Hello swisscheese-ga!
I thought it would be apropros for me to tackle this question, since
I've actually done this very task for a living in the past [utilizing
the skills you've required]. I'm going to start on a broad level, so
you can ascertain the fundamental reasoning I'm using to approach your
web site. You can then apply this reasoning to future modifications
and improvements to your site. Please take what I say below as my
personal opinions and suggestions, and by no means an attack on what
you are doing or have done. I commend you for an extremely
interesting and pioneering idea!
SITE AESTHETICS & ACCESSIBILITY
===============================
Assuming the mind of a customer, I've got 3 primary issues typically
at stake:
Get my job done well.
Get my job done the cheapest.
Get my job done the fastest.
GOOD, FAST, CHEAP. I'll call it the GCF Model. A customer wants all
of these things, but is normally forced to pick any two; one will
generally be at the expense of the others. If it's good and fast, it
may not be cheap. If it's cheap and good, it may not be fast. The
savvy company will work to satisfy its customer's demands as
professionally as possible on all 3 fronts. Everything from company
information, marketing, web sites, product processes... EVERYTHING
must have the customer's goals of GCF in mind.
In the case of eMachineShop, your primary clientele avenue is your web
site, so we need to assess if a prospective customer can attain his
goals.
Now-a-days, we live in a fast-paced society. So in most
circumstances, a customer wants to wait the absolute LEAST amount of
time to get his job done or get his product produced. This is human
nature. Would you rather wait in line at the restaurant or be seated
now? Would you rather wait for a web site to load, or have it loaded
right now?
The essence of proper marketing caters to the "instant-on"
attention-deficit nature of a customer. You've got a VERY small
window of time to capture a person's interest. We're talking seconds.
Watch how people flip through channels on the TV or radio -- if the
visuals or audio doesn't capture a person's attention in that window,
you've either A) lost him as a customer, B) frustrated him, or C)
both.
What's my point?
Think of your web site as an interactive advertisement. It has to
quickly grab a customer's attention and get him to where he wants to
be, NOW. If there is any frustration, people *simply don't want to be
bothered*. People don't want to have to hear, "Thanks for calling
XYZ... press 1 for this, press 2 for that, press 3 for the other."
They want to press 0 to get to the darn operator and talk NOW. :) If
it requires any more effort than is absolutely necessary, they don't
want to be bothered. They want it fast.
How do we achieve this? Using a "Less is more," streamlined design w/
your site.
The mass public generally doesn't have the patience to read. No one
wants to read the manual to their new cordless phone. They want it to
just work. They don't want to be bothered with minutiae, details,
50-pages of info, etc. They subsconsciously ONLY WANT TO SEE what is
ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to getting the product made GOOD, FAST, and
CHEAP.
When I visit eMachineShop, the first thing that comes to my mind --
even subconsciously -- as a customer is, "I don't know what to look
at." There's simply a lot of text on the front page. I don't know
what to look at first, because I'm not TOLD what to look at first.
This is EXTREMELY important to effective marketing design. I want to
see a title, a heading, and the least amount of text necessary to tell
me what this site does. Then I want the least amount of
point-and-clicking to getting there.
If we were to zoom in on a customer's subconscious mind when seeing
the home page right now, here are some questions being formed in the
first few seconds to determine what it is he wants to do:
Should I read the bottom part first? DO I need to read the bottom
part first? What about the heading? Is this important to read? Or
should I just look at the pictures? But wait, there's a menu over on
the left. Should I look at that first? Ooo... a FAQ, let me just go
there, all of the answers are normally in one place. That should
answer all my questions. I don't want to read all this. But wait,
here are some headings down below... ahh, HEADINGS... low cost,
instant pricing, easy and convenient... but.. what is this place
again? Should I sign up right this minute? They have a sign-up thing
here? Yeah, right over to the left... but wait, I don't want to
sign-up yet, I don't know if I have to pay to sign-up! Maybe I should
just email them and ask them exactly what it is I want. Oh, let me
just read the FAQ.. I'm familiar with FAQ's.... etc., etc.
Instead of being harnessed in that extremely important first few
seconds, I'm frustrated, because I don't know where I'm supposed to
go, or what is the best choice to make first. Too many options
intermingled w/ too much text. If there are going to be a lot of
options, they typically have to be incidental to the one or two MAIN
options. Same with text and graphics. Simplicity and elegance go
hand-in-hand.
In general, on a conscious level, a person only want to concentrate on
one thing at a time.
Look at www.apple.com for an example. Do you see how clean it is in
terms of what you're presented with? It could even be cleaner, but
the idea here is that
you've got this huge, clickable, highly accessible thing right in the
middle that is CALLING you to click it. Everything else is secondary
to that ONE THING. A clean design is a professional design. The best
melodies [hits] are often the simplest. It has to appeal to the
child-like "lead me exactly where I need to go" spirit in every
person.
