Illyana Lund – DTC-355 Web Design and Development
Browsers Olympia – https://www.browsersolympia.com/item/ZQ5ZFEH6_RyfWj4HgWYQZQ
Orca books – https://www.orcabooks.com/book/9780307887443
Last Word Books – https://www.lastwordbooks.org/product/87468/Ready-Player-One-A-Novel
The three sites I chose are all small bookstores in Olympia, Washington. Browsers Olympia, Orca Books, and Last Word Books. All three sites are similar in terms of searching for products. They each feature a prominent search bar which makes finding a specific book straightforward. Out of the three, Browsers was the easiest for me to spot quickly. Browsers keeps the search bar at the very top of the home page. I appreciated the placement because it made it that much faster to search for what I needed. Ocra Books and Last Word Books also had search bars, but you had to read through a bit of Information first.
Entering the book title I wanted on each site brought me to a list of available books matching my search. Browsers search bar features predictive elements that create a drop-down menu as you type, refreshing quickly to show clickable suggestions. This feature was extremely convenient. Orca and Last Word were both much less intuitive. One feature that I immediately noticed as lacking was a way to account for a misspelling of a search term. When searching for Ready Player One on Orca Books and Last Word Books, a misplaced letter resulted in 0 results. For Last Word Books in particular, searching for the exact title generated a list with the book I was looking for underneath several others with completely unrelated titles.
All three sites are similar in the way they display products. Each features a large picture of the book with the title in bold. Relevant information is listed below. Each lists a brief description of the book, a biography of the author, and some reviews. The main difference I noticed was the “Add to cart” button. For both Orca and Last Word, the “Add to cart” button is at the top of the page next to the photo of the book and featured prominently. Browsers require you to scroll to the bottom of the page to find a way to purchase. I felt like this was an odd choice, especially since, out of the three stores, Browsers seems to do the most online business.
All three stores sell primarily through their physical locations, so hours of operation, parking information, and info about what products they have available make sense to feature on the home page. Browsers home page is the most succinct and uncluttered. The menu bar is minimal and easy to navigate. For users searching primarily for recommendations of new books, the home page includes several sections, each a relevant category with a side-scrolling list of books shown as clickable images. Ocra and Last Word also featured recommendations, but the options were limited and required navigation to a new page. This made it a pain to browse for something new.
The navigation menus for each site are where I found the biggest differences. Browsers is easy to find and understand. A simple search bar at the very top with a horizontal list of menus underneath. Each menu features a drop-down sub-menu and takes you to the relevant page when you click on it. The search bar and menu bar stay at the top on all of the pages, making it easy to quickly navigate to something specific with minimal clicks.
Orca Books is much less intuitive and is visually cluttered. There are fewer navigation options, drop-down menus are not obvious, and the pages are very text-heavy with few clickable links or collapsible menus. This means it takes a lot more time to find a specific piece of information. Social media widgets take up a large portion of the right side of each page, which feels clunky. Small, clickable options to navigate to social media pages would be cleaner.
Last Word has the least user-friendly navigation. The menu does feature a search bar that is easy to find, but if you are searching by category you must wade through a confusing list of options that have no clear order. The Categories drop-down menu is alphabetical but has so many options you can only scroll down the “B” before you must navigate to a new page. Unless you know the exact title you are searching for, it is difficult to figure out what the site has available.
Overall, Browsers Olympia has the best, easiest-to-use website. The navigation is simple and intuitive. I was able to quickly find what I needed without unnecessary clicks and the UI is both clean and attractive. Orca books, on the other hand, performed more like a newsletter than a website. It has so much information that it is easy to get lost and bogged down when searching, even for something specific. Last Word Books has a similar problem. There are so many options that it is difficult to decide what category to start with. The overall effect of these navigation differences is that Both Orca and Last word are slightly frustrating. If I were to be in the market for a book and these were my only three choices for where to buy, the navigation alone would be enough for me to choose Browsers and not visit the other sites again.