Links For Web Pub III In-Class Exercise 3:

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Well Structured Hierarchies

Annotated Links:

http://www.southwest.com/ 
Southwest.com is an example of a web site with a well structured hierarchy. The site is very easy to use and is one of my favorite travel sites. The first thing your eye sees in the top left is the thing that most people go there for: Reservations. That is followed by: Schedules, Fares, Click N Save, Travel Center and Rapid Rewards. These all seem to be in the right order in terms of importance. Below the main navigation buttons are some links of secondary importance, like E-mail update, SWA Biz, Careers, etc. Their placement and size is appropriate for their content. There is also a section on the bottom half of the page for What's New, where the airline highlights it's hot current items. Navigating through the site to purchase a ticket is very easy. The flight schedules and fare options are laid out well and you have your ticket within four clicks. This site passes with flying colors.

One of my favorite websites is dialpad.com. When I first discovered this website, I could not believe how easy it was to use. The registration process took very little time. The links explained how dialpad works very precisely with easy to understand instructions and illustrations. The homepage contains a member login form, and 4 links. The four links include, what is dialpad, how dialpad works, dialpad contact information, jobs. This simple structure is all that is needed.

http://www.walgreens.com/library/default.jhtml 
A+ for well structured hierarchy -- you can tell what makes Walgreens tick. Beginning with the tabs at the top - first pharmacy, then health library, then corporate information - clearly shows that most important is the pharmacy, next is providing information to consumers and visitors, and third is company information for those interested or seeking. On the pharmacy page, the hierarchy is again well done -- prescriptions - Online Pharmacy, Refills, and then more about Walgreens pharmacy and related services (Learn More) -- obvious & easy to find, these links are part of an obvious and well thought out hierarchy.

http://www.sourgrapes.com/home/home.html 
"Sour Grapes" is a black comedy about how money can't buy health and happiness. It's directed by Larry David, the co-creator of "Seinfeld"! This web site provides the user with clearly defined left-to-right hierarchy in its navigation.  It has a vine with grapes that burst each time the mouse rolls over them. This navigation menu is available to the user on every page of the web site. Their main links are 'Story', 'Actors', 'Director', 'Downloads' and 'Test your Ethics Quotient'. Each of these links has sub-categories under them. For instance, under the 'actors' link, there is a list of actors that were a part of this production; under the 'downloads' link, there is a list of scenes the user can download. Over all this website has a clear and concise hierarchy through which the user CAN NOT get lost!

SEE U THERE
See You There relaxes your eye with the white space around their mission statement. Then they offer to take you on a tour of event planning. This allows the person to be quickly introduced to the subject matter. Then upon exiting you return to the homepage to search further and the top navigation bar is clean with only 6 choices.

Aim: Visit Quantum Design's website for information on their products (magnetometers)
Audience: Almost entirely scientists from universities and national labs
First impression Loaded quickly using a 56K modem. Site was simple, pleasing, no graphics. Home page got straight to the subject
Hierarchy: links to other pages were on the sidebar on the left.
Home page described what kind of products they make. One immediately knows whether to go in or move on to another site.  The next button is to "OVERVIEW" which is a brief overview of the company, products, and the market. Next is "PRODUCTS" which describes the product lines.
The sublevel here has the individual products with all the specs, photos and even info to download. This is roughly where people will get all their info and leave.
Other button on the menu bar are for technical docs, contact, etc. which is rightly towards the bottom! You don't buy a million dollar piece of equipment without looking around some more!
to Quantum Design

Well Structured Hierarchy: Chrysler Motors

Interesting how I'm so not a fan of Chrysler vehicles, but I dig the naming and hierarchy of their web site. For pretty much the same reasons that I previously discussed about this site being reminiscent of a MS Windows Explorer, I think this implementation provides a simple and easy way to structure a lot of web pages, files and information in general. The frame at left always shows one where they are in the hierarchy relative to the home page and content sections of other pages. One of the text links in the navigation section listed as 'Products' opens a target page in the content frame with another set of text links for deeper site searching. I found this to be a nice example of how this site does not overuse the navigation section. Because it's set to a fixed width, there is certainly a limit to how many child layers can be opened in the navigation hierarchy before it looks out of control. Overall, the navigation structure of this site is a winner to me.

www.squaw.com  A very well organized and well structured site. There is no way one could be mistaken as to where the user is being led once you start checking out the links. The site distinctly divides information for their summer and winter activities. All information are current and the site is obviously updated all the time.  The site's hierarchy goes down to only up to two sublevel from the main level which makes it less boring for users to get access information.