Other examples of opening pages:
Volkswagen
http://www.vw.com
Federal Express
http://www.fedex.com
Acura
http://www.acura.com
I'd remove the benefits section and the menu on the left from the home
page altogether.
As a main entry page to your site, I would suggest taking that "How it
works" section, overhauling it, and putting it front and center. I
would change this to 3 separate, illustrated graphics w/ a blurb of
text underneath each graphic, separated by arrows pointing from
process 1 to process 2 to process 3. You could word some of the main
benefits into these graphics/blurbs. Then place a "Get Started / Get
More Info" button underneath it. And that would be primarily it for
your main entry page. A catchy slogan would help as well. "Get it
made. Online." "Designed online by you. Machined by us. Shipped to
you door." Then, once they click on the "Get Started / Get More Info"
button, they're taken to another page that is equally easy. Option
one could be, "I know how this works, I need to download software."
The other option could be, "Tell me more about this place." Then you
could list the benefits under that option, and more about what it is
that you do. FAQ-like language helps. These are just rough ideas.
Graphically, I think the site is OK, but with some finer attention to
image creation, layout, and fonts, it could definitely be raised a few
quality notches [in my opinion]. People notice these things, even if
subconscious, and details are everything. Looks are extremely
important in displaying a professional image.
Your Equipment link is good. Nice and clean. Each item very
accessible. Ditto on the products page.
FAQ page could be cleaned up in this regard. Lot of text... don't
know what to look at.
Your Support link is comprehensive, but I would put your phone number
and email address front and center. People couldn't care less about
anything else in most cases. They just want help *now*, and
preferably on the phone.
Contact page has too many options/email address, but it's good that
you have your phone number at the top. I would definitely make that
more prominent however; that and your PRIMARY email address. People
don't want to have to calculate what email address they need to email.
Could be a source of frustration.
Demo link is quite good. Clear, descriptive, pictorial.
These "Contact Us" links are dead:
http://www.emachineshop.com/contact.htm
[at the bottom of the Career Opportunities page]
http://www.emachineshop.com/company/search.htm
[at the bottom of your search page]
You might want to check all your links to make sure they're working.
I tried calling your corporate phone number, and it greets as "Micro
Logic." Might want to have that changed to eMachineShop, as
psychologically people want to feel like they've actually REACHED
eMachineShop.
I'd be happy to supply a full web re-design strategy in a different
question/arrangement.
PRODUCT FUNCTION & ACCESSIBILITY
================================
The concept of a freely downloadable CAD program is excellent.
However, I think it's extremely important to offer the ability to have
the CD freely snail-mailed physically to customers, preferably with a
welcome kit. Some people literally don't have the "downloading thing"
down yet. Still others like to read it all on paper. I would also
think about getting the software ported to the Macintosh platform as
well, since a lot of design work is done on that platform [right now,
you're completely cut off from that market].
There are people [one of whom I know personally] who are not really
easily capable, for one reason or another, of using the software, but
want to get their product machined. How does he do it? Does your
company offer the ability to submit "old-fashioned" design plans on
plain old graph paper? I think this should be an option -- and an
emphasized one at that -- since you will have people that are scared
of, incapable of, or impatient with learning/using a new software
package -- even if it's easy.
I haven't been able to use the software yet [as noted below], but it
has to be EXTREMELY easy to use... for the absolute novice. Assume
the costumer knows next to nothing. Your goal is to not just reach
computer-savvy individuals, but non-savvy ones as well. You have to
reach your common denominator.
Here's some things I ran across in the installation:
There was some confusing information as to how to access the program
once installed. It should simply say something like, "Simply
double-click the eMachineShop icon that's now on your desktop" or
preferably load it automatically.
For the "Click and move one of the shapes to test video card..."
option, the shapes should be moveable by clicking and holding the
inside of the shape, as well as the outside of it. It's just the
outside now, and it's frustrating if you try to move it from the
inside. I thought it wasn't working for a few seconds. It was my
original inclination to try and move the shapes by clicking and
dragging from the inside of the shape -- and I'm someone who has
worked with things like PhotoShop, QuarkXPress, and Word. A complete
novice might be stumbled by this.
After updating the price list, and clicking "update," it repeatedly
reprompted me to do it again, after I had just done it. And it
wouldn't let me exit that prompt, so this as far as I got with the
software.
I'll be happy to evalute the software if you can get me going with it.
Search Terms:
"less is more" web site design
Additional link:
http://www.reddotsmartcontent.com/e_article000084768.cfm |
