Web Plan - Competitive Analysis

www.thesubways.net
The official site is obviously going to be my biggest ‘competitor’ so to speak and seemed like a good place to look. The site has recently had a remake so you would expect it to be quite up to date both in it’s information and it’s style.

What really gets my attention about the site straight away is the distinct lack of colour. The background of the web site is pure white with the main body of the text being black. Even the sites header is mainly black and white.

This theme seems to run throughout the whole site with photos on the site being black and white (and even a section devoted to the gallery for black and white photos).

The navigation I find quite interesting. As The and Subways are on two lines there would normally be a lot of negative space left but the navigation actually fits in with the title to take away this fact. I personally think it is quite a clever idea as not only does it use up the negative space but it also reduces the space needed for the navigation, and with 11 links this is quite a good thing. This is of course at the cost of accessibility as the navigation is actually a series of images. Anyone viewing the site in a browser which doesn’t support images would not be able to navigate the site at all.

The site is very simple to use, the navigation is obvious and at the top of the page at all times. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of the site is the fact that there is a ‘live’ page which contains identical information on the home page. For people who immediately look at the navigation however this is probably a good thing.

Overall I think the site is quite plain and in some ways quite boring. The idea of trying to keep the site black and white is effective but it seems like very little has being done with the rest of the site so to fit in with this style.

www.myspace.com/thesubways
The first site I looked at is The Subways ‘official’ web site. Presently this is their MySpace page and so perhaps not as accurate as I would of liked but it is a good place to start non the less.

The first thing I notice about the site is that they have a large image used at the top of their page which pushes the rest of the web site down. Although this is quite an effective picture it seems almost like a ‘splash page’ as it takes up nearly the whole of the screen (and perhaps on smaller screens would do) and forces the user to scroll immediately.

Once scrolled past the large and somewhat pointless picture you see a list of what is coming up on the tour and some songs which you can listen to. The list of songs is very useful as it allows people who may not have heard of the band to listen to them, and the tour list is good for people wishing to find out when they are next playing near them.

After this is a blog section which is really just some news and a bit about the band.

The design of the web site isn’t the best. It is just a plain black background with a slight gradient type edge fading into white. Though the black is effective, as it makes everything else stand out. it is very basic and boring. As well as this there are numerous flash banners throughout the site which can be a bit annoying but at the same time do catch your eye. Perhaps if they were just a little bit smaller they wouldn’t be as bad.

www.the-metropolitans.tk
This site starts off with a very annoying splash page which brings very little (if anything) to the site. Once in the site there is a very crude picture at the top of the page which is very badly compressed and appears to cut off at one side. There is also a pattern on the image which doesn’t match up with the background pattern.

The first thing you really notice however is the navigation at the top of the page. It is clear and is obviously divided from the rest of the content. The worst thing about this navigation is that there is no differentiation in states from the standard link, a hovered link or even a visited link. If there was some differentiation it would improve the navigation even more.

Other than this there is not really that much more to say about this site. The text is centered which makes it difficult to read, some of the images need more spacing around them, some need less, some need a combination of both.

www.the-subways-fans.de
This site is completely different to the other 2 I looked at. There is very little colour on this website (very pale greys and white) where as the previous 2, although still lacking in colour, used very bold, dark colours (blacks and browns) which stood out from the page and the rest of the content.

The second thing I really notice about this site is that there appears to be two parts to the navigation which can confuse the user. Especially when there are 2 links for ‘home’, this just seems pointless too.

I think the fact that the navigation is divided with sub sections is quite a good idea as there is quite a long list of links. By clicking on ‘The Band’ and it then giving you links for the individual band members for example helps reduce the navigational list.

Once more the text is centered which makes it very difficult to read at times, and again some of the images could do with a little more padding added to them.

The final thing I notice about the site is that there is quite a lot of scrolling to be done on some of the pages which could really be shortened or divided up more but this may once again add to the list of links in the navigation.