Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Desert Ridge Marketplace, one stop shop destination


Navigating the internet is one of the most common practices of today's society. The instant gratification that internet provides keeps everyone satisfied and allows merchandise to be displayed with ease. A good website must serve its function, provide a pleasing time and easy to navigate.  Yet there are some websites that display completely useless information and their key terms have no relevance to the websites audience. The creative and unique visual effects interest the user and grab their attention to further explore the website. Once the attention is grasped how easily the site is navigated is a factor that will determine if they stay or leave the webpage. All of these keys to a website are vital to market their product. An effective website attracts hundreds of users daily and allows them to have a comforting experience navigating their site. Efficient websites load relatively fast, have quick, easy to find information and allows for the user to productively interact with it. The Desert Ridge Marketplace website is customer appealing and completely effective because of its appealing visual effects, useful content, ease of use and efficiency of absorbing their audience.

            Visual effects are generally the most important factor to a 2.0 website. Just after the webpage opens the hovering over tabs and the way the pictures transition throughout its use immediately catch the user’s attention. With respect to the main audience the coloration and placement of certain color matters. The desert ridge web page has a great balanced of earth toned colors and pictures which relax and bring comfort to the many users. These certain attributes trigger a gut reaction. This gut reaction sparks the user’s curiosity into further exploring the webpage. The Desert Ridge Marketplace website provides the perfect color coordination and photo effects for their audience, with appealing photo transitions and clear HD photos. A darker cool shade of teal and an off neutral gray color invites people of all ages to view the page. All of the photos are of the actual marketplace providing ideas of what the experience is actually going to be like. Sort of like providing a virtual tour of the marketplace beforehand and anyone could easily print off a map of the directory or download a mobile copy to a smartphone. The photos change with respect to the topic of the website and every single photo is a link which takes you to the topic the picture is describing. Every feature of visual effect with this website is completely effective and useful. There isn't a wasted moment when using the this website.

Desert ridge’s ease of use is so amazing and easy to navigate freely throughout website without hassle, pop ups and limited ads. To locate specific information the website must have some sort of search function and menus. Desert ridge give search tools for stores and various drop down menus with useful information in big bold and highlighted letter for a clearer image. Hovering over main sections drops brings down the many subheadings to choose from allowing for fine surfing. For instance if I were to click on the shop tab it would contain all of the sections related to buying things would show up along with what stores are there. They have a virtual tour of the marketplace with interactive maps which are very convenient for tourist. They can preview the place before arriving to get a better understanding of where to go and what to expect. The interactive maps are very smooth and their flow makes it even easier to use and keep the user constantly impressed. Many websites have many daily visitors causing the server to overload and slow down to the websites speed. But with desert ridge’s web page there has yet to be a problem, the tours and maps pop up quickly. The store hours, and location are clearly posted off to the sides which is one main reason why so many customers visit the store websites. The website really targets main reasons why someone would visit their website. For every section they contain address, hours, brief history of stores and merchandise offered. They even host events and have a specific section for promotions and special offers. Even if after you can’t navigate through the already easy to use they have contact information where you can get guided assistance or even set up a gig. The website and marketplace even allow people to open up a rewards card. Characteristics such as these are what make an efficient and memorable website.
Most websites similar to desert ridge marketplace may not have a mobile website and if that’s the case the webpage usually runs slower on a mobile device. But with desert ridge marketplace, the web pages still load as quick as a desktop and no functions are restricted for mobile devices like many other sites tend to do. 
Just like any other well-made site desert ridge marketplace is integrated with social networks such as twitter Facebook and foursquare. This allows for another alternative way to stay updated with the marketplace. You can receive event notifications, special offers and any relevant information of importance. A few problems arise when with these social networks, very few users even link up their social networking accounts to the website because they’re simply too busy or it doesn't catch the audiences attention. On the desert ridge webpage this is clearly evident; the three social icons just hover over the top right corner not really catching anyone’s eye.
But as expected no one site it perfect every page has a few areas that could improve. The desert ridge web page doesn't have a search bar for key terms and tag which could make the site even easier to navigate. The website contains many great qualities but even those could be improved. The font size if good for its function but could use a darker coloring for headers. The light green and purple coloring takes away the reader’s attention and is often difficult to read especially for older adults with eye sight problems. Compared to similar websites they do not come close to what desert ridge marketplace has to offer, the neutral coloring scheme, balanced amount of text and pictures and the efficiency of the website make it stand out above the rest.
  Its serves its purpose very well, it allows for quick access to specific mall stores, events, dining, etc… the websites usability is very user friendly and even the smallest of children would be able to navigate through them. The website is pretty self-explanatory and even has a custom search function for the available stores within the marketplace. The virtual tours and interactive maps also speak to you allowing for a better understanding of the actual place itself. The maps provide a fairly good understanding of the size of the walkway and stores themselves. Right off the back all aspects of the page are caught by the eye the main sections clearly in bold heavy fonts giving the user a faster and more accurate way of browsing the website. The limited to no ads on every page is also a plus because it doesn't distract the user and lets them get back to their original purpose.

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