Epicurious

www.epicurious.com

Intended audience: People who like to cook or want to learn to cook.

Usefulness of information: This site does contain a lot of good information. It features recipes under various headings (healthy, drinks, seasonal, etc.), which are clear and usually contain at least one photo and reviews by other readers. There are also a lot of good tips for people like me, who want to cook but are essentially clueless. They also have a food dictionary and technique videos.

Consistency of design: The color scheme and background image change when you click on one of the main tabs up top, but the changes are consistent for each of the links within the subheads. I find it strange that there’s no Resources tab at the top of the page, even though this section follows the format of the other major sections (it has its own color scheme and subheads, and it is featured at the bottom of the page with all its subheadings, along with all the other major sections). Another thing that bothered me was that, for some reason, the Desserts page under the Recipes & Menus tab is styled differently than the other pages under that tab.

Ease of navigation: I don’t find this site particularly difficult to navigate, but I think it could be set up better, mainly for the reasons I mentioned in the last section. There is a search bar right up top, so I can always find what I’m looking for, but because of the site’s inconsistent design, I’m never sure if I’ve seen everything that could be useful to me.