Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

I have a few quick suggestions:

Change "Shipping included" to "Free Shipping on Every Item, Every Day".

I think you need a reference at the top that says what your site is all about -- e.g., "Lifetime Outdoor Products". Help customers understand what you do and what the products have to do with each other. This should also be in the title tag of your page.

Put links in a different color.

Stick to one font family. Use CSS and specify that all body text is one font, all paragraph headers are another font.

The product photos look nice. It would be a nice feature to be able to zoom in on the photos -- but this may take more work... the other changes I suggested are easier to do quickly.

Are there any reviews of your products on the web? If so, it might be nice to include a link to reviews. I often like to reference independent product reviews when buying online. The testimonials feature is nice, though.

Hope that helps!

I have a few issues with the layout.

I find six columns of items to be too many. I like the vertical orientation of the columns, but each column is too small. More white space and larger images would make it easier on the eyes.

I normally view at 1152*864 resolution, on a 19' monitor, and your page is wider than my screen. Whatever you do should fit into a standard screen. The most common resolution of the visitors to my site is 1024*768, with 38% of my visitors at that size.

Some of your space on the front page is being taken up by the left hand navigation column. Since the bold header on the Featured columns match those of the left nav, you could save that space by making the column header pull down to the sub-navigation. In fact, these menu headers actually appear three times. You also have them above the large images. I totally missed them the first time I looked at the site, and as they are easy to find elsewhere, you really don't need them on top.

You are also missing the opportunity to collect email addresses for future marketing campaigns.

I also have a problem with using Helvetica as your main font. It may only by my problem since I use a pretty non-standard resolution, but it kerns really poorly on my screen. I find Verdana and Arial (other sans-serif fonts) kern much more reliably.

Good luck.

Hi, Ksalter,
You do have a lot packed into the page, but it's pretty clean and I might see why the layout makes sense to a visitor - who has a good chance at finding something they want (or at least seeing a lot of what you've got) right on the first page. But I would add a MORE button at the bottom of each column as an alternative way of getting to the category page.

I'd like to see the testimonials up higher. Maybe they could use a square or two out of the product layout. Or work into the header or just below it. They're lost as is.

I didn't like seeing the top sellers on every page - maybe that's just me, but if I pick chairs, I don't want to see sheds...

I do think there's too much in the left navigation column.

There are some graphic things that could be improved over time - the all caps category headings aren't the ultimate, but the biggest thing for me is that I'd want to do some work on the header. The company name Lifetime implies that maybe your stuff is so well made it lasts a lifetime? If that's the idea (or whatever the idea is), I'd want to say it at least in words and/or even better through some visual imagery. "We've got it here" doesn't do a thing for me - obviously whatever anyone is selling is something they've got; there's no benefit or differentiator there; and it doesn't give me an idea of the company's personality.

Good luck with this.

Marge