A Site Review Of Ent Federal Credit Union By Ten Readers.
Check out these reviews for design ideas. There’s nothing like your peers to tell you what’s wrong with your site.
(For a complete listing of reviews of this site, site links, and to read the site review criteria established by the site’s webmaster, visit the Ent Federal review page.)
Dear Ms. Selfridge,
My first impression — Which way do I go? I think the homepage would benefit greatly from the 7 link rule. The following 7 would be effective main navigation:
about us
services
rates
investing/insurance
just for kids
online banking
planning tools
I would reinforce the ease of navigation by making the home page and all the inside pages the same look/color. Also make sure the graphic is the same physical spot on each page so your eye is not jumping around as you travel through the site. Your quick jump feature is nice but it really clutters up the page. Perhaps just narrow the links down. It seems directions, news, locations and hours and contact us could go under the About us tab. The privacy pledge could go in the bottom links. The online banking link there seems redundant. Perhaps the remaining links could be shown graphically (icon) so your eye is drawn to, for instance a big check mark with a photo of a check for reorder checks link. This link should go direct to a reorder check page. I notice now you are taking to a page where you actually have to click again, which in essence doesn’t make it a quick link from the home page.
Another tip would be to include the same text links at the bottom of your page as your main navigation (good for search engines). Also at the bottom you could add your sitemap link.
Hope this helps.
Lara Amaral
LEA Designs
http://www.leadesigns.com
mailto:info@leadesigns.com
Very, very nice website. VERY FAST! I love that.
Clean, easy to use and easy to navigate.
Well organized with outstanding content! Members should be very happy to have such a good resource. Of course, not being a member I was unable to access the “Account Management” pages, so I will assume it worked just as well as the pages I could access.
No gratuitous graphics and dancing bears to distract and slow the download. That’s a big plus to me. When I use a financial website I want to be able to get where I want to go, get my business done, and get back to work. This site also offered a great deal of help and informative content.
One downside, and it’s kinda big. Browser compatibility. It was built for Internet Explorer. Everything worked fine in IE and Opera, but it was not happy in Netscape. The drop-down menus didn’t work and whenever I use the “Back” button on my browser it didn’t like to display cleanly.
It’s a mistake to use Microsoft-Only features and style sheets. Netscape and Mozilla are used by a large segment of the population. Why make it tough for them? To me it’s like building a store with an 18″ wide doorway so fat people and crippled people can’t shop. “Beautiful People Only” may be a good policy for a trendy night club, but “Microsoft Only” a bad idea for a website.
Another suggestion: Refine the meta tags. The Description and Keywords looked like the Oxford Dictionary. A lot of search engines hate that.
Overall, I’d have to give this site an A-. The only thing I found wrong with it at all, was the Netscape thing.
John Young
1. Navigation is a bit off on the home page, since as you move from left to right, wider menus on the left effectively screen the next one to the right. If you mouse over Services, for instance, then the Rates menu is unavailable (at least on my screen – 1280 x 960, large fonts). This does not seem to happen on the other pages.
2. I picked a typical thing – looking up Mortgage information. I thought the navigation was obvious and that the content was excellent. I had no trouble figuring out how to find what I wanted.
3. One complaint I have, as my eyes get older, is that the left nav is hard to read. Yes, I’m running at high resolution, but still it’s frustrating to have to put on my reading glasses to see what the words are over there, or squint and strain.
4. Money space design change is eye-catching, but the left nav having black text on a blue background is very hard to read. Even the white-on-blue is hard to read, but that may because of #3 above. %^}
5. The random stars-as-links (Consumer Loan Rates) are interesting, but without Alt text, it’s only by fluke that I found out that they are live links rather than just decoration. The same goes for the piggy bank on Savings Account Rates and anywhere else that graphics are used in non-obvious spots as links.
6. On the other hand, I really like the summary table of loan rates on the Consumer Loan Rates page – clear, all in one place, doesn’t force me to dig for key information.
Overall, load time was fine for me (DSL), graphics weren’t distracting or annoying, and it all seemed to fit together well.
Steven List, President
http://www.AnotherThought.com
Steven@AnotherThought.com
Jeff Johnson
http://jetstream-technologies.com
First of all, the adds on the homepage are too much apperant. The navigation on the right does not catch the eye but the adds do.
Noone if not tried can guess that the top nav has a cool dropdown. It is not there if no one sees it.
The alt tag to the image is not necessary at all. No links to the image but gets all the way when scrolling the mouse.
There is a huge gap on the right side of the screen. It’s OK for 800×600 but what about the others??? The designers should think about a way to avoid that. Does not look good.
What can I say? I just went to the membership page. This site is bad. You can’t read, there’s too much to read and no navigation.
I will not go to any other pages to review the site and I think this tells how I rate it
Celal
http://www.nova-trade.com
I loved the site. It was colorful, happy. The only negative thing I could find would be the four boxes at the bottom of the home page. The info looked like those cheap pop-up ads – not very professional and kind of scary. Maybe you should make those the same color so it would appear more solid, aesthetic-looking(sp?), and professional. Otherwise, I thought it was a great site and would be proud to do online business with a company whose website were as thoughtfully done as yours.
Frances Clemons
Webmaster
http://www.hopesda.com
This is reasonable enough site, perhaps a bit crowded, but with satisfactory navigation, etc. What I did not like was the graphical images on the default page. To me they look like banners or adverts which I tend to blank. Otherwise fine!
Regards,
Bryan D Weir
http://www.TOUCHER.CO.UK
For a banking site, even for a credit union the “presence” must be one of a serious nature. I wouldn’t probably use the site for banking due to the look and feel of the site. It’s almost like going to a bank and the branch manager is wearing a purple zoot suit with a yellow hat. You have a nice website, but a poor internet presence. Give your site that “gray pinstripe” look and I believe you will get the traffic and usage of the site that you desire.
Roderick Rowser
http://www.esmtechnology.com
I’d make the home image smaller and crisper and pull up the lower banners a little higher.
Then add a quick log-in form & button for people who are in a hurry.
Other than that everything seems to load pretty fast which is always a plus in money matters.
Sean Collins
As soon as I hit popup I clicked out.
Jeff McElhattan
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