Site with Great Innovation:
The PG&E website found at http://www.wecandothis.com/ is very impressive. PG&E is the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. This site appears to hold content for PG&E customers. The information is entertaining and helpful in educating the customer in energy saving technology, tips and future ideas. The site is mostly flash driven and very interactive and even has games for the user to play. Being a flash site it does have a preloader for the site to load. The preloader is a great distraction as it is a custom preloader with very large number broken into a unique grid. In my opinion the site loaded very quickly, but at the same time I have super fast Internet.
After the page loads, the user is greeted by different sounds that are connected to the different interactive images. Some may say at first glance the design has no visual hierarchy, but I view the display a to be a balanced collaboration of information expressing in a fun interactive way. The eye is drawn up to the top left corner by instinct as well as the bright orange contrasting color. Here is where the user finds the menu. A nice soft blue color is used which is calming and easy on the eyes. Accents of orange are used for contrast and to draw the user to the menu tabs.
The consistency of the site is quite strong. While there are a few links that lead to new windows that do not follow the look and consistency of the flash site, only a few of these links that landed on traditional HTML pages that all looked consistent. In my opinion it looks like it takes the user to the old site or a less entertaining HTML version of the current site. I was surprised to find this as it makes the site seem slightly unfinished.
Considering how much content this site has to offer I appreciate the organization of the information. Most sites that have all this information on the front page with many links I and other user may find over whelming. There is a a lot of clicking going back but it allows the user to have a comfortable experience without too much information at once.
I think it is great that the site offers the content in a few different languages. The only problem I found with that was that once you click on the Spanish link and try to go back to English the page has an error.
A contact phone number is provided, as well as, a form for correspondence. I did not see an email address on the site, and I would venture to guess there is not one. Typically larger companies do not use email addresses but rather forms.
Over all I found the site to be very creative, innovative and user friendly. The interactive roll over images that have animation really draw the user in. The site looked the same in both Safari and Firefox browsers. It however did not load at all in IE 5 but that is not surprising as it is a flash site. Most important I think the site gives the user a one of a kind unique experience with an organized way to find needed information.
Source:
wecandothis.com