Week 5 - National Ice Cream Cake Day - UX Observation Post

Did you know that today is National Ice Cream Cake Day?! No, well, you aren't alone. I had no idea that this was a thing. In honor of this delicious observation, I used the search term "Ice Cream Cake" to review a few websites for this week's user experience posting. 

As usual, to rate them, I will be using the following key:

0 – This is not a usability problem

1 – Cosmetic problem

2 – minor usability problem

3 – major usability problem

4 – usability catastrophe; imperative to fix

1) https://www.lifeloveandsugar.com/copycat-dairy-queen-ice-cream-cake/ (Rating 1) - The first website is a recipe blog that focuses on desserts. Its aim looks to provide assistance for those who enjoy baking or things that are sweet. I actually like this website. For a food blog (which usually contains a lot of ads), this doesn't have too many obnoxious popups, it's somewhat simplistic and provides options for the audience to learn on various levels. However, with those popups, I still can't give it a perfect score because they do clutter the website.

 

2) https://www.coldstonecreamery.com/index.php (Rating 0) - This website truly made me want Cold Stone as I was on it. The visuals were amazing and there was a consistent theme across all the pages. They have a section for purely ice cream, cakes, drinks, yogurt/sorbet, rewards, gifts, and then community experience. On each of these pages, there are further breakdowns of their products and options to order them. LOVED It! There was also a way to review your gift card balance, reward points, and what they are doing in the community. I will definitely go back to their site. 

3) https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/# (Rating 1) - When I saw the Pioneer Woman come up in my search I was super excited to view her blog. This site belongs to the famous food blogger Ree Drummond who has a show on the Food Network and because of her successful blog and show, now has merchandise in Walmart. I really love her recipes and had visited the site in the past so I was eager to see if it had changed. I remembered the site being really messy and hard to navigate especially with all the content she had (she doesn't just post about food, but also gives life updates also), however, to my surprise, there has been a redesign. A lot of the clutter that was on the website has been reduced, but unfortunately, it is still a little clunky. She has a cute navigation field on the left side complete with a search bar. It easy to click on a section and see the various posts she has related to the topic. When you click on a specific post you are taken to that information and then at the bottom of the page, you are able to see the other articles in the category. So, to me, a much better website than before, but not perfect.

4) https://www.leafly.com/ (Rating 0) - Yikes, you never know what you are going to get back in your search for things on the internet. Instead of me opening up a site about real ice cream cake, the third link in my search brought me to a website for a cannabis product called Ice Cream Cake. To diversify this post, I decided to go ahead and analyze the website anyway especially since that's what my search brought up. This website is super educational. It provides information about various strains of products, allows you to find dispensaries near you, and has news, facts, lab, and doctor information all regarding cannabinoids, and to make it even better, there are no ADs! I know it may seem like I am biased on that topic, but I really believe it can transform your page. I feel like this website is great and provides exactly what someone would need to learn about these different products. Oh, and upon clicking on the link, it did make me verify my age.

5) https://www.subzeroicecream.com/ (Rating 0) - The next site that I navigated to was Sub Zero Ice Cream. This is another chain ice cream company that specializes in creating ice cream as you walk up with the use of Nitrogen. Once again, I have been to one of their establishments (boy, I guess I am an ice cream connoisseur) and I really love their ice cream. This website took a more simplistic approach in comparison to Cold Stone. It did have a menu navigator for the product info, the company's story  (they were featured on the business tv show Shark Tank) and at the very bottom a little blog that shows "fun" articles about ice cream, science, and what they are doing in the community. 

6) https://www.mapquest.com/ (Rating 2) - Poor mapquest, they never had a chance with Google around. Somehow this came up because I guess it was trying to find the nearest ice cream cake to me. While I did navigate via the link, I moved away to the main mapquest landing page to analyze it. The website is simplistic in form, offering consumers a way to type in an address and find a location. It does have ads, but it also has some other features for those who don't use GPS on their phones. You can even use the website to look at COVID numbers, book hotels, cars, etc even though it's a little hard to find. Their main website is really this small navigation pane that if you click on a section, will open up a new tab with a full site for the topic, otherwise, if you search an address the map will appear on the right-hand pane.  This website could be optimized to be a little more user-friendly, but overall still not bad.