I just visited the page for Hendrick’s Gin (age verification required) and it was really well done. What sites do you know that are worth a visit for the site alone?
Form or function, or both?
I travel a lot and in the past year or two (it wasn’t always true at all) I find www.aa.com and www.continental.com to be very intuitive, graphically attractive, and functional.
Amazon has always been good to use.
I recently had to visit the FBI’s website for a patron and was surprised at how informative it is. It’s not gorgeous, but it makes sense and is easy to navigate, plus I found what I needed to find instantly.
I think I’m going more for form. If you look at the link in my OP you’ll get an idea. They put a lot of work/thought in. It’s cool.
Sorry, I have to disagree. The Hendrick’s Gin site is terrible. First of all, when I went there, I got a ‘loading’ screen, and after waiting 20 seconds and it was still only up to around 25%, I abandonded it. They violated one of the cardinal rules of the web - don’t gateway your site. Don’t put up a front page that takes a long time to load.
But then I thought I should be fair, so I went back. It took over a minute to get past the loading screen, and I have cable internet. Then I got to ANOTHER gateway screen. This time I have to enter my age just to enter the site. And that flying insect animation is VERY annoying.
So I go through all that, and get to the main page. I’m willing to bet that by now the company has lost at least 3/4 of the people who started at their ‘loading screen’. Anyway, after that you are presented with a home screen full of hidden links, that annoying insect animation is running the whole time, and their ‘cute’ labels for things means you can’t just read the links and figure out what the hell they are talking about.
There’s an application you can fill out to join the ‘curiousitorium’, but since you really don’t know what the hell that is, I can’t imagine they get many people filling it out. It says, “Register and be rewarded!”, but doesn’t tell you what the reward is until after you register.
The whole site is like that. It looks like the company spent a fortune to create what, in the end, is a very basic web site. Except that all the whiz-bang features they added to it made it less usable than a site that could have been made from a standard template with some branding in a few days.
I tried clicking some other links, but after the first one I clicked got me back to a ponderous ‘loading’ screen, I gave up.
It’s a good example of how not to build a web site.
It’s also done entirely in Flash, which plays merry hell with accessibility. I can’t middle-click to open links in new tabs, for example; nor can I right-click to open new windows or copy links to share with other people. If I were significantly visually impaired, I would be frustrated to discover that I cannot use my browser’s zoom function to display the contents at a larger size, nor can I use a screen reader to present the content audibly.
Sure, they get points for style; as a cutesy visual presentation, it’s great. As a website, it’s the WWW equivalent of an expensive doorstop.
Just for yucks, I tried the Bacardi web site, which was the first other hard liquor I thought of. It suffers from some of the same problems, but it’s far superior. The navigation is better, the labels are better, it looks better, and it’s much, much faster. I still would prefer not to see all the flash crap, but it’s much less obtrusive than the other one.
I’ve always been impressed by uboat.net, which, if I understand correctly, is a labor of love by a history buff. It’s become an enormous database but still looks accessible.
Alcohol websites, at least us based ones, have always had age verification, afaik. They all gateway their site, either by law or mutual agreement.
Ahhhh, but if you are sucking down Hendrick’s Gin, the time just flies by.