I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with interactive websites, especially those that represent a design or marketing agency. There are some that I love and some that I desperately want to love, but can’t, only because they are entirely too cumbersome, are slow to load or are so intricately designed that I sometimes can’t even tell what service or company the website is promoting. A few sites that I’ve found that strongly support my point:
Turbo Chef [LOVE it!]
While I’m fully aware this is a website for an oven, not only does the site offer an extremely fun user experience, but it’s highly effective, since I personally want to run out and buy this oven right now. This is an interactive site that does what any good interactive site does: showcases a product beautifully, features lovely sound effects in all the right places and offers catchy phrasing throughout. Overall, it’s super interesting, operates flawlessly (barely a hiccup in streamlined load times) and it makes very clear what the focus of the site is. Additionally, it gives me the option to “skip” through the site, meaning, if I don’t want to wait through the intro, I don’t have to. I love a website that respects my time. You absolutely must check it out, and while you’re at it, go ahead and have the chef whip you up some apple cranberry pie. You’ll see what I mean.
AgencyNet [LIKE IT a lot...]
AgencyNet.com is a wonderland. The awe-inspiring graphics, attention to detail and the ability the user has to navigate through the “office building” to find particular pieces of the website (portfolio, capabilities, etc.) will have you playing around with their site for a good 15 minutes. Even load times are quick and the site itself is gorgeous, but it does leave a few things to be desired. For one, the navigation is a little bit hard to get the hang of. I’m not saying it took me 10 minutes to figure it out, but it just wasn’t as intuitive as I’d like to see on a site for an agency. However, what it lacks in intuition it makes up for in ingenuity: at one place on the site, the user is asked if they would like to “fly the remote helicopter” making it’s way through the cubicles. Once clicked on, a pop up invitation appears offering to allow the user to access the remote helicopter through their mobile device using a randomly generated code and an external link. That’s crazy, but crazy-good! Overall, the site is brilliant, albeit a little convoluted.
Homeostatic [Not so much.]
Ok, let me first say that I think this interactive site for Homeostatic (an agency, from what I gather) has loads of potential and it’s obvious there are some great minds developing over there. BUT, I really could not gather what this site was, who the site was for, what they offered, if they offered anything, or any of the pertinent details you’d expect to see on an interactive agency’s website. It’s almost as though they got SO caught up in the world they were creating that they forgot there would be outside users looking for an experience and most importantly, information about the company. Interactive sites are a dangerous game (case in point) because there is a very fine line between “Oh man, this site rocks and this company obviously knows what they’re doing!” and “Is this a video game or a website? Is there an instruction manual? I just need their fax number!” IMHO, this site is a FAIL. Too heavy on the fantasy, not enough meat and potatoes to make it entertaining AND an effective source of info.
Feel free to comment to let us know what fabulous interactive sites you come across!
