Peer Review #3
My final peer review is for Alice’s website ‘Paiks Pets’.
To start my review I want to focus briefly on the aesthetics and design of her website. The bright and playful colours are very suitable for the playful nature of the blog’s subject. The white, mint and yellow theme seems suitable and is reminiscent of the colour schemes of dog toys. The little logo at the top of the site absolutely lends itself to making that theme more plentiful. However, I almost feel that the typography choices take away from this. The default Arial-like choice for most of the body text feels a little too plain. Maybe if the fonts for titles and categories were perhaps more playful or decorative, the plainness of the body text would not be as evident. I feel like with such a cute and bubbly concept and colour scheme, more suitable font choices could make the blog feel more alive.
I do have a few minimal concerns about navigation. Simply clicking on any of the tabs without the subtabs means you are left with an error. And the PUB101 button is empty except for the essay. A little more attention to detail in categorising would serve her well. And naming the categories with ‘Category:’ makes it seem a tad bit less professional. In addition there are two home buttons, the logo and the paik pet menu button. I feel this is a little bit redundant. The paik pet button doesn’t need to exist.
Otherwise Alice’s content is stellar. You can very much feel her love of dogs and her own dog Mint and the affection that goes into her posts. One small suggestion would be to put featured images where you scroll through the category, especially with the daily life with Mint. I find that the addition of images makes longer pages easier on the eyes. Perhaps also introducing social media accounts of ‘dog of the week’ would also add to her content.
Lastly, in relation to searchability and marketability, I feel that Alice has a good start. The subjects of her posts are of clear interest to her audience, which she state right on the homepage as ‘For all the Dog person in the world’. I think the very clear audience will help her. I do believe little details (such as things I mentioned above) and stuff like establishing a more professional email contact to display on the site will add to her site’s credibility. As covered in class, trust and credibility are essential to the standing and marketability of a brand. I also found that the aesthetic rounded menu bar falls apart in smaller window sizes, and inevitably makes the site navigation clunkier on mobile.
Though there are some areas where Alice could make some improvements, her blog is full of personality and a pleasure to peruse!
