Overall, the site design is unpleasant to the eyes. The background is nice, and not too distracting, but is quickly overshadowed by the use of red and blue on top of it. This is a bad choice of color schemes. Look away from the site, and then look back, and see how long it takes your eyes to focus on the red print. Blue is historically a link color, and can be a distraction when used in the manner that this site uses it. I pick on reds and blues, because my company uses that color scheme, and wanted the intranet to be like this too, so I had a heck of a time making it work together. (See screenshot of my corporate intranet’s self help section which is all data driven using an SQL backend, your comments back are always welcome. You will notice the manner by which white space is used to separate the reds and blues).
The organization of the shopping experience needs a lot of improvement, including setting up thumbnails instead of lists. Don’t be afraid to use the ASP power your host provides to better utilize your database to present items more efficiently. Also, don’t be afraid to use white space to separate the reds and blues a bit. I have provided more comments below specific to the design.
Specific Comments:
1) The products page/catalog could use some help for sure. I would suggest using thumbnails to review multiple products at once… (Something similar to 1800Flowers.com) The products listed are not so numerous so as to prohibit this type of online catalog. I personally don’t care to shop at an online retailer when I don’t get a quick glimpse of the products through thumbnails right away.
2) The text links throughout the products page are hard to see on multiple levels. On one hand, the regular link color is too light, and gets lost in the background. Two, the visited link uses a bright red, which is a bad color choice against a predominantly blue site. (Reds and Blues are difficult to make work together. Three, the Active link color is green, which appear completely out of place against the red, pink and blues.
3) There is blue underlined text on the home page. This led me to believe it was a link, since that’s the default scheme for a link, and no precedence has been set on the site yet, as to what thee text links will look like.
4) The register page uses port 8947 to access. This is fine on most Internet connections, but that port is disabled by a lot of firewalls by default, and would thus be inaccessible (such is the case with my work)
5) The shopping experience as a whole seems confused… The “Store Directory” Page is unneeded, because that information could be included on the products page.
6) Also, the example given on the search page produced no results. It is best to give an example of a product that works. If you tell people an example of mug works better than mugs, then have a mug product that will show up if I search for “mug”. If I went straight to the search page without really knowing what to look for, then I would think you sold mugs (amongst other things) but can’t even search for mug. (I know this seems lame, but is actually a pretty strong marketing technique.)
7) Another good marketing technique is to always have a promotion available. There were none listed when I reviewed the site.
(I know marketing isn’t a design aspect, but it can affect the overall experience, and after all, aren’t we trying to improve the stickiness of the site?)
8) Once I get to the product pages, it is 2 clicks to get back to your contact info. This should always be one or less… (Click one is to home page, and click 2 is to the contact page.)
I wish you all the best of luck, and look forward to seeing improvements.
Kindest Regards,
Jacob
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