Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Doug, I must say it's come a long way!! I commented on your site a while ago, and I LOVE the look you've gone for in this iteration! Here's why:
1- Yes, you present lots of information right off, but you have it well organized, using headers, lighter copy, and pictures where appropriate. The site looks professionally informational, not overwhelming.
2- I considered Jay's idea of merging the left nav with the top nav, making a drop-down, but I don't think that's needed, I like the way your information is organized.
3- The "interviews with graphic design heavyweights" looks like it is an ad from another site, yet it links to one of your pages. If you have total control of the look and feel of this button, I'd make it look more like your site.
4- I absolutely LOVE the shades of gray and the lime green. Your site looks very "new" and "important" (perhaps because many news sites use the same shades of gray) it begs to be read and interacted with. Nice work!
5- At some point, it would be awesome to feature member bios. Check out www.thenest.com , they feature new members of the week, and link to their public page with photos and information. This would be a great avenue for designers to show off their artwork.

Best of luck to you. I think you're off to a great start.

Hi Doug,

What I like best about your site is that it looks very content-rich. Useful articles. Nice header.

Suggestions -
Since it's a graphic designer resource website, I think the design needs to be more of a priority. I would like to see a cleaner looking site. I think you could achieve this a few ways.

First, you might consider simplifying your color palette, or at least being totally consistent with it. For example, all linked text should have the same treatment (I like the green for links... but when I click on an article, I see some links in the standard blue link color). Some links change color in their rollover state, and some have underlining. I'd recommend just using a highlighted (brighter) version of the green color for rollover state, no underline.

You use boxes to separate different areas on a homepage. I think it would look nice to add some dimension to the boxes. The Apple website is a good example - they round the corners and add a touch of shadow. The Sony website is also a pretty good example - they don't do the shadow, but their use of color and rounded corners looks really clean and modern.

Eliminate some of your left-hand nav categories. For example, you've got an RSS feed link, RSS headers, and an RSS button. You really only need the button. You have a computer-savvy audience, so you don't need to dumb it down that much. "About the Site" could probably just be one link, with sub sections on the page itself. You can make some of the link titles shorter -- "Mac Screencasts" can be "Screencasts"; "Graphic Design Reviews" can be "Reviews". Site Map should go under Other instead of Depts. All the "Other" stuff could go on your About Us section. Text size link is at the bottom of the page, so doesn't need to be in nav.

I like the idea of using thumbnail images next to the articles, but the images themselves don't look very good. Some of them are detailed for such a small image (like the Boston Celtics one). Only use an image if it looks clean at the given size.

I think the About box on the right should be kept in the About Us section. This is prime real estate, so replace that with something that leads to an action you want users to take -- for example, the RSS feed button or subscribe link.

Lastly, I'd recommend having someone thoroughly proofread your site for grammar. You have some unceccesary ellipses (also crowd the text) and capitalization (job titles are not capitalized). Hope that helps!

Doug,

There are many positive things about your site. I think your site has a very "web 2.0" feel to it -- which is all the rage now. Thought to me... it looks just a bit too much like a blog, but I think, like you said, a lot of that has to do with the limitations of the CMS. I really like the color scheme you are going for, and I do like the splashes of color. If you are speaking to creatives -- you definitely need some color, ay? But be sure you check the consistency in how you are using that color, and make sure to have a reason for every design element you put on the pages.

There are some details that I recommend addressing. ... in my opinion, these details affect the credibility and general feel of your site.

1] Target Audience: Designers are your target audience here, right? I agree with Tracy about making design a priority. Again you are limited by your CMS, but you might consider having one custom built (for instance, we created a fairly inexpensive one for https://www.nappr.org -- and you can't tell it's run by CMS, ay?). Course it's not open source ... I know I am biased, but I 100% believe in the effectiveness of a custom-built CMS / design. Especially considering your target audience. For instance, looking at your column alignment. The left column is in one spot, the middle in another and the third in yet another. It steps down from left to right on my browser. Without purpose, it just looks like a mistake. There are a lot of little things like this -- in your pop-up to request that I sign up ... it needs work as well. It doesn't "feel" like everything fits together in a complete puzzle, it feels like you have a bunch of pieces from different puzzles and you are trying to sell me them as one puzzle. Gosh I hope this makes sense. Design is one of the toughest things to try to describe, ay?