http://www.redlandbaptist.org/ 
This site's navigation is excellent and a pleasure to navigate, especially given it is for a non-profit organization. The site has clean and clear direction and structure, with a limited number of links. The navigation is not top-heavy, with a primary navigation bar on the center right (text JavaScript rollovers), and secondary navigation at the bottom (text) and top right (text box form). This navigation carries through from page to page (however, the primary navigation bar is on the left). This primary navigation bar is hierarchical (five levels) and rebuilds upon accessing each page - most impressive! The site places the most important links first, from top to bottom and left to right, with the exception of the homepage, which acts as a quasi-splash page to reinforce the brand. Also, the contacts link and search text box is at the end or bottom of the navigation bars. Use of text and graphic links makes it more difficult to update but adds to the navigation of the site. The site offers multiple navigation approaches (text and graphics, with "onmouseover" and "onmouseout" and "alt" tags), good text links (brief and intuitive names, which are all in lower case without spaces) and a homepage icon ("RedlandBaptist.Org" logo). Also, they even have a powerful search engine on their site, which is effective and superb - wow!

A site that is a well structured hierarchy is SDSU.edu  SDSU also has a well structured hierarchy. The most important information is first and on top. For example, the link to the students is on the top navigation bar listed immediately after the home page. Then the faculty, prospective students, alumni, and news are listed respectively.

A site that was easy to follow through as well keep track of where you are is yahoo.com. Not just as a search engine, but in regards to information you can drill down into within the site, you are given the trail at the top of the page and are always made aware of where you are. You can also click on any of those areas to go back or skip back a couple of pages.

The Napa Valley Wine Train has a really nice web page. The navigation is clear and the hierarchy is good. I had no problem finding the information I needed to make reservation my reservations on the Napa Valley Wine Train. The navigation buttons are in the following order: General information, train schedules, rates, and sample menu, what more could you want. I would like to use some of these very simple ideas on my site.

The Apple site, http://www.apple.com/ is a good example of a well structured hierarchy because it's organized and clear. Apple clearly identified their products, services, and company information. If I was interested in a G4, I can find it easily within a click under hardware.

Here is another good site for structure; Tucows. Tucows is a site offering software/shareware/freeware to the general population. There main page offers the user the ability to browse software by type of product or by the operation system. This is another site that I've never been "lost" in.

http://www.kurtross.com/
This site is a fine art photography site. It is broken down into two well laid out columns. The left-most column lists where the pictures were taken, geographically by region (the southwest, the Adirondacks, etc.). The right-most column gives information on how to purchase the art, the artist's biography, a show schedule, contact information, etc. When the links to the artwork are followed, a thumbnail sketch of the photograph is displayed, along with information on the image--size, how to purchase it, where it was taken, etc. All other links are what you would expect them to be too.  I like the way this site is laid out. It is well structured and actually quite a beautiful site. It is both a showcase for the artwork, as well as a practical way to obtain further information about the art, or to buy it. This was probably the best site I visited

Ciao Tours
Ciao Tours specialize in Tuscany and their links are basically the list of everything, one would possibly like to do during his or hers Tuscan holidays. They have their own icons on the home page:
[Golf | Gardens | Terme | Riding | Wine | Strolling | Hiking | Cooking | Fantasy ]
In the bottom of the page above links are repeated and another are added that I would call service links, they are:
[ Hints | Customize | Insurance | Home | Contact | Email ]
This hierarchy is really clear and easy to navigate.

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Poorly Structured Hierarchies

Annotated Links:

And finally, here is a website with a poorly structured hierarchy. Diesel.com is an e-commerce site. The demographic for this website is 18-30 years old. The homepage is laid out like a "mock" tabloid newspaper. The front page of this paper is an imagemap which takes viewers to another page in the site. On the right hand side are links which also take viewers to various locations within the website. Many of the images link to other popups. The concept for this page is not bad but I found it hard to figure out what was the main feature of this company. It seemed to only feature malnourished people preening around. This company also manufactures accessories which were barely featured on the website.

http://www.pepsico.com/ 
I love Pepsi, but am not wild about its site. Where's the hierarchy? The links are so small! Okay, there in the top left hand corner -- good job -- but there so small! And all of equal size. I wish the page contained a visual clue about what to visit first - everything is displayed too equally!

http://www.intel.com/ 
Intel, one of the biggest firms in technology did a below average job at creating a structured hierarchy in their navigation menu. They have both left-to-right and top-to-bottom menus.  The left-to-right menu consists of 'Intel.com', 'Contents', 'Search', 'Contact Us' and 'Support'. The top-to-bottom menu has 'Home Computing', 'Business', 'Developer', 'Channel', 'Products & Services', 'Company Info' and 'Pentium III owners'. What can confuse the user the most is the marginal difference between 'contact us', 'Intel.com', and 'company info.' May be all of these could have been a part of the same category called 'Our Company'. In addition, 'Pentium III owners' should have been a sub-heading under 'Products & Services' or 'Home Computing'. 'Channel' and 'Developer' links have no meaning by themselves to the user. This navigation hierarchy is not only misleading but also inaccurately designed.

