Kudler Fine Foods Website

Kudler Fine Foods Website

In 1998, Kathy Kudler had a vision to create a one - stop shopping experience for fans of gourmet cooking. Kudler Fine Foods Inc. has three stores. These stores stock fresh ingredients, baked goods, quality meats and seafood as well as gourmet tools. Kudler Fine Foods believes that customer satisfaction is one of the key focuses of the business. The company wants to further target the high - income customers because price is not a disincentive to shop at the gourmet grocer. This target group wants quality, yet unique items. Kudler Fine Foods has created a website for customers to obtain additional information on grocery items. In this paper, Team A will evaluate the e Kudler website and propose some recommended website improvements.

The Internet was become a place for companies to promote and sell their products and services to a larger audience than traditional advertisement. Kudler Fine Foods is no exception. Kudler has developed a website to inform new and current customers about Kudler products. Because there are other companies on the Internet that sell products similar to Kudler, Kudler's website must use graphics to set Kudler, aesthetically apart from the company's competitors. Team A will address design for the Kudler website, specifically:

* the style and artistic quality used on the website;

* the navigation of the site;

* the over-all performance of the site;

* the marketing strategy;

* e-commerce capabilities; and

* the web community as a whole..

Aesthetics and Layout

The Kudler Fine Foods Store is a grocery store that thrives on their gourmet-style foods and this is shown in the photos that are on the website. The Kudler Fine Foods website uses very few graphics other than the main logo and some cycling food pictures and Team A has determined the website as a whole could use more pictures of the elegant, gourmet food displays. The text is plain and should be more elegant, yet readable. The font selection should be more appealing to the eye to draw more interest to customers browsing the site.

Websites, without the use of various graphics, are very dull. Graphics reinforce the brand concept to customers. If Kudler Fine Foods is looking to create a certain perception of the company via the website, the graphics are the key ingredient to accomplishing that. The graphics and font need to portray the business objectives of Kudler Fine Foods.

Typically .jpeg and .gif are the file formats to use for images placed on the web. A common mistake used by amateur web designers is the size of the image. If the graphic file is too large, the website will take along time to load. A slow-loading website is a quick way for a consumer to give up and move on to the next related website. WEBSITE SOURCE states "While inserting graphics to your website, make sure that you are not inserting huge image file, since the larger the image, the longer it takes to load the page. And the longer it takes to load the page, the more likely your visitor will go somewhere else" (2007).

As previously mentioned, the Kudler Fine Foods website is very basic and unimaginative, resulting in a lack-luster website visit. However, though the website is lifeless, the simplistic table layout allows for easy navigation and high performance.

The Kudler website uses a basic table format with the home and department links across the top and the location links and hours listing along the left side. This layout allows for easy navigation because the link placement does not change only the body of the table changes depending on the link that is selected. Another benefit of using this table format with stationary links is that the users cannot get lost on the site. Users can easily explore all the links on the website and return to the homepage with ease. In addition to the ease of navigation, the Kudler website also exhibits high performance with low response and load times. This benefit is also attributable to the table layout used by Kudler Fine Foods.

Style and Artistic Quality

While a website is used as a communication or promotional tool, the site should have some level of style and artistic quality. When designing a website, web designers must keep typography in mind, which is the selection of fonts and typeface for a design project. According to Sklar (2003), web designers should always use such design principles as:

* Choose fewer fonts and sizes

* Use available fonts

* Design for legibility

* Avoid using text as graphics (pg. 166)

Some other design elements include:

* Aligning text and image

* White space around images

* The use of appropriate background colors.

These principles and elements help to make a website attractive and easy to use.

Kudler Fine Foods website employs many of the design principles. The graphics on each page of the website is placed in the same location with ample "white" space surrounding each graphic. The white space separates the image from the text and gives the reader an uncluttered view of the page, which adds to the readability factor, the alignment of text and images. In addition, the Kudler website uses few fonts and font sizes. The fonts and sizes are consistent in each section. The font selections also contribute to the readability of the text.

The background colors, rose pink and black, give the website a neat look, but the color scheme lacks the sleek and sophistication the website needs to attract customers. The colors are used appropriately allowing easy reading. The graphics aid in enhancing the background colors. The graphics are not transparent, which are very effective since the images are digital still photographs. The images used also enhance Kudler gourmet and high-end image.

The Kudler Fine Foods website is in need of some basic design improvements. The overall consensus is that the Kudler website is dull and lacks visual appeal for customers. A website with the purpose to attract customers should have more flare and focus. The text is simple, not very detailed and the colors are dull. The site is offset to the right and in some browsers or viewing aspects the text could fall off the screen.

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