Evaluation and Analysis
Huffman Trucking provides truckload shipping services and caters mainly to the government and manufacturing sectors. Their services are used primarily for the delivery of automotive parts to manufacturers, as well as the delivery of raw materials such as polymers to plastic product manufacturers. In addition, Huffman Trucking caters to clients who require special accommodations, such as the delivery of munitions, computers, wines, and others.
The Huffman Trucking website provides the organization with an online presence, so that both old and new customers can easily find information about the company and the services they offer.
The website provides existing and potential customers information about the company, including a brief historical background, its mission/vision statement, a contact form, a description of its customers, the location of its operations, and the number of employees and equipment available to provide services. It also allows customers to maintain a user account and track the status of their shipments. In addition, it provides a page for those who might be seeking employment with Huffman Trucking.
Analysis of the Huffman Trucking Website
The headings are quite legible and the buttons easily get the user’s attention. However, the colors of the heading fonts and buttons do not contrast with the background color, which prevents them from further standing out. They remain readily visible, though, whether viewing the web page with an 800x600 or a 1600x900 screen resolution. Horizontal or vertical scrolling will not be necessary.
There are headings on top of the navigation bar for each of the organization’s hub. However, they are not linked. It would be better for each of them to be linked to a separate page for each hub; otherwise, it would be best to just remove them as this information is also provided on the Facts page. However, without separate web pages for each office site, the office site listing on the Facts page should include the address or contact number for each site.
It would be better to combine the contents of the Our Company and Facts pages into one page that users can access by clicking the Our Company heading. In addition, the Facts heading is not very descriptive and is quite confusing. As well, it’s confusing that there’s a heading labeled Your Account and yet there’s no heading or link for registering or signing up.
Every page is properly highlighted, with the page headings or titles prominently displayed at the top and center of each page. The navigation button that the user clicked is also highlighted by the orange dot that displays on the button. However, although a larger font is used for the page titles, they can be made even more distinct by using a different font from the page’s content and by making the change in the button’s appearance more distinct. A different color for the page’s title can also be used.
Although photos are used on almost every page, they are too small and leave a lot of white space around the page. They also look quite “generic” in that they don’t really speak of the company. It would be best to use images that relate directly to company, such as the photos of their offices, equipment, or personnel. In addition, the company logo on the upper left corner of the page is too small and the company name can hardly be read. In general, it would be best to add more graphical elements – such as icons, maps, drop-down menus and others -- on the pages to make them more appealing to users and to easily get their attention. As well, their colors should be in contrast to the site’s main theme to make them stand out.
There is no sufficient content on the site, as most of the pages are blank. In this case, the fonts can be made larger to fill up the page and to make the text more readable. In addition, the headings and subheadings on the pages should be made distinct from the rest of the content by using different font types, font sizes, or font colors. There should also be spaces in between lines of text to add further to their readability.
The site currently has different orientations with the alignment of the text. On some pages, they are left-aligned, center on some, and right-aligned on others. It would be best to use a left alignment for pages with much content and a center alignment for pages with little content. This way, users can easily find the information they need.
In the same manner, the text box labels are very far from the text boxes, which make it hard for users to easily understand what the text box is for. The labels should then be placed right before the text boxes, so that users can easily make the association.
Moreover, the Our Company page should provide more information than the company’s mission/vision statement. For example, how the company plans to fulfill its mission/vision. It should also include information about the services they offer, as this information is currently not available on the site. Also, the information on the company’s history should be integrated with the Our Company information either through a link or by adding the information on the same page. In turn, the Home page should display more catchy information – such as what the company can do for the user or what users can find on the site – in order to entice users to explore the site.
Finally, although the page layout and the site’s theme and color are consistent throughout the pages, there isn’t enough contrast, which makes it difficult to distinguish the different elements of the page. It also makes the site look boring, which may make users easily lose interest on the site.
