The Coffee Rush

            Everyone enjoys sitting on a patio enjoying their favorite coffee themed drink, soaking in the atmosphere and letting your worries wander away. Every favorite drink comes from a customer’s favorite café, each having their little differences but all amounting to the same thing; a place to get coffee. Every café needs a good website to display their menu and locations, and to provide picture examples of their café and products. A website is a way for a business to spread the word about itself, however whether it is a good word or a bad one depends on how well made the website is. A good website needs clean, tight font; obvious and well interfaced menus; and last but not least, an appropriate color scheme. These three things are what it takes to make a user-friendly, positively promoting website. Coffee Rush is a café like any other, however it is there excellently executed website design, which meets these three criteria, and the extra mile they went with uniqueness that puts their cafés website over the top.

            The home screen is simple. Start with a few menu options on the left, and a nice background picture depicting one of the various locations across the state, changing at a random interval. The font used is Times New Roman, which makes for a very general, but clean cut display. For their font color they chose white, upon a gray and black background. The white color stands out and makes the words very easy to read. The font size of each menu option is the same, and all are centered within their button. The home page also displays the company’s name and logo, along with their mission statement. The entire website has a veil of black shadowing; however when you choose an item to view it, or a menu option, anything you are currently selecting is clear. This allows for minimal distractions when you wish to focus on one particular thing, while also giving the entire site very medium vibe. The homepage, with its well laid out menu and inviting photos will make you want to check out the rest of the site.

            The first option you have to choose on the left is Hours and Locations. This button brings up a page showing the three available locations across the state and also the business hours. The locations addresses are coupled with an embedded Google maps location, allowing you to trace the exact route needed to find the café closest to you. To embed active Google maps files requires a greater knowledge of HTML coding, and a lot of times will result in slow or bugged files. Coffee Rush has zero problems with their maps, and they all work smooth and fast, showing that the company put time and effort into creating a good website.

            The next option on the menu is the café Menu. This page has a list of eight favorites, each with color themed font and a picture of the item. The font styles and color choices make for easy reading while also being eye catching. Also on this page are three images of their actual full menu, all three of which can be clicked on to enlarge.  The font style for the menu is a little less formal; however it remains clear and easy to read with the help of yellow and white lettering on a black background. The next page, Deals, offers five unique deals or special offers one may take advantage of. This page uses the same coloring and font style as the menu and a picture depicting each offer. The coloring, style, and layout of the font for the entire site make it easy to read, and offers a degree of visual pleasure lacking in other contenders.

            The final pages of the site are the Gallery; showing pictures of customers, workers, and scenery alike; the Jobs; allowing for a download of Coffee Rush’s employment application in PDF format; and Contact Us; allowing a site visitor to write and address an email to Coffee Rush right there in the browser. The Gallery is done very well, allowing for each image to be enlarged viewing it at greater detail, while not resulting in a resolution loss. Also, the page allows you to specify which location the pictures you see come from, offering a method to see what your specific café will look like. In these last pages, and overall the sites color scheme would be gray, with mixes of brown, yellow, white, and black. These colors offer a mild theme while also drawing focus to key points of information with usage of white or yellow lettering.

            Coffee Rush is a unique coffee destination and it goes over the top due to its website delivering easy to read font, an appropriate color scheme, and a well-organized and working interface. Unlike other café’s websites, Coffee Rush’s helps to show that they put time and effort into their company and products, promoting positive customer feedback and higher return visits. A well-made website can be the tool that determines your business’s success or failure, and Coffee Rush came out on top.    

By Steven Garner
     Elyssar Medawar