Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

DISCLAIMER: Please do not take what I have to say as insult, but rather as constructive criticism.

Site definitely needs to be re-designed and modernized. Get rid of the background -- the color concept is not appeasing to the eye. If you are stuck using the pre-existing colour scheme -- I would base the site more around white and use the pink for highlighting and borders. Also make sure this time around that the site is centred -- so that across all sizes of monitors the content shapes effectively to all monitors.

Also, I would stress the importance of tables, borders, and layers to bring your content togethor.


Levon
The Place Marketing Group

There's so much information on your homepage! But unfortunately, it's not laid out well enough for me to figure out - quickly - what I want to do when I visited. I took some time because I was there to review the page, but if I was just surfing for sewing machines, I wouldn't have taken the time.

I'd have liked to see your main purpose more prominently and some of your secondary purposes less prominently. For instance, I wouldn't list your locations on the homepage - it just makes me scroll more and more to get to other information - a link to locations might work better. And the employment request so prominently actually makes me think maybe you don't have the staff to serve my needs!

Speaking of scrolling, I had to scroll across as well as up and down to get to all your text. I'd like to see it resize automatically or be small enough that any size monitor can see the whole page on the screen.

I agree with the others that there are too many fonts and too many colors. Also, your logo is grainy (on my screen at least) and looks a little amateurish.

It's nice that you will ship anywhere, but I don't know what you'll ship. Having information you wrote about your products in addition to the link to Viking's homepage information would give me more trust in you and I'd be more likely to purchase something from you.

Hope some of that is helpful...

Dear David Flash,

Give due consideration to the following areas :

Aesthetic Appeal : Color Scheme, Background, Layout need a lot of improvement. Creative artists to be involved alongwith the software developer (webdeveloper) in the design.

Language : Need to use straight and simple words. Very few words are to be used. (For example, "Have you seen the Fabric Mover yet ? Click here). You could just say "See the Fabric Mover!" . Click here is redundant - it is suggestive by the cursor. More creativeness in copy writing needed.

Avoid Monotony : When you move from page to page, there should not be any monotony (with repeated dull background, color scheme, repeated photograph or lay out etc). Every page should give a live and fresh experience.

Logical Navigation : It should be natural flow. Let "HOME" bar always be at Top Left. You could have "BRANCHES" bar link, instead of making a long scroll down.

Generally, it needs expert creative artist's and creative writer's help.

Best Wishes,

kannan

Here are a couple of very simple improvements I suggest...
1) the stony brook logo on your site needs to be adjusted... maybe rescanned, it looks grainy and amateurish.
2) you have too many colors on the page. I dont think you need to have red blue and purple (?) colors on the text. I would simplify it to Blue only.. but that is a personal preference
3) i would change the colors of the navigation buttons to blue. all to drive some simplicity
4) this may be more difficult based on your software, but i would try to center the bottom navigation buttons..

And finally and this one may be slightly more difficult...
I would add a section with simple hints, and patterns that would be a reason for a person to come back to your sight over and over. The class listing is a good reason to come to your site but it is the only one.

Good luck, your are getting pretty close...

OK, I usually offer a 65 point usability healthcheck, I haven't got the time to do that here (and it's chargeable .. but here is a start).

o Use a plain background
o Don't use too many different font colours
o Get a professional logo
o Update or source new images (haven't seen one here that would really help sell the services).
o Nav buttons are not centre aligned and they should use a more modern font.
o Viking Website link seems a little too obvious (unless you have a contractual reason why it needs to be shown like that!).
o Different pages use slightly different layouts (just look at your logo as you click around it moves slightly, as do the buttons).
o NEVER underline a word unless it IS a link
o Don't use the "dynamicanimation" it doesn't add anything
o Instead of Times Roman, consider an Arial type font throughout

Sorry to sound negative, these are not comments aimed to say whether the site is good or bad, but to tell you what would increase visitors browsing the site and actually wanting to spend money with you.

If you need help on creating the site, copy, promotion or usability them please get in touch offline.

Good Luck

Andrew
black and white marketing