Friday, February 13, 2009

campus food!

Campusfood.com is a website that college students use almost everyday. The website offers menus for local restaurants, and allows students to place pickup/delivery orders over the Internet. I found it interesting that when you type "campusfoods.com" into the address field you get a different front screen to the website than if you type in "campusfood.com". (Note the "S" after food). When you type in campusfoods.com you get the campus food logo (which is a plate in the shape of a face) and under the face reads "campusfoods.com". The plate becomes animated and you then see the plate eating the "s" in campusfoods.com. However when you type in "campusfood.com" you do not see the plate, you only see the front screen. 
This website tries to tell the reader that the correct address is "campusfood.com" through the text, and the animation of the plate eating the text but I feel it is unsuccessful. I use this website frequently and only when I chose to write this blog post did I realize the difference in the two website addresses. I do however think it was creative and interesting to have the animated plate eat the text though. 

7 comments:

katiewelsh said...

wow, I never realized that about the website either... It's a cool idea but under-recognized

CarlyS said...

I love campusfood.com mainly because it's so easy to find what you're looking for. Especially with food, you find yourself "in the mood" for something specific. They list the various types of cuisines in addition to other features like cheap eats and late night. It just goes to show how they know their audience and are able to make the user experience a more enriching one with their attention to type.

Kelsey McCarthy said...

Wow! I'm on campusfood.com all the time and I've never notices that before. I's sureas a company it can in a sense be frustrating when people constantly refer to you by an incorrect (although ever so slightly way.) I think it's awesome how they went about trying to correct their customers in such a creative way. It's funny though because I started thinking about it and even conversational you will always ask a friend " hey want to order from campus foods tonight" - like the "s" is just a part of it. I think that have the bowl eat the "s" is appropriate not only because obviously it's a website about food and eating, but also because it's a cool way to get people to realize the "s" doesnt belong there.

Elena said...

woah that's crazy i never realized that before either. its definitely a cool way to inform people that they're on the wrong website but i'm not sure if people really catch on to it.

A. Mainthia said...

Campusfoods is definitely an important website that revolves around user interaction. Good example!

Unknown said...

I appreciate the commentary on this little known page on campusfood.com. I'm the founder and was fortunate enough to buy both domain names at the same time in the late nineties. It always amazes me how many times people reference it as campusfoods to me.

This blog post hit my google alerts and I thought it would be a good forum to mention that We have a part time opportunity for a graphic artist to work with us in our office in NYC. If interested, please send an email to marketing (at) campusfood.com

Sam MacAvoy said...

Do you think that they should rebrand themselves so that they don't have this issue... maybe become campusfoods instead of campus food. Perhaps they should just get a new name altogether.