2] Font Usage: Your fonts are an issue for me. Helvetica is not a font I would recommend for easy web reading. On my screen, the Helvetica looks ... clumpy. Letters run into each other, overlap, etc. Especially the lowercase "i"s the other skinny letters. It's just difficult to read at the default size. I think Helvetica shows up much better on a mac platform. I also see a lot of question mark symbols on my screen as well. I can send you a screen shot if you like -- they are shaped like diamonds with a question mark in the middle. It is what happens when there is some sort of symbol that the browser or computer doesn't have ... usually associated with fonts. I think it may be your bullets -- use the ALT + 0149 - those are usually pretty safe ASCII characters. Go to https://browsershots.org and look at your site in other browsers. Check and recheck -- and make sure that your audience will have access to your site the way you want them to see it.

3] CSS Usage: Use CSS exclusively if you can help it. I see some font tags in your code, and I recommend that you don't use them at all -- except very sparingly. Esp. using a CMS, the tags can quickly build up and get out of hand. Just say no to Code Bloat :) Since the design is already table based instead of CSS based, you have some of that going on already ... just want to keep it to a minimum.
Using the CSS will also help you stay consistent in text presentation, a big plus over time!! :)

3] Site Copy: Like Tracy recommended, think about hiring a copywriter. Word nerds would eat it up. :) Treat ellipses like a three letter word. otherwise they can get separated over a line and it would look odd to have two ellipses on one line and the third on the next line.

3] Front Page Content: Consider cutting down the amount you have here on your front page. For instance, instead of five limited resources, list two or three. Instead of 15 recent blog posts, list 5. Instead of 6 premium content articles, list 4. Like Jay said, it's really a lot to try hit all at once. I think the top navigation bar is wasted -- I like the idea of having fly-out menus to show the inner layers versus trying to put a link to everything from your front page. It's a bit overwhelming. Ask yourself these questions: What do I want the person to do first? Second? Third? Fourth? What is most important? Once you answer those questions and prioritize what you have on your front page, you can get the feature-rich content set up in a way that totally guides site users where you want them to go instead of just going wherever. Use that Heat Map research story and apply it to your site :)

4] One of the strongest things you have for a service like this is that your members are saying how much they like it, and how much it has helped them. I don't think the member testimonials should be so far below the fold. Maybe incorporate kind of a "random" testimonial thing -- kind of like what we did on https://www.vstateblazers.com -- where every time the page is loaded, it randomly pulls an athlete from the DB to present. Again, I would shorten what is presented there -- give a bite enough to draw me in and then I can read more if I wanna. Also strip the paragraph tags from the testimonials to allow for more "meat" in a shorter space. You need that real estate! :)

5] See if you can use mod-rewrite with your CMS to get those keywords in your URL. "/public/department27.cfm" is not so good in the SEO area. ... each page title.

6] I like the breadcrumbs feature, but at three levels (at the article level), it has an awkward wrap around the search box. Maybe put that search lower, or change the CMS so the search box won't be on the same plane as the breadcrumbs.

Overall -- this might seem like a lot of stuff, but it's really not. And much of it goes back to the CMS, which you don't really have a lot of control over either -- so it might be one of these "settle for now" kinds of things for you. You want me to look at your site like a designer's haven, a place to learn and grow and connect -- but I'm not totally feeling that from the way things are laid out right now ... Maybe you can have a contest for the designers who are members now -- for free membership for a year or something. A site designed by it's own members, now there's a thought ....

Well, anyway -- hope this helps!! Good luck -- I think this is a super great idea, and I hope it pans out for you. ...

Best Wishes,

Jennifer P.
XPRT Creative

:)