The villager website knows its genre and audience and it is a good example of a simplistic layout with an emphasis on ease of access. However the layout is stretched out too thin.
The Villager does a lot of things right. The word choice and the delivery of text is academic and professional. Most articles are coupled with videos and pictures. Paragraphs are kept short at 2 to 3 sentences each for quick reading. Visually, the colors chosen for the villager help its simplistic look. It only consist of white, black and a touch of green. These colors blend nicely. The slideshow on the home page pulls readers in and helps them jump into a topic that catches their interest. It is a good layout that helps visitors easily start navigating throughout the website. After clicking an article, readers can then use the side bar to find more stories on the website or click next to read the article next in line. The villager also includes a few articles for the reader that they may like. The biggest weakness I can see on The Villager is how its information is laid out too thin. There are 10 tabs on the navigation bar that are at most one layer deep. This could be fixed by reducing the number of tabs and merging topics. So as mentioned before the villager has a great way of simplifying their website and keeping it easy for users to navigate it but too much simplifying eliminates user choice and ultimately turns the website into something static with few interactions.
