Thank you for inviting me to evaluate your website. I have worked on this with the checklist on http://www.waller.co.uk/usability16.htm.
1. Good First Impression
The URL is good; the site comes up quickly, and there is some useful content to read well within the required 8 seconds. It is attractive.
2. Friendly Image
There is a lot of information on the homepage, but the key stuff is visible at the first display. The font is easy to read with good contrast. The images are fine with the correct ALT= statements. At a quick glance the code seems technically sound.
The homepage does not contract elegantly to accommodate visitors with 640 or smaller display windows, and by the same token will not print correctly. Indeed the subsequent pages are even less satisfactory in this regard, too wide even for 800 wide displays.
3. Easy Navigation
Very good consistent navigation with text links top and bottom, search tool and good sitemap.
4. Useful Content
Clear objective and target audience Excellent content and usefully arranged. It seems to be regularly updated. I like the New Products box. I have not tested the shopping cart – I assume that it works and is friendly. And that the goods actually will get delivered to Goring-by-Sea in the UK if I wanted.
5. Appropriate for Audience
Very good.
6. Clear Contact Information
The contact information is at the bottom of the Contact page. It is curious that you have two links to this page: About Us, and Contact. I would like to have seen the contact information on the bottom of every page in case someone wants to print the page for future reference. And the telephone number on the homepage is an image so I cannot copy and paste into my telephone dialler.
7. Good for Search Engines
Betty Lukens is mentioned in the META statement and I don’t know who she is. The name of the company The Felt Source is not shown in text at all on the homepage that I can see. Nor has the company logo got a ALT= statement. The search engines will perhaps take it from the TITLE statement so all is not completely lost.
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I wish you success with your website. I hope you feel these comments are useful. This brief evaluation service is provided free to local companies here as my personal contribution to effective communication on the Internet.
Richard Waller
www.waller.co.uk
www.goring-by-sea.uk.com
Peer reviewers volunteer their time and effort to help other site owners with their websites. Please take time to visit this reviewer’s site and say that you think what they’re doing is valuable to the web business community. If you’d like your site reviewed, send an email to editors@www.murdok.org.
