The Hideout Theater

www.hideouttheather.com

Target audience: People in Austin interested in seeing a show, taking improv classes, or renting theater space.

Usefulness of content: All the information you need is there. The homepage clearly presents the address and phone number of the theater and gives information about all the upcoming shows. There are also links to pages about buying tickets or registering for a class. The pages about renting the theater space have all of the information you would need to know: prices, size, times, the equipment available, etc.

Consistency of design: The site doesn’t really utilize a lot of design elements, but what’s there is fairly consistent. The Hideout Theater logo is featured on every page, and the links on both the left and the right of the page are consistent throughout. It’s clear not a lot of effort went into developing this site. The colors are sort of offensive together (particularly on the calendar page), and the link to the site map seems randomly placed (and I’m not sure why that bright blue color was chosen to be used against a maroon background). One part of the site that is strangely inconsistent is how the details about the shows are presented when you click on them. Most of them are arranged in a box with a picture on the left and information about the show on the right, but some are arranged differently. One in particular that I clicked on was just text, and it didn’t fit on the screen, so I had to scroll horizontally to read all of it.


Ease of navigation: In spite of all the complaints I can make about the design of this site, I can’t deny that navigating it is simple. All of the links are on the homepage in clear view, and those links provide you with all the information you need. The only complaint I can make about this is that I went to the calendar page to find the show I was looking for, even though it was listed directly underneath the calendar in the “latest events” column on the homepage. I didn’t even look there, though, because I really thought they were advertisements.