Discover Card

http://www.discovercard.com/

Intended Audience:
· Discover card users, who want to manage their account online
· Those interested in signing up for a Discover card and want more information about the company and its policies

Usefulness of Content:
· Since the site is designed for its clients and its potential clients, Discover has made sure that the main content of the site is focused on what Discover offers as services. While the content of the main page consists almost entirely of advertisements for several of Discover’s new services, once one has gotten further into the website, the content has more value .
· For the most Discover does not clutter up its content with images – the site depends on text to effectively describe the sometimes confusing technicalities of the services Discover offers. Some companies, like Visa, rely on videos to explain features of Visa and the Visa website. I think it’s more useful to have important information available in a format that requires the fewest number of hardware and software components.
· While the site does include information for prospective customers, it is also a way for current Discover card members to access and manage their account. Discover card allows members to edit basic account information, order new card designs, pay their bills online, and redeem their Cashback Bonus online, as well as many other activities.

Consistency of Design:
· The website uses a strong orange color to make the main navigation bar stand out to the user, and this element is available from any of the interior pages. The navigation bar is always on the left side of the browser window.
· When logged in, the account name and address (both mailing address and email address) is visible at the top right corner of the website. This is a wonderful way to check that the account information is correct at a glance. Once or twice my information has been wrong, and I’ve been able to catch it because I saw it at the top of my window.
· The website is very easy to read. The text is black on white, which is very easy to read and understand. The Discover website also manages to keep each page fairly clean and orderly – there are no pages that are littered with links. Links are placed in an order that makes it easy (and fairly intuitive) to find any needed answers to questions. The Mastercard.com website’s homepage has too many links – it’s hard to see the hierarchy the different pages are placed in.

Ease of Navigation:
· Users should be able to find the answers (or the appropriate path to the answer) to most of their questions through the homepage, or the user’s homepage upon logging in. This page lists most of the needs of the average user: “Make a payment,” “View latest statement,” “Edit your personal information,” “Redeem your Cashback Bonus,” among many others.
· As the user moves within the site, Discovercard.com is careful to display the name of the specific page the user is visiting, as well as where the site is in the hierarchy of the website by highlighting the levels in the left-hand navigation system. This helps keep the user oriented while moving through the site. The other benefit to this is that the levels that are coordinate with the specific page being visited are displayed (in plain text) along with the highlighted level under a high level in the hierarchy.
· All of the hyperlinks in the website are linked through text phrases, rather than through linked icons (or images). This makes for clarity and ease when choosing which hyperlinks to pick – there is little room for ambiguity or confusion about the destination of the link.