Best Web Design

EightHourDay takes the winning place in Best Minneapolis Web Design by providing the user with a beautiful presentation in a wonderful newspaper-like layout. All current information is within the first page in a great hierarchy. They have paid lots of attention to detail.

Typographical treatments follow all standards for web. This site degrades beautifully. A fantastic example of what can be done with an open source content management system. EightHourDay’s 404 page is useful, although it could be more descriptive. The website’s overall usability is good, however the semantic HTML hierarchy could be improved. Navigation can be slightly confusing as it changes from place to place, however it is intuitive.

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Azul 7 shows us good use of a grid layout with work that is laid out well with straightforward information. This website has great navigation. The images provided are large enough to be readable.

The Contact Form is laid out well and it clearly indicates which fields are required. This site has good semantic hierarchy, however there are errors in the validation. Azul 7’s logo should be placed in the H1 tag. The site does not have a 404 page. Some other areas for improvement would be to have more descriptive text for the alt tags on some of the images and to not take the user away from the active page when using the Contact link.

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Catalyst Studios website’s quick transitions get the user to where they want without waiting. They are using Flash as it was intended to be used. The site is fun and very interactive.

With Javascript turned off, the site’s information is still accessible. The site validates fully. The 404 page information is useful with a site map. We found that the scrolling wheel did not work in certain areas and that the Contact page takes the user away from where they were. Some images could be shown in the non-Flash version to aide the site user.

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Larsen’s grid-based layout provides a great presentation of products and images, filterable by the user. This site has a great information hierarchy. The site works well without Javascript.

The 404 page is present, but not as intuitive as it could be. We found that on sub-pages, the 404 error messaging was not displayed properly. The Contact form takes the user to a new page, but the form is laid out well and it is clear that is required. We found readability issues with the default display font size.

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Modern Climate opens with very clean navigation. It is non-traditional, however it is very intuitive. The site provides a great use of color and size to present information.

The site has good typography. The Work Area is laid out well, however the images could be bigger when the document is expanded. The site could use a contact form and it is missing a 404 page. The navigation takes a bit of getting used to (the navigation re-orders itself), however once the user realizes what it is doing the navigation makes sense.

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