Sitecritic.net Website Reviews – You Be The Judge

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The Drug3K logo contains the right concepts – a medicinal symbol, the text of “Drug3K” and a tagline which is acceptable and useful. The logo is OK but is a bit fragmented because the Drug3K text is in black and doesn’t blend in with the blue elements. I also felt that the centre aligned text didn’t look aesthetic and if all the text was left aligned and the “prescription drug information for consumers” was put on one line below the Drug3K text, it would line up to the graphic a bit easier and also look a bit better. Maybe the graphic could contain some black too, in order to combine the colours?

The Drug3K home page looks like a serious and informative page but lacks a bit in corporate colouring. The layout is a two column one, with the left main column containing tabs that link to extensive lists where you can hunt down the drug you are looking for. The right column has a Babel Fish translator, which I thought was a nifty idea. The blue and black colouring on the page loosely matches the logo but the blue is not the same blue and this would need to match to give it a more professional look. The red “visited” link colour would also need to be the same red as the pill image at the top. Try checking out http://www.free-webmaster-tools.com/colorpicker.htm to find web colours to use.

White backgrounds are pretty commonplace on websites and it’s a good idea to put some colour into it. Why not try using the blue colour from the logo as a background colour, while the two columns stay white? This will make it a bit more exciting but keep the readability factor.

I quite liked the Online Drug Encyclopaedia logo and felt that putting yellow into other page design elements could help improve the corporate look also.Overall the layout is very good and works well in conveying a lot of information. The “Large Text” button down the bottom of the page is a great idea – I’d even move this under the Babel Fish so that people can use it straight away.

The design is simple, neat and just needs that extra appeal with colours to make it look more professional and more unique.

Function

There are a lot of links on the Drug3K home page but since the navigational links are in all the usual and correct places I didn’t get lost. All links seemed to work too, as did the search box. The only link that should be removed is the hotspot on the logo on the main page, which links to the main page again (remove this from the home page only).

Coding is html with CSS and some javascript. Some keywords need to be put in to generate more traffic. Loading time is medium to fast, probably due to having a lot of code and text on the pages.

Conclusion

Drug3K is a good concept as it’s based on useful content that is free to access and also has a place for ratings and reviews. The lack of advertising is quite refreshing and the website functions reasonably well. A bit of design work is needed to get the look of it right and some other work might be needed to get the traffic flowing, but Drug3K should prove to be a good site to visit (especially if your chemist prescribes those antibiotics with long names and no description of what they do). A good effort!

fig 1. Individual drug information

fig 2. This logo looks pretty good

fig 3. This logo needs work

fig 4. Larger text will help readability