Alex & Chris-House of Tricks

House of Tricks

By Alex & Chris

The House of trick is a quaint little restaurant located in the heart of Tempe, just off Mill ave. the menu is a  on classic American cuisine. The restaurant opened back in 1987 and has been doing well ever sense. The 

House of Tricks is a popular restaurant for many local business men and women or to treat your hungry college student. The House of Tricks web site is very friendly and easy to use. When you open the web page you arrive at the home page with the restaurant name at the top in elegant letters. There is a short paragraph welcoming you to their web site. Next you notice the tabs located just under the letters “House of Tricks” at the top of the page. These tabs take you to pages with information about the cuisine, wine, parties, location and other helpful information. On the side of every page there is a side menu where you can see upcoming event, awards they have one and even make a reservation! When you click on one of the tabs, such as cuisine, it brings you to another page with a brief description of the style of food they serve at house of tricks and a bio of the Chief. There is also a PDF file you can download to view the menu and the wine list. All the other tabs are similar to this in layout. They are usually short and to the point and provide all the essential information you need. All the pages on this set are set in a dark green background with white writing on it, making visibility relatively simple. The website is almost the bare minimum you need to survive but it is done in a way that works extremely well. You never feel wanting more or confused. The House of Tricks website is a very well done website.

                

 The House of Tricks website is a well laid out, elegantly simple, user-friendly site with few problems. This differs from most websites that have a many flaws and glitches, and are really confusing to use. The House of Tricks goes for a very simple layout that allows you to view everything with extreme ease. The web page does not try to “crowed” everything on to one page or overwhelm you with writing and pictures. The website also includes many features that make it very appealing to users.  

Simplicity with elegance can come together to make beautiful works of arts, make stunning architectural masterpieces or in the case of the House of Tricks web site it makes it easy to navigate. There are very simple titles and menu options on the main web page. There isn’t a lot of cutler or overuse of one aspect. There are pictures, such as in the ‘about’ tab, of the restaurant and the cats. The Garden in front of house of tricks is home to many fish and a few lazy cats that like to hang around. Back on the website, there are no “look at me” parts of a page. They don’t try to make thing stand out. All aspects flow together. The house of trick also utilizes very basic colors, as to not overwhelm you. The House of Tricks website is almost a beautiful piece of artwork. It combines simplicity with loads of user friendly applications.

The House of Tricks website is well laid out and very neat. It is neat in the sense that it is basic and organized. This creates a user friendly site that can be easily navigated. They give a large variety of tabs to click on. Each tab gives an insight on that category and is very thorough. The tabs are not congested with information and are easy to access. This differs to most websites where when you click on a tab it gives you a drop down screen of more options that are hard to click on. This site only requires one click and gets you to the link you want really easily. This site is also very friendly in the sense that it has a lot of options and allows the user to read up on the staff, the owners/founders, and what is in the food they are eating. This website gives close to every bit of information you need. This organization makes it very easy to use and allows the user to get whatever information they need about the restaurant with little difficulty and very efficiently.

The House of Tricks web site was designed to be able to use by anyone. The web site utilizes different aspects in order to make it very easy for a client to see the menu or even reserve a table. If you look under the cuisine tab on the homepage you will find a PDF at the bottom in which you can download a copy of the menu. This is a little inconvenient because it takes a while to load. Once it does load however you will have a full copy of the restaurant menu. Another neat feature of the website is the ability to reserve a table online. All you have to do is click on the side menu option and reserve your seat. This allows you to make quick reservation and not have to try and do it over the phone. With these two features it lets you see the menu before you get there and make your reservations. Also on their side bar you can even find out where the house of tricks gets their produce and it gives you a link. When you click on this link it allows you to pick from the suppliers of house of tricks and contact them directly. Another neat feature is you can go directly to the house of tricks Facebook page and find out what upcoming events are occurring. With these features the House of Tricks make it very simple for clients to navigate and utilize all aspects of the web page.

However well the House of Tricks website may be there are a few problems with it. The first color you see is green, a lot of green. The background for every page is a dark green and it can be a little overwhelming. It makes the website seem dark. Another great inconvenience is you must download a copy of the menu. This takes some time to do and doesn't always load the first attempt. Another problem is once you have downloaded the menu it is very hard to read the text is placed very close together and it appears to just be one huge block of words. This gets frustrating when trying to read the full menu. The tab labeled “events” also has another problem with color and text. The page features a large calendar with upcoming events on it. The background is dark green while the text is a light green color. This makes the text very difficult to read and you can't really get much from it. Besides these color choices and downloading problems there are very few errors on the House of Tricks web page.

This website is very useful overall with a few minor kinks. It allows access to just about any piece information the consumer wishes to know. With its simple layout, everything is very organized and allows the user to navigate the site without problem. The print is hard to read at times and some menus take time to load, but other than that it’s a smooth site. The House of Tricks in our opinion gets an A, and the food gets an A++!