Website Review 3: Progressive Enhancement

The website that I chose to review for week three is digitechwebdesignaustin.com. This website is for a marketing company that specializes in web design. The site itself, although advertising for the marketing company also put out a lot of information regarding web design as well.

1. What is the site name and URL you reviewed?: Digitech Web Design Austin digitechwebdesignaustin.com
2. What are Progressive Enhancements?: Progressive elements are a website design method. In this method it prioritizes the core functionally and content first. Then will gradually incorporate more nice to have features like CSS and JavaScript, that enhance how the site looks and the users experience with it.
3. Why are Progressive Enhancements needed?: Progressive enhancements are needed for a couple different reasons. The first being the improved accessibility. It allows for everybody to be able to access the data of the site regardless if they have outdated browsers or outdated devices in general. It is also beneficial for users with disabilities who may be reliant on screen readers. Second it gives better performance because its designed to be efficient and only loads the additional features if the browser or device allows them, creating a smoother experience. Third they help you in managing and updating your site by creating separation of core content and enhancement. This allows your site to stay up to date and won’t break when new technology comes out or old technology becomes outdated. Fourth it enhances the user experience by creating a positive interaction with your site regardless of how your internet speed is. And lastly it has SEO benefits because it loads quickly and is easy to navigate to get users their content, search engines like Google with prioritize the site. This gives you higher search engine results allowing more people to find your site and engage with it.
4. Does the site's home page validate?: No, it does not and the CSS checker finds errors as well.
5. Find any other page on the site. Does the second page validate?: No, it does not and same thing the CSS checker finds errors as well.
6. Document how many validation errors and/or warnings may exist on each of the two pages you validate.: I get 51 errors on the first page and I get 49 errors on the second page.
7. How would you rate the site's design, on a scale of 1(horrible) to 10 (fantastic)? Why?: I would rate the sites design to be a 10. It was very visually appealing and even with all of the content I still felt it was easy to navigate and keep me engaged. There seemed to be some new visual element that I didn’t notice before as I went through some of the pages. The one weird part was every page had a loading screen before it. That was cool to look at having never been to the site before but, I think it could get old to someone who might use the site often.
8. How would you rate the site's usability on a scale of 1 (horrible) to 10 (fantastic)? Why?: I would give the site a 9. I felt that it was very easy to get around and use. It has a ton of content, yet it all felt broken down and not overwhelming. It was nice that everything had its own section and the bold headers making it easy to know when that section was done. Plus it gave multiple menus to use for navigation to get around.
9. Does the site meet its purpose?: Yes, I would say that it meets its purpose. They had lots of information, but it was broken down to be clear and concise. With how visually engaging it was, I would go back to it as a reference.