Sites of the Week 01/05/2023

Welcome to the first site of the week post. I am sure this will evolve over time as we get further into the Built with Bricks journey, but for now, the plan is to feature one or two sites a week and dive into things that we like about it, why we put it on the site in the first place, and then maybe a couple of constructive criticisms.

Built With Bricks
December 4, 2023

Split.io

Initial Thoughts

This site is huge was my first thought! Tons of pages and they use their templating very well from what it looks like. Some very impressive features with some little details that may have gone unnoticed at first glance.

Things I like

  • The line graphic that flows the user down the page. It gives a subtle emphasis to keep reading the pagesplit line
  • The “switch” that is incorporated into the main call to action. Nice effect, playing into their call to actionSplit switch
  • I love the colors. They did a great job of capturing the bright colors that have been the rage in SAAS over the last few years.
  • I love that when you choose a call to action (schedule a demo), they remove the header and footer, leaving the only action for the user is to fill the form out.
  • They have a very well done mega menu as well on the home page. Not many mega menus make sense but in this instance I like it.

Things To Improve

This site is really quite good in my opinion. But the job of the post is to nitpick, and so here are a couple of criticisms:

The main blog card is not properly developed. It contains two links to the same content, which doesn’t make screen readers happy. This is easily fixed by using the clickable parent technique to make the entire card clickable. An alternative would just to only have one link on the entire card. In addition, in the DOM, the header should ideally come first and the taxonomy should be moved using order: -1. Finally, the taxonomy color does not meet accessibility standards for contrast ratio either.

split clickable parent

View the screens

Wayback Burgers

waybackburgers.com homepage

Initial Thoughts

Wayback burgers was definitely one of my favorite initial finds when I started this journey. From the colors to the logo to the graphics, it all just really worked well.

Things I like:

The design/development team really did a nice job on a lot of aspects of this site, and it even got me wishing I was a potential franchisee! Here are just a few of the things that initially impressed me:

  • The process screen. Really well done using the stack of a burger to lay out the franchise process.
  • The subtle scrolling animations are a nice touch and keep up with modern design
  • I love the icons. Really nice job and how they are displayed
  • I like that the offer is minimized rather than going away entirely, so that if I decide I want a free milkshake, I don’t have to go searching for it. “Second chance” at getting a sale.

Possible Improvements

There really isn’t anything major that I would improve from a usability/looks standpoint. The site is clean, modern, with great graphics and text. I didn’t do any accessibility audits or anything, but from a purely visual standpoint, it just works. There is one change I would make:

  • One popup is all that is needed. Immediately upon going on the page, you are greeted with an offer popup as well as a delivery/takeout pop up.
    wayback burger popup

View the screens

Midjourney Experience

screencapture midjourneyexperience 2023 12 01 10 12 44

Initial Thoughts

Honestly, I was just drawn to the strong imagery on my initial visit. I had a list of a couple hundred sites that I had kept in a database, and I distinctly remember thinking this would be a good one to add. It steps out of the normal design realm and really kicks the design up a notch.

Things I Like

  • I like the graphics, and the way they visually move your eyes down the page. You keep wanting to scroll to see more.
  • I like the font choices. It’s a nice mixture, and one that you don’t see that often – it isn’t often that I see Playfair used as a body font, but in this instance, it works, probably because the text and overall website is just so “large”
  • Good color scheme. I like the colors here for sure.

Things to Improve

  • Give us more than one page. The design is so strong, let’s carry it over into more pages.
  • Give a better sneak peek of the newsletter. I didn’t want to share my email address to get the sample newsletter, but if you show me a snapshot of a newsletter (maybe not even a whole newsletter), I may have signed up
  • More information on what the newsletter shows, which kind of goes with the bullet point above.

View the screens

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