Walters_Interaction Design: Website Audits

When completing my Audits for the webpages I found both good design, and bad design. The biggest issue I found with the sites were with links. We talked so much in class about making links the same color and the only thing that color, but most of websites did not so this. There were links in the body copy that a user would pass right over since they were the same color as the rest of the text, or on purple doors site, the body copy is different colors and you think there are links, but they are just text. On the Salt n’ Light site, I found links randomly in body copy that would direct you to a page that there is no other path to. This information could be completely missed by the user if they are not looking for it.

The knock summer festival site was the worst design, however, the navigation was the easiest to follow. They still could have made the links more distinguishable. The navigation is white with a blue rollover, while the body copy links are red (which is the same color as the titles) with an underline. The one thing all three sites have working for them is there organization. Salt n’ Light has a very easy to follow navigation with drop down sub navigation for each section that keeps things organized.

As the audits show, all three sites have limited links; I believe they could have benefited from adding more. There were many times that I was rolling over the text and clicking expecting to be taken to another site, or page and found nothing.

All three sites also had cross-links that were seen on every page, this could be in the footer, header, or side content area. The site that took advantage off this the most was Salt n’ Light. They only used the cross links in their footer area. The other two sites had information everywhere that was seen on every page, this became distracting to the main content of the page. On Purple doors site, the feature area, never changes.

Below are the Audits that I did for the following sites:

Salt n' Light Youth Ministries