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Evite Gets a Redesign, Nerds Still Hate It

by Matthew Zuras on August 5, 2010 at 10:00 AM

screenshot of new evite site
TechCrunch is mad at Evite. The Web-based invitation generator has fallen out of style in the last several years, mainly due to a ghastly UI. But Evite has, like the party phoenix of petits fours and mylar balloons, risen from the ashes of its own burning, and redesigned its site. But Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch still thinks that the new look is "not attractive anyway you slice it."

We took a look at both the new Evite and the relatively popular Pingg, which Tsotsis holds up as the benchmark invitation-site user experience. We have to say that neither of the sites worked perfectly, as our sample event on Pingg was met with repeated errors, despite the fact that we had entered all of the information as we should have, but that's no reason to write either of them off. The new Evite sports a shinier design, and now connects to Facebook, just as Pingg does -- which strikes us as strange. Why not just use the Facebook event function in the first place? But we digress.

The failure common to both of these sites is the unimaginative, neu-clipart-bedecked layouts (even though Pingg has tried to up the ante with "designer" templates). Both sites are full of ads, as one would expect of a free site. Now, we're not especially partial to one or the other, because during the rare blue moon that one of our neighbors does think to invite us to their cat's birthday party, we're just thrilled that we get a chance to interact with a live human who isn't the exterminator. But what we do know is that if you're overly concerned with the look and user experience of your invitation, maybe you should just design one yourself. [From: TechCrunch]

Tags: AlexiaTsotsis, design, ElectronicInvitation, evite, ping, redesign, techcrunch, top, ui, web

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