The site I chose to review is http://allrecipes.com. I enjoy trying new recipes and this is a site I’ve used for several years now. Here you will find a surplus of recipes, hence the name “all recipes”.
Finding Your Way
If you click “recipes” in the navigation bar, you’ll find a breakdown of different types of dishes, which helps you to find what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a specific dish, just type it in the search bar at the top of the page. The Videos link will allow you to watch a recipe being made. This doesn’t include every recipe, but there are many videos. The Menus tab organizes in different categories such as holidays, diet, seasonal, etc. All of the tabs help to organize the info and help the user to navigate easily and quickly.
The design is fairly successful. The color scheme, variants of gray and white with the complementing orange and blue, work well together. Orange is used to contrast and call out important info such as the time the meal will take to prepare, links to helpful reviews, the ratings and the “subscribe now” button. The text contrasts well and is legible. Certain design elements (ex: the + symbol, dotted line, etc.) are repeated which add to the continuity of the page.
The site uses a four-column grid. When looking at a recipe page, smaller rectangular boxes (ads and links) on the right are repeated in a column taking up a third of the composition. The left side is all of the information about the recipe: the ingredients, recipe, and more. On the left side, there are three columns within the larger column. The info is aligned in those three columns. Placing the most important information at the top of the column and providing larger titles for each section uses hierarchy.
If I could change the site, I would give the type more room to breathe. White space is always good! Some recipe sites look a little crowded, but not all. (ex: epicurious.com) I would remove some of the reviews, showing two and have a link to see more. I’d group together the elements that belong together, such as the time the recipe takes.
The target audience is anyone and everyone who cooks. It seems to be geared more towards amateur chefs, but the site has comments from those with a variety of cooking skills and experience. Also, more women use the site than men.
Allrecipes.com caters to this audience by making it possible to share recipes, tips, and photos of the food that is being talked about. It’s a community of people who share their recipes all over the world. The recipes are very customizable; you can edit and save the ingredients list, change the amount of servings needed for your specific meal, etc. The design includes a navigation bar that let’s you plan out meals for the week, create a shopping list or take a look at your recipe box. (This requires you to sign up, but is free) It is very interactive, the way that preparing a meal is. Features like being able to print the recipe or create and print a shopping list really help to make it easy to handle. Users are able to rate recipes and tell how the meal turned out after they’ve successfully (or unsuccessfully) produced the dish. This site is successful in getting the recipes and information to the users.
Intro to Web Design 