XAT Chat Offers Sophomoric Design, Lively Chat

XAT Chat is a social networking site which allows users to browse and participate in XAT chat rooms, form or join chat groups and even create your own chat rooms.

While XAT Chat boasts both a broad network of users (estimated in the 10,000s) and hundreds of XAT chat groups, the site also has a number of opportunities they could take advantage of in order to increase the end user experience.

From a participation standpoint, XAT Chat has a surprising number of XAT chat groups and is always packed with its well-connected, loyal base of users.

As visitors sign in, they are instantly immersed into the exciting world of XAT Chat, with a promoted chat room on the right and featured groups for users to join on the left.

Visitors who spend time on the XAT Chat site will quickly learn of the great number of features available to them, including the ability to launch their own chat rooms and chat groups, and add chat widgets to their own web site connecting them to their XAT chat room.

Membership on XAT Chat is free, with optional features and services available at cost. Users must affirm they are age 14 and up.

In general, despite XAT Chat's strengths in number of users and the ability to personalize the chat experience completely, the web site design is difficult to navigate and sometime the color schemes difficult to swallow.

While I understand the contrasting color palattes are the result of XAT Chat's user-defined communities of which XAT Chat has no control, a little consistency on XAT Chat menu pages could make the difference between a cohesive vision for their chat site and a funky amagamation of colors, backgrounds, avatars and emoticons.

One of my chief complaints is lack of warning about loud Internet radio feeds which play depending on XAT Chat groups that are featured on the XAT home page; the end result is visitors scrambling to find a way to turn the sound off before having to mute their computers.

(By the way, the music can be turned off via the featured chat room, with "Radio Off" and sound volume near the text field).

In short, when XAT Chat prevails in offer exciting chat rooms, their lack is in aesthetics, which is important in building integrity and trust between the site and its users.

In short, while I love the independent spirit and the broad number of topics visitors can chat about on XAT Chat, the web site's design was at times difficult to use and the search for radio volume controls was a little too annoying.

In the end, I give XAT Chat two-and-a-half stars.