About Nabisco.com topThe purpose of the Nabisco web site is to entertain people. They do this through games, promotions and contests, and educate about Nabisco products and services. People can find screen savers, games, mini-movies, Frequently Asked Questions and much more when visiting Nabisco.com. The audience ranges from younger children who would be attracted to the games and movies, to adults who would want to search the recipes. Animation and Typography topI found Nabisco uses animation sparingly, but does make use of graphics. Almost every page has a rather large cartoon image at the bottom of the page, which gives the site a relaxed, yet professional look. Some pages had a combination of pale, soft colors, while other pages were filled with autumn colors. Nabisco.com had an overall soft, comforting look. Although I would have liked to see some more exciting typography, I can understand why Nabisco.com may have chosen what looks like Times New Roman font. This typography is a common font which most computers support. If Nabisco.com had chosen a rarely used, more exciting font, it may not be viewed the way it is meant. The rare font would become a browser's default font. The simple typography does not distract the viewer from what the web site has to offer. Frames topWhen visiting Nabisco.com, you first come across a page with four frames and many graphics, but it does load quickly. Four frames make the page cluttered and a bit confusing. The top left frame has a few different things going on. It seems as though there was a bluish color scheme for three of the buttons, but then a purple and yellow were thrown in. Nabisco should have stayed with the bluish color scheme for the two remaining buttons. When moving the mouse over the buttons, red triangles appear. A Nabisco logo takes you back to the home page. This should be at the top of the frame, rather than in the middle. "Search Nabisco" and "Contact Us" buttons are bigger than everything else, which seems odd. I’m not sure why Nabisco did not make those two buttons the same as the others in the frame. I would have made them the same to keep consistency in the frame. Those two buttons just do not seem to fit with the rest of the frame. The frame in the lower left corner adds to the clutter of the
page. It is a list of links to other Nabisco product sites. The bottom frame is simple and does not disrupt the flow of the page by being on the bottom. The only problem I had with this frame was some of the ads. On two different occasions, the banner advertisements could not be found, and an error message appeared. I do like having the advertisements at the bottom rather than smaller windows popping up on the screen. The main frame is basically a large image map to areas within the web site. The background blue complements the colors in the image. Each building links to a different area on the site: Arcade, Cinema, Promos, Town Hall, Nabisco Recipes, Nabisco Store, Museum, Health Club and School. The cute design is setup like an actual street. By clicking on "uptown" you see the buildings on the left. By clicking on "downtown" you see the buildings on the right. There is also text at the bottom to navigate throughout the site if you do not want to use the image. Surfing the site topA couple of links within the image not easily found. Where the skiers are in the top left of the image, you can find a link there to the Nabisco Gold Championship. Unlike the buildings, you would not realize a link is in that location. It would be a good idea to have something in that place, rather than the skiers which blend into the image. Speaking of the skiers, depending on what time you visit the web site, the sky is blue for the day and black for the evening. That is not something I expected to happen, and it pleasantly surprised me. The "What’s New" section of the site deals with
announcements about Nabisco, separated by date. With the frames and a back button, it is
easy to get back to the home page. The "Town Hall" section of the web site offers directions to Nabisco Headquarters’ locations, job opportunities and financial reports. It was easy to get back to the home page via the back button and the frames. The "Privacy & Parents" section gave all the information about prizes, polls, surveys and links to other web sites. They want to create a safe place on the web for children, and this page acts as a disclaimer. Among the other pages on this site are the following: legal page, health club, school, guestbook, search and contact us. Navigation and Colors topI had some problems getting to the "Recipes" section of the web site. The button in the upper left frame gave me errors rather than taking me to the page. When I tried accessing it through the image on the home page, it opened immediately, but in the same window. There were so many great recipes to look at, I got lost, and there was no easy way to return to where I had come from. The "Arcade" section is fun for kids. The bluish background, with yellow and green words, are colors children like. The yellow and green text are a good contrast to the bluish background. This makes the text easy to read without straining your eyes. There are links to games and other web sites that have lot of games on them. The "Cinema" section is easy to read with the yellow,
red and white text on The "Promos" section offers coupons and sweepstakes. It’s simple, but gets the information across with the gray background and black letters. The black letters against the gray background provide an easy-to-read page. There is a very strong contrast between the black and gray. Although easy to read, the gray and black leave this page unexciting and slightly dreary. I would suggest some more upbeat colors, such as red, yellow or white. The "Nabisco Store" offers an online catalog, which is closed temporarily. It has a very professional "under construction" page which would make me want to come back when it’s up and running. The only problem with the page is that the back button does not take me anywhere. It sticks me on the same page. Nabisco.com's audience topDifferent areas of Nabisco.com appeal to different people. The games and mini-movies will
appeal to children, while the recipes will appeal to people who like to cook. The online
catalog, once working again, will appeal to people who like shopping on the Internet or
people who like collecting things. There are also people who are crazy about Nabisco and
want to know all the Success topNabisco.com is a success in my opinion because I never wanted to leave the web site. It dragged me in and trapped me there because I wanted to find out the nutty facts and history of Nabisco. The web site even reached the kid in me, and I wanted to play the games. I could not wait to search every inch of this site and I can not wait to go back and visit it again. To me, success of a web site is when people enjoy being at the web site and want to go back. There are some areas of Nabisco.com that could use improvement and I have noted those areas below. Areas for improvement top
To improve the web site, Nabisco could eliminate the number of frames on the home page. This would also eliminate some of the clutter on the page. Nabisco should also make sure when linking outside of the web site to have the web pages open in a new window. This will allow people to easily close that window when they are done and return to Nabisco.com. Also, nowhere did I see a "last updated" date or signature on each page. This should at least be on the home page, if not on every page throughout the web site.
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This site maintained by Stacey Hart. Last updated 5/5/00. |
