Books & Looks
Welcome! My name is Christina and I'll be giving you a small insight of my favorite websites. Throughout history, fashion and books have been a huge development that had and continues to have a huge impact on our daily lives. Trying to find a certain outfit or book has become effortless because of the internet. Two websites that I've always found helpful are Barnes&Noble and Urban Outfitters with each giving their own twist on selling items but each being very successful in doing so. The Barnes&Noble website has varieties of books to choose from. It provides such a large selection that even non-readers will find themselves adding books to the cart! Just like this website, Urban Outfitters does the same exact thing. From clothes to home furniture, viewers can find and purchase anything their hearts desire!
Barnes & NobleMy first favorite website is www.barnesandnoble.com
Barnes & Noble is a very popular bookstore that has many locations around the United States. It purpose is to make searching for a book to read for fun, to use for school, or just to explore the many genres of books that can be found. It’s a helping tool that works to education just about every age group about how simple it is to look up a book and find exactly what you’re looking for! The website itself makes It ‘s extremely efficient, just like any market website, to buy books, textbooks, magazines, toys, and games. Everything is organized in categories so that it’s very easy to find exactly what a viewer is searching for. The Barnes & Noble website contains a section for each individual item is rated and reviewed by buyers. These reviews are open to the public; the better the review the more the item is going to sell. Also, the site sells these items by providing an intriguing description for each item, making items more appealing in order to sell. The website has built a community around a common cause. The ability to write item reviews reunifies site viewers and enabling them to almost communicate with one another. This website also informs the viewer about the different store locations and which ones are nearest to them. If the viewer would rather drop by a Barnes & Noble store, it’s very simple to look up an address. This website provides thousands of images of items which attract the viewer, other than using words. The logo of this website is simple but yet effective. It has an elegant dark green and gold font that spells out “Barnes & Noble.” The logo itself does not consist of much creativity but that’s not its purpose. It’s a logo that's straight to the point and gets its message across directly. Just like books, creativity is located beyond the cover and within the pages. The website’s background is white without any images repeating. Some images that do repeat however are popular items that are sold on the website. Repeating certain images lures viewers in and might even persuade them enough to buy that product. The website consists of three colors: green, black, and white. The layout of the website is basic and that’s exact the impression it’s trying to give off. Barnes & Noble is supposed to be a scholarly and serious site and that is exactly the message they are trying to portray. The author of the website is catchy. For each genre of books, the author has created a memorable quote to captivate the viewer. Viewers can explore just about any written document they please, no matter what age. Anyone interested in reading and writing uses this website regularly. From kids ranging from ages 3 and up to the elderly, everyone can find something worth reading! I absolutely love this website! First and foremost, I love to read books! As George R.R. Martin once said “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Reading over the years has become one of my many passions and what better way to explore and enhance my book knowledge than the Barnes & Noble website! Categorizing and organization is one of the aspects that I particularly like about this website. It’s easy to find just about anything I’m looking for. |
Urban OutfittersMy second favorite website is www.urbanoutfitters.com
Urban Outfitters is a specialty retail store where you can view then/or purchase products, ranging from apparel to home merchandise. This website works to educate about styles that don’t necessarily follow the latest fashion. It carries a distinct clothing line and furniture that can’t be found in a common retail store. The site sells their items by using models to pose in their clothing. By doing this, the viewer will look at the outfit and buy it because it looks good on the model, even though they themselves have never tried it on. The website has built a community around a common cause which is to help one another buy the best possible product, in quality, a viewer can buy. Urban Outfitters works to inform you about certain styles, like vintage. Also, it helps viewers find locations of an Urban Outfitters store near by. The website communicates its purposes with more than just words by storing thousands of pictures of their products. You don’t have to read descriptions of items to figure out what they may look like. The images provided do that for you, making life a bit simpler! There are several logos for Urban Outfitters. There isn’t a specific one for it but the most common one found is, just like Barnes and Noble, simple and straightforward. The logo contains the words “Urban Outfitters” in the color white. The words are surrounded by a black text highlight, making the words pop out. There are no repeating images, just a plain white background. Other images that do appear on this website are professional photos with models posing and advertising Urban Outfitters’ clothing in different scenarios. The photo shoots seem to be located at beaches with men and women posing on or with surfboards and skateboards. The purpose of this is to advertise summer approaching. These photos are seasonal and are usually updated a few times a year. The authors of this website sound clear. They seem to prefer outlining and bulleting product details, keeping their message short but still useful. They are talking to teenagers and young adults specifically. This is obvious because the models they use are young and are doing activities that usually young adults would do. I think viewers who are looking for a different look or want to buy new clothing use this site regularly. (Someone like me!) People interact on this website by posting item reviews and posting pictures of them wearing the item they bought off the site to share with others. The reason why I like this website is because it’s fun to look at! The website itself is playful; it contains more images than writing which is always a plus! The photos that that website provides the viewer with almost makes me what to join in. Everyone looks happy and enjoying what life has to offer. Even though it’s meant to give off that impression to obtain more viewers, it almost makes you dream of a better place.; A place that’s always paradise and nothing less. |
Whether it be buying books from Barnes&Noble or purchasing apparel from Urban Outfitters, these websites have taught me a great deal about web design. When it comes to organization and categorizing, it is extremely important to make items easy to find. The easier an item is to find, the more viewers and buyers a website will gain. Barnes&Noble and Urban Outfitters both use this technique to keep their website simple but also interesting at the same time. Another aspect of web design that I've learned from retail websites is the importance of pictures used to grab a viewer's attention. Web design is not all about writing details; Adding pictures to display certain items has a huge significance. It keeps the website compelling and attractive, luring viewers in. These are just a few website features I will keep in mind when building my own websites in the future.