menu actually works, which is not traditional at all.

The smaller screen version transformed flawlessly and was still a beautiful site and layout. No scroll bar at the bottom but still felt like I was getting the experience of the full site.

large screen:

 Smaller screen:

2. Pennicott Journeys   - http://www.pennicottjourneys.com.au/

This website had a great transition with their nav menu. On the large screen it was a row of horizontal pictures up in the huge header which also had a background pic. Reduce the screen smaller and you get the background pic first and then vertically, with no scroll, the rest of the nav menu pics, each a link. Pretty cool.

Large screen:

Smaller Screen: 

 3. Websto  - http://www.websto.ca/

This websites nav menu actually stayed the same layout wise and looks wise, they just had everything resized to a smaller version. I thought this was cool, really gives the user the same feel if it is a site they visit often on both computers and smaller devices. Also, because they use round images instead of just underlined links, i think the smaller format still works for people to feel comfortable with pressing links.

Larger Screen:

Smaller Screen:

3 Multi-level Menus that Function Well, and Look Good

1. Starbucks  - http://www.starbucks.com/

I like Starbucks multi layered menu. For companies with not a lot of different products to offer, I don't think it would work. But with Starbucks, I think the idea of a huge drop down showing many menu options reduces the chance of a customer having to go through a ton of clicks to get to the page that they want. I love the black background with the green background hover effect too. I think, for Starbucks, this works.

2. Walmart  - http://www.walmart.com/

Walmart's website and mult layered nav menu kind of stood out to me because it was somewhat different than the ten's of other websites I looked at for this post. I like the idea of the nav menu on the side, which isn't necessarily different but it looks good on their website. Also, I liked the fact that although the sub menu that popped up was somewhat big and full of info, you could also click on a sub category instead of specific item with that category. That was kind of cool for someone who would rather just browse that category than pick something specific. (doesn't really show that in the screencapture I got, but it's there for other depts.).

3. Alaskan Airlines -  http://www.alaskaair.com/?semid=9e82f2d3-c937-47f8-bced-f13957cf8c41::3240166::||Evergreen||&gclid=CIaM1IrK1cMCFZNafgodozsAzw

I liked Alaskan Airlines multi layered menus the best. They had clearly defined sections, when you'd hover and the drop down would come up. They also included pictures in some of them and it was just very appealing to the eye and their menu was the most concise I have seen today. For example when you hover over polices, you see a list of the top three, and then a link for 'all polices'. Not providing too much info on the sub menus I think is key while providing the most gone to links for easy access. I think they nailed it.

3 Responsive Web Sites Doing it Right

 -- All Photos are screenshots from my mobile device --

1. Amazon     - http://www.amazon.com/

I thought Amazon.com, the mobile site was really user friendly. It doesn't appear that it redirects to a mobile version, given the same name, Amazon.com in my browser by the version that I got on my phone was slightly different than what I saw on my computer. I thought it was a good mobile site because they lowered the number of links along the top and just put a couple important ones, like search and login. Also, they are using a horizontal layout to showcase products for sale that you can scroll horizontally on. I think that's a great way to save space and allows them to increase the viewing size of the items this way.

2. ESPN   - http://espn.go.com/  

ESPN'S website is ESPN.go.com. I thought this was a redirect to a mobile site and they added the go in it but when I went to espn.com on my computer it went to the same site.  I think they did a great job on their mobile site because they minimized icons down to the most important ones and they have a great size for their menu. I don't have to pinch to zoom at all on their site, which is a huge benefit for a mobile user. Everything important still fits above the fold and their mobile site's layout is almost exactly like their regular site, which helps find things if you already knew where they were on the regular site.

3. CNN  - http://www.cnn.com/
CNN has a pretty cool mobile site. It looks like they give it a resizing feature instead of making two different sites, which is great for their SEO. Basically, the mobile site on my phone looked just like the website on my computer, except they took stuff from the far right of their computer site and put it in one straight line. Also, their menu is fixed on both sites which especially helps on a mobile site when scrolling isn't always as easy. Finally, I really like that CNN's mobile site seems to include everything their regular site has, which makes the mobile user feel like they arent missing out on any pertinent news.