Greetings!
I checked out the site - good job overall! I've broken my comments
into three sections, 'Questionable' bits, 'Good' bits, and a site
walkthrough. First, the 'Questionable' parts of the website:
Questionable:
'affordable vs discount' in tagline - pick one and stay with it.
Also, add the tagline to your <title> tag, it'll help with being
indexed in search engines. Google especially considers the title tag
in ranking searches.
Not quite sure of the reason for this link - why the Google re-direct?
<a href="://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.tanee.com">
'about us' on every page is overkill. Create about us page, linked
from a short paragraph about how cool you are.
dead periwinkle borders - at full screen browsing, most of the page is
periwinkle. Odd. Not bad, just odd.
Fixed width tables - hard on smaller screens, requires side-scrolling.
Some folks still run less than 800x600 resolution. Make sure the
site is easily viewable at 640x480.
Use of the 'font' tag - consider defining a Style Sheet for your page
and using default styles for paragraphs, headings, and so on. Easier
to maintain.
No 'alt' tags for the images. Alt tags make it easier for search
engines to index the page.
No Character Encoding detected! To assure correct validation,
processing, and display, it is important that the character encoding
is properly labeled.
http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html
You should make the first line of your HTML document a DOCTYPE
declaration, for example, for a typical HTML 4.01 document:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
Even after adding the character set and HTML DOCTYPE, it still does
not validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional. This is going to make it hard
to index by search engines, and will cause the rendering to vary on
different browsers.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tanee.com%2F&charset=us-ascii+%28basic+English%29&doctype=HTML+4.01+Transitional
Now, for the good parts of the website (most of it, really):
Good:
Consistent style (Excellent, actually)
Consistent navigation (well done)
Good clean layout - not a lot of fluff. Easy to find what I'm looking
for.
Clear text and images
Walkthru:
I open the site, and the first thing that strikes my eye is the large
black area above the logo. Draws the eye to the top, not the bottom
where the content is. Ok, found the content - lets see what you have
to say.
Labor Day promotion doesn't offer me anything - no free shipping, no
guaranteed delivery if ordered by such and so date...
Scrolling down - Wow! Look at all those shades. I'm going to click
on a couple of em...
Nice image there - big, clear. Maybe you might want to have a second
image showing a different view of the shades. Good ad copy on the
right.
Ok - back to the home page. Say, whats this? More info at the
bottom? Man, I almost missed this. Hey - that's good info on history
and fitting of sunglasses. Sure wish that was linked up near the top,
so I could have found it easier. Maybe if you moved, shrunk or
removed the Flash animation and put up a right-side menu of separate
pages detailing the history and fitting of sunglasses, it'd be more
clear. Content is king, after all.
Ok - now I'm at the bottom of the page. Looks like this footer is a
link...
<click>
Hmm. The logo was the same as the one at the top, but now I'm at a
different page. Where'd all the info go? It just says 'Showcase'.
Well, there's the shades, and that's what I'm looking for.
Ordering is quite straight forward, as you'd expect with a Yahoo!
store.
Overall, a good effort. Definitely 'Beta' quality. A bit more
polishing and a fine tooth comb thru the ad copy, and you'll be ready
for your '1.0' release of the site. Nice work.
Further Resources:
Useit.com - Usability and WebDesign:
http://www.useit.com/
Particularly, Alert Box May 2002:
Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html
and
Ten Good Deeds in Web Design (you're already doing many of them!)
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991003.html |
