Saveur Site Critique

Lifesyle Magazine Saveur Uses Website To Appeal To Wider Audience

Using striking photography, design, and captivating prose, the new site is not without flaws

Purpose of Site: Saveur Tagline: Devoted to the culinary arts, this magazine tells the story of food. 

Saveur is a lifestyle magazine and website featuring gourmet food, wine and travel. It features articles and recipes about travel and international fare, domestic wines, a how-to section, kitchen tools and design as well as a marketplace, member services and subscriptions and forums. The primary audience appears to be people that enjoy gourmet food, wine and travel and catering to people with a more affluent lifestyle and discernable palate. A secondary audience could perhaps be people looking for new recipes to try, novice gourmets looking to spice up their culinary hobby. The Marketplace section allows culinary businesses to advertise in various categories making it easy for the readers of the magazine site to buy the products discussed in the articles. The web version of the printed magazine allows for interaction between the readers of the magazine and the users of the site (as well as non-readers of the magazine to become familiar with the site/magazine).


Site Organization + Navigation
The site is organized by its use of tabbed navigation as seen in the screen capture below. Each tabbed section has a coordinating dropdown menu. A link back to the homepage appears throughout the site in the form of the Saveur logo at the top left of the site.

This style of navigation serves its users well in that each area of interest is clearly indicated. However, some improvements could make organization and navigation more effective. The link back to the homepage is only indicated by hovering over the area and the cursor changes from the point cursor to the click cursor. Otherwise, the user really has no indication that the Saveur logo serves as a link to the homepage. A possible solution could be the addition of some text that indicates the homepage link, like a hover-tip that appears when the users cursor passes over the area. Another issue with the navigation area is the very large and intrusive ad-space that appears to the right of the Saveur logo, right above the navigation bar. While the need to advertise on the site is understood, perhaps there is a better place than the navigation area for advertisements.

A major issue throughout this site is redundancy. While there are distinct subject areas within the navigation bar, the information pertaining to the specific topics are not necessarily contained exclusively within that subject area. Within the navigation (see above image) there is a Member tab and right below is the Member Login, this seems redundant. It seems that one of them could serve the purpose of both of these areas. Promotions and Contests seem to be intertwined, yet are shown in navigation as two distinct areas. Shown below, I clicked on Promotions, yet the Contest tab is highlighted. Within the Promotions page Saveur Contests appears even though there is a Contest tab. Again, this seems redundant and misleading.

The Marketplace is promoted throughout the site. The image below appears within each main section in navigation, including the Marketplace section. By keeping the Marketplace information within its own section, this redundancy could be avoided.

Perhaps a better use of space and navigation could be to re-organize the site so that the relevant information is contained within the designated subject areas as noted in the navigation bar.

Another organization and navigation issue is within the Travel section. In the navigation bar the Travel tab does not have a dropdown menu, but within the Travel section there are four distinct areas to explore. If I click on one of the regions, there is no other way to get to the other regions except to go back in the browser. The Travel section of the navigation bar could use a dropdown menu that has each region accounted for.

Usability Consideration for the usability of the site is seen in the navigation. The idea behind the organization and navigation of the site is a good one, with tabbed subject areas and highlighted tabs as indicators, combined make the site more usable. However, the organization and navigation is flawed in some ways as indicated above. Saveur is very dedicated to its members and makes it easy for users to become members with free registration; and registration is not contingent on being a subscriber to the magazine.

There are actually three distinct areas for members to convene, two in the navigation bar, Members and Forums, as well as Member Login. To use the Forums, a user must be a registered member of the site, but in order to get that information, a user would have to first go into the Forum area and read the FAQ. Perhaps a better way to organize the member services for better usability would be to use one area, like the Members tab in the navigation bar.

Layouts Saveurs use of striking design and photography serve to create a seemingly tactile environment. The beautifully photographed foods capture the viewers attention as soon as they enter the site:

The first thing the user will notice upon entering the site is the scrolling features (pictured above). The image scrolls automatically or the user can use the buttons to go forward or backward, then click on the image that leads to a gallery feature with links to recipes of the featured images. There is an emotional element throughout this site. People are emotional about food and this site uses the images of food to draw on that emotion.

However, the homepage has a lot going on:

There is so much on the homepage that it could be overwhelming and cluttered in appearance and requires a lot of scrolling. A lot of the information on the homepage (recipes, technique, etc) can also be found within the navigation bar. Eliminating repetition of information could reduce the current clutter on the site. Below is another example of this repetition and clutter: the left image shows a menu located in the top portion of the homepage, the bottom image is located near the bottom of the homepage. Featured and Most Popular recipes could be relocated to the dropdown menu of the Recipes tabs in the navigation bar.

Similarly, subscription information is located in two different areas on the homepage. The image on the right is located within the right-side navigation on the page while the image on the left is located near the bottom of the homepage. Perhaps a better use of space on the homepage could be achieved by adding a Subscription tab within the navigation bar, again avoiding this redundant use of information.

Finally, this site could use an About section in the navigation. On the bottom of the homepage there is a section that contains a lot of extraneous information that could be relocated to its own section/page within the site. As it stands, it just clutters the homepage.

Tone/Voice/Quality Besides the striking design elements of the site, despite the issues mentioned above, the writing is particularly where Saveur excels in knowing its audience. When I think of Saveur, quality of content tone and voice are appropriate for the intended audience*. Recipe selections utilize detailed lists of ingredient, step-by-step instruction, and pictures of the featured dishes. The Travel section in particular is where the writing on the site really shines – the writing breaks away from a technical style with captivating prose.

Conclusions
Saveur excels in some ways with its navigation, organization and layout and design. There is a clear hierarchy across the top of the page with the utilization of the drop-down navigation bar. The organization of the site is well done as well making it easy for the user to navigate and retrieve the information they are interested in. The layout and design is another strong point on this site reflecting a classic sophistication that represents the target audience; offering striking visuals and photography. Besides offering abundant content online featuring various topics besides cooking and recipes like travel, culture and wine, the site also offers free membership services, creating an interactive experience for the user to save/retrieve recipes and chat with other members. The site is in need of some restructuring in order for this site to achieve its full potential. The good news is that most of the issues noted in this report are not difficult to improve upon. With some time spent dedicated to reorganizing and streamlining the information on the site, the navigation and usability could be greatly improved upon, thus creating the ideal user experience.

*Audience mentioned estimated to be educated and or professional people in their mid-late 20’s and into retirement age interested in gourmet food and travel, and part of the overall lifestyle promoted in the publication and site.