Website Reviews Blog

Spiritualism, Transformation, Enlightenment

2006-03-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

This is a personal website of Michaela Scherr, a personal transformation coach. Her goal is to help others to achieve inner peace in their lives. The author is a great writer and has alot of cool content to share.

First Impression
Initially, I was really confused of what the website was trying to say. To be truthful, it took me quite a while to figure out what was going on. My observation is that there are 3 forces competing for attention in the site. The author wrote alot of content, trying to tell the reader what "transformation" is all about. There are also 3rd party advertisements and Pay-Per-Click Ads, meaning that the author is into online advertising and business. Lastly, the author is also trying to promote her own e-book and services. The author needs to rethink what she wants to achieve with the website and concentrate on building a theme.

Theme
The colors, fonts, graphics and layout need to gel together to express a common idea. At the moment, things are flying all over the place and I do not experience any peace at all!. If I am the website designer, I might probably work on 2 concepts, "spiritual growth" and "inner peace". Light colors are probably the way to go. Simple layout with lesser text and alot of space might work better than the current system. If the site is about selling the author's services, it needs to be more convincing. Perhaps more images of the author conducting classes or pics of the author might be a good idea.

Navigation
I think the top banner is taking up too much space, considering the amount of information it is conveying to the reader. The top menu is consistent but the left menu is confusing. It will be a big bonus if the left menu has lesser items so that the reader need not scroll so much. The author might also consider using shorter texts with coloured background for each in the menus. Menus in a website should only contain important links to different sections of the site.

Design And Layout
I believe any layout can be effective if information is well organized. There are too many empty spaces at the moment and it makes the website looks awkard. One example is the newsletter page where the reader just keep scrolling without anything to read. Most of the graphics used in the site are clip arts. Clip arts convey a message of "playfulness" and when used in web design, gives people an impression that the website is not serious in what it is trying to say.

There are tonnes of advertisements all over the place. The adsense advertisement on top of many webpages gives people an impression that the site is more interested in marketing rather than have something serious to sell. Promoting adsense too strongly can kill a website. People today are intelligent and they see adsense everyday. Everybody wants to earn extra advertising income but the question is how can we make people click on the ads comfortably...To do that, we must first make people feel comfortable with our site.

Coding
There are signs that the site is trying to be optimized for search engines. The problem is that the opitimization work is done at the expense of the user experience. I am not so worried about the codes at the moment because I believe there are much more important things to be done. I would fix up the aesthetics and user experience issue before looking at the code. Frontpage can produce crappy codes but I believe it can be a good tool for people without programming experience. Frontpage can also produce nice websites and it is just about understanding the software better.

Conclusion
I am a personally fan of philosophy and spiritualism and I believe that michaelascherr.com has a great content to sell. The website needs to undergo a great revamp to communicate more effectively to the end-user. The author has to rethink in what she wants to achieve with the site and set her priority. For example, if she wants good search engine traffic, she will go in the SEO direction and so on...

About the Author
Sitecritic.net Website Reviews is formed by a group of web addicts, mainly volunteers from all over the world. Our goal is to create a community of web designers and developers who share the common interest in bringing out the best in creatiing effective web sites.

BBC News website

2006-03-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

The BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, aka the Beeb or Auntie to its friends is the UK most important media organisation funded through licence fees producing TV and Radio programmes for the UK and internationally. The volume of what the BBC produces is truly gargantuan, with eight TV channels and eleven main radio stations, plus local programming and more commercial channels broadcasted internationally, and all this has to be represented under one website. So how does it stand up to the challenge?

Two of the most important factors are, as always, navigation and branding, but the site also wins with a good search option, functionality, and surprisingly few dead links. Let’s start with the branding, at which the BBC have been traditionally – and necessarily – excellent. Their logo and navigation bar is visible on all pages, and each channel (eg. Radio 4) and classification (eg. Arts) has their own bar with its own logo and look which holds consistently with the BBC brand. Each of these sections has their own complimentary colour scheme – funky colours for Children’s pages and more muted colours for the ‘serious’ stuff such as news.

The consistent layout style helps to keep everything cohesive while allowing each area to maintain its unique feel and does this without falling into the trap when using content management systems of looking boxy and bland.With the volume of content - and the Beeb have decided to be enormously generous with both current and archived material - the navigation of this site is absolutely key, and the BBC’s answer has been to use a number of approaches. The major sections are always available at the top of all pages, as is a search box. On the left side of the page, a navigation bar is present and options change to fit with the context of the page.

The right hand side of the window provides useful links for recommended programmes. In true British Institution Tradition, filing has been fully embraced and one of the most useful features is to be able to browse from an a-z listing of programmes, both current and off-air. The keyword search feature works very well, though this is a section where the branding of the site seems to fall down, looking a little incongruous and clunky by comparison to the rest of the site.

The site’s best feature is the Radio Player, which opens in a new window and allows you to stream live or archived programmes using the free-to-download RealPlayer media engine. This works very smoothly, and contains its own navigation, making it incredibly easy to jump between channels using drop-down menus and a-z listings. Streamed TV clips of news, weather and programming is available though a similar method, but is less successful and the quality can be quite low. Well-maintained forums and a great deal of further information on programmes offer a feeling of depth and community to the site – check out www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers on the famous Archers radio series – there’s even an interactive map on the fictional village of Ambridge!

This is an excellent example of how to manage a massive amount of content effectively, bringing together a disparate range of programming and genres under one well-branded umbrella. The generosity of content ensures browsers return to the site regularly, and additional features really go the extra mile. As a victim of its success, some areas might be missed due to the size of the site – make sure you visit the Collective area – www.bbc.co.uk/collective which is a fantastic site on contemporary culture in the UK.