TENNIS.COM
Tennis.com is a site that throws a little bit of this and a little bit of that into the pile just to see if they can fit it all on. Oh, they can't. So they use scrolling navigation bars that are really annoying and takes up so much valuable space for even more annoying advertising. There is no pitch, no
direction no inspiration at all. Even the names on the links are confusing. I get tired just thinking about tooling around in search of the perfect tennis racket.

Aim: Visit Humirel's website for information about humidity sensors (including what temperature range do they work in? what kind of power supply do they need?---)
Audience: mostly technical people doing experimental work
First impression first page has a picture but doesn't say much. Appearance is plain.
Hierarchy: links to other pages were on the sidebar-frames!
Home page said nothing except for the menu bar. The next button on the side bar is COMPANY PROFILE with unnecessary info on the company. Next comes CONTACT US and GET SAMPLES (which are just forms to fill out) even before they describe their products. Finally we get to PRODUCT INFO but here all they do is ask you to download info. We do not find a description of their products anywhere on the pages. There is little motivation to stay and look around. to Humirel.com

A Poorly Structured Hierarchy: Starbucks

I'd consider the Achilles heel of this site to be it's absence of a site map which I think should be a standard component for any and every web site. Even if a site has a poorly implemented hierarchy, a site map can at least enable a user to find their way around. That's not to say that a site map is a cure for an incoherent structure of pages claiming to be a web site, but it can at least be a fall back for the masses to use for navigation. I consider a site map it to be the universal tool/compass (GPS for the modern folk) to be used when a person is lost.  Starbucks has incorporated an eclectic mix of products into their business, certainly some that do not have much to do with coffee. Altogether, the categories of products that they market are in fact fairly heterogeneous. The mix of subject matter certainly can make for a successful business venture, but it presents a definite challenge to have a coherent system that understandably puts it all together in a navigable web site. The thought I'm left with after surfing this site is, it's simply unorganized, but this does not imply a negative critique about the web site. Surfing it is very semblant to an experience visiting a Starbucks store. You go in, buy your coffee, and while you're waiting for it to be prepared, you're exposed to all this stuff. It reminds me of being at a garage sale, there's all kinds of trinkets and random items to buy.  Altogether, it creates what I'll call the Starbucks atmosphere which to me certainly adds to some of it's attraction, and it all seems purposeful. Interesting, that if I were to rate this site artistically, it would be among my favorites. I like the backgrounds and fonts that are used.

www.skiheavenly.com  As competitor to Squaw Valley, Heavenly Ski Resort failed to even come close to offering a site that is navigational. It is littered with graphics that are not necessary, links that are hard to follow or even understand and menus all over the place.  I recently accessed it to find out about season passes for the next ski season and found out that most of the information on the site are not updated. There are also links that do not seem to serve any purposes. When looking for the season pass link, I used that pull down site index menu and found the link on Tickets and Passes. Once on that page, it is not immediately clear where the information is because the only one that one notices right away is a paragraph informing the user about the availability of such passes. Upon further scrutiny, one might notice that the link for the passes are in small clickable text under the heading.

A site that has a poorly structured hierarchy is Iwon.com Iwon.com is not structured very well. I don't know what is the most important information. There is also a lot of information on the homepage. It is very similar to Yahoo.com. On Yahoo's site, I also do not know what is the most important information.

There are some sites that you use quite often due to their content and often forget or ignore if they are structurally any good. tonystone.com is one of those sites. I use this site pretty often, but it was hard to first figure it out. I mainly use the search feature and don't bother really utilizing the other areas.

Citibank a well known name in quality banking? Well you should see their site. It is a really good example of WHY NOT to use Frames. I tried to get information of their on-line banking, and what a wild goose hunt. I had so many windows opened and none of them buttons took me where they promise. I left the site with no information.

To obtain information on a PC300GL, I got frustrated answering questions on 'series' and 'models'. I shouldn't have to remember the series or models of a PC if I don't have a clue about it. IBM, www.ibm.com, also known as the e-commerce solution is packed with information that it took me approximately six clicks to get there.

Shakespeare's Italy
The best worst example I have found in this category is the site of Joe Vincent. Below I have copied names of his links in original order:
Our Philosophy, Photogallery, Web Links, Future Tours, Meet the Tour Guide, Itinerary, Home, Accomodations, Payment and Disclaimer, Contact us
One think I really dislike is to start from philosophy when I'm going to holidays. I am always most interested in what tours they offer, here it is not easy to find. After a while I decided to go to Future Tours and... Bingo! Web links in the beginning is really not the best idea, accommodations after home and before payments... Anyway this is how one usually explore site with poor hierarchy.

http://www.opsd.com/ 
 The Office Pavillion page has no links. This multi-million dollar company fit everything into one page. Some may consider this good organization, but I feel they didn't strive to create a useful site.

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