Contemporary web design hits the Chase Park Plaza
May 12, 2009
Chase Park Plaza hotel home page
Nowadays, it seems like many interactive firms are hell-bent on cramming as many unnecessary flash elements, patterns, gradients, menus, and graphics as they can possibly manage on one page. So, that is why it is refreshing to see what has been done with the website of Saint Louis’s Chase Park Plaza. Below you will find my simple and straight-forward critique of the site.
To begin, I really dig the center-aligned header, footer, and body elements. This type of layout seems to make more sense since this hotel has a more traditional branding. The header is aesthetically pleasing, but it could be slightly larger for purposes of legibility. I am happy to see that the developers have dedicated the top half of the pages to images and videos, while the bottom half of each page is left for copy and form content. This was a great decision considering that it provides the viewer with consistency.
On this website, the background is a very intricate pattern made with the Chase Park’s logo icon. Although, this pattern is detailed it is not very distracting, and does not seem to prevent the viewer from focusing on the site content. The thin borders around the content holders are perfect since, again, the hotel’s branding is more traditional.
A web site’s color palette is very important considering that it ties in with the company’s brand. I’m not really sure if “blue” is the official hue of the Chase Park Plaza, but it seems to do well on the site. The royal blue is very masculine, which seems to contrast with the feminine elegance of other page elements. Although, it’s nice to see the high contrast between the background and the content holders. This makes the content highly visible to the viewer.
Now, as far as usability goes, I feel that the site’s developers did a good job. The main navigation below the border acts like a set of three quick-links for the hotel’s most important services. Below that is another set of links which are centered around the hotel and its facilities. Unfortunately, this secondary navigation doesn’t really stand out, and the size of the text is difficult to read. The links in the footer of the pages are pretty typical of a hotel website. Personally, I’d like to see the “site map” link be done away with all-together.
So, that’s my quick critique of the Chase Park Plaza’s current website. Overall, I think the designers and developers did a great job. Hotel websites typically have a lot of content, and it’s nice to see that it really is possible to organize all of it intuitively. This website will definately be my first point of contact if I ever choose to stay there.
