WSA Winner
Saturday August 21st, 2004
"We've recently redesigned chevy.com into XHTML Strict and tableless CSS layouts. Navigation is comprised of accessible definition lists. The homepage alone plummeted from a modem-crushing 1MB to a svelte 17k. I hope you like what we've accomplished."
Dave Linabury of
Campbell-Ewald describes the new chevy site and yes, I certainly like it. Most of all I like the fact that another really large commercial site adopts web standards, but the design isn't all that shabby either. The layout could use a little more white space and a softer colour palette to accentuate the pictures of the cars. In my mind at least. The world of hardcore
ROI will probably disagree. :)
Reviewed by Johan Edlund
#1
A very well structured website with a great a great navigational menu system. Moving around the site is very easy and its very easy to find what your looking for.
i dont like how the navigation overlaps the banner image though, it looks a bit untidy
Posted by Justers :: August 21st, 2004 at 11:33 PM
#2
Web standards at full speed! >_>;
Pity they forgot to set the background colour to white (or whatever...).
Posted by Neko :: August 22nd, 2004 at 12:36 AM
#3
yes the bgcolor is set to default. i have my default set to a light grey and the site looks quite shabby. just an extra 5 secs to drop in a white bgcolor in the style sheet may work wonders.. or maybe they wanted it to be grey?
nice all the way around though. great find!
Posted by malan :: August 23rd, 2004 at 01:08 AM
#4
Congratulations Dave, It looks great with clean code. Very easy to use and navigate.
Posted by Blake Scarbrough :: August 23rd, 2004 at 03:53 PM
#5
Looked at this a couple days ago but didn't comment because I was at a loss for words.
Tipped off Zeldman so there's now a link on his site.
I'd be interested in seeing some interviews about this redesign. Someone get to it.
What can I say? Move over Wired News! :)
Posted by Damon Haidary :: August 24th, 2004 at 12:38 AM
#6
I guess the closest thing to an interview so far is listed on a Sprint developer's site, zelph.com. The designer (or at least one of them) posted some comments at http://www.zelph.com/archives/2004/08/23/chevrolet-xhtmlcss-overhaul/#comments
Posted by Jonathan Berkhalter :: August 24th, 2004 at 04:26 AM
#7
Thanks for the comments! We worked really hard on the code. It was a complete re-write from the ground up. Uh...sorry about that background color thing. Mildly embarrassing.
Posted by Tami Jo Urban :: August 24th, 2004 at 06:17 PM
#8
Having worked on Chevrolet.com years ago, it is very nice to see it has come along way. Congrats to the team! the site is really nice, and has come along way from the flash/and html code that was there in 2000. Cheers!
Posted by kevin airgid :: August 26th, 2004 at 05:09 PM
#9
Alright, the page validates, is coded using CSS, and follows web standards. However, since this site is supposed to support not only standards, but website done beautifully with standards, I think Chevrolet falls short of the mark.
The site is cramped, and seems somehow haphazard, and the details are lacking. Congratulations to the designers for creating a major commercial site using web standards - however, I think, aesthetically, it falls a bit short of the "standard".
Posted by francey :: August 27th, 2004 at 12:45 AM
#10
I'm REALLY not trying to sound fussy here, and I know from personal experience how difficult this task is for companies this large, but the article states:
"The homepage alone plummeted from a modem-crushing 1MB to a svelte 17k"
Well, I just checked, and:
Images = 80.5k
JUST main page code = 19.8k
Am I missing something?
Going from 1 meg to less than 100k is nice and all, but if you are going to nitpik, its best to do it right.
..love the victory over corporate politics with regards to an online brand, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one who noticed that discepancy:)
Great start tho!
Posted by I :: August 28th, 2004 at 08:24 PM
#11
I'm late but - very nice! I know a couple of the guys that work for Campbell-Ewald and they put a lot of time and care into crafting this redesign. It's sleek and fast and efficient without compromising aesthetics. Work like this makes me so eager to rehaul my own sites (I'm only recently discovering the advantages of true web standards).
It's just a shame that Pontiac.com felt the need to emulate it so very hard (their redesign just went up a couple weeks ago) - GMC.com as well. Quite obvious, quite blatant, quite blah. It has to be frustrating to the Chevy kids.
Posted by huny :: September 24th, 2004 at 04:34 PM
Comments on: Chevrolet