About Tim Jukes
Tim Jukes is an artist and designer, born in the UK and currently based in Berlin. He has worked in marketing for a number of years with arts institutions including Chelsea College of Art & Design and Camberwell College of Arts. He works as a freelance web and print designer and also exhibits regularly as an artist, investigating the relationship between technology and the handmade.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic Website Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Functional IT Job Website

2006-02-21T21:27:00.000-08:00

Dev Bistro is a community resource that lets you search and post Web Development and other Information Technology jobs and find experienced IT Professionals. The job board offers free job posting and you get to contact the employer directly.

If Dev Bistro is the web equivalent of an instant coffee and a plain cheese sandwich. No fuss or fluff – functionality is at this site’s heart. The site is aimed at Web Developers rather than Designers, so in many ways this is appropriate, and I imagine dissuades irrelevant postings from designers seeking work. There is certainly no shortage of job sites out there with many features, but it is Dev Bistro’s simplicity that really appeals, and as a refreshing change, both job and resume posting is free.

Visually, the site is very plain – a grey band at the top with bland imagery is the only visual content to this site, lifted a little by orange header text, which does little to lighten the mood while I do my least favourite task of searching for work. However, this is combated by a nice, open layout and very simple navigation using rollover buttons with alt tag descriptions. Plenty of white space is given throughout the space which allows Dev Bistro to avoid the feeling of claustrophobia given off by most job sites.

Posting jobs and resumes is very straightforward and fast, which will appeal to both busy souls in human resources and jobseekers tired of jumping through several pages to post a simple profile. The text-based HTML site works well with Google and will push up posters’ profiles in search engines, which is always an appealing plus to anyone. Speaking of Google - there are a number of ads by Google on evry page in a similar style to the overall layout which sometimes proves a little confusing.

The search function of the site feels very solid and efficient, allowing the user to search jobs or resumes by keyword, location, expertise, etc. Results are shown in a table with the row background colours alternating white and grey, making it easy to hunt through a long list.

If you start to tire of looking at jobs, Dev Bistro provides some other reading information in the form of articles aimed at developers and walkthroughs of interview questions. This section seems to be steadily growing and should prove to be a very useful resource for the programming community. The wide range of interview questions and answers are practical, clear and thorough and will help people prepare properly for the jobs they are seeking.

Dev Bistro isn’t the looker of the web world, but plays well to its strengths and should serve its community well. This community has been clearly identified and catered for, reflected in the site’s solid design and no frills approach - its simplicity of use contrasts heavily with other more corporate sites and works in a refreshingly straightforward manner.

About Tim Jukes
Tim Jukes is an artist and designer, born in the UK and currently based in Berlin. He has worked in marketing for a number of years with arts institutions including Chelsea College of Art & Design and Camberwell College of Arts. He works as a freelance web and print designer and also exhibits regularly as an artist, investigating the relationship between technology and the handmade.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Law Firm Site Review

2006-02-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Tedioli is a law firm in Italy specializing in agricultural law, general civil, commercial practice, insolvency and corporate law services. The website is extremely simple but communicates effectively to the end-users.

First Impression
We would recommend taking away the flash introduction from the homepage for 2 reasons. Firstly, it does not impress. Secondly, it does not serve its purpose. Flash can be effective but we reckoned that using it in this case is not justifiable. Once entered the site, we were looking for the company logo which we could not find. The logo speaks alot about the company and it is important to have it placed in a fixed position of the website.

Navigation and Layout
The menu and layout is simple - cool. It might be a good idea to make the menu stand out more by adding background colors, more pronounced mouseover effects...etc. This is not critical because the current system is already quite functional. The display, however needs to be re-looked. The varying image widths on the right causes the entire table to stretch and contract. They author might want to work on the image sizes or even replace them by adding quick links or texts.

Design and Content
The content of all the pages is short and sweet - good. Long stories tend to bore people easily. The images used in the site need professional help and some are inserted inappropriately. We would also like to see more images relating to customer services. The keywords in the header image could be extracted so that they are visible to the search engines. The author might therefore want to use transparent gifs instead of jpegs for the headers.

The news page should only contain news and not other things. Putting links, judgements and other sections there is not a good idea.

Because of the nature of the industry, we would expect the site to be content focus. All design elements in the site should sell the content and not distract users from reading it; We were particularly distracted by the animated gifs used in the website. As the site is not convincing in terms of its design, the company might want to consider adding a testimonial section with customer faces and quotations to boost the user confidence in the company.

Conclusion
The site is simple and is able to convey its messages easily across to the end-users. However, as a commercial law firm, we would expect some level of professionalism in their website. More work could definitely be done on the fonts, images and layout.

About the Author
SiteCritic Wesite Design and Reviews is formed by a group of web addicts, mainly volunteers from all over the world. Our goal is to create a community of web designers and developers who share the common interest in bringing out the best in creatiing effective web sites.

Visual Orange Internet Marketing

2006-02-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

Visual Orange is a Web Design, Internet Solutions and Marketing company located in Thailand. They specialize in web based solutions for e-business, targeting small to medium sized companies.

Look And Feel
When I first entered the site, my first impression was that the site had a common corporate look and that it was well planned and designed. My eyes were drawn to the striking words(logo) on the top left hand corner named "Visual Orange". The word "Visual" seemed to be emphasized and that made me think I should be expecting something visual... I then zoomed out and look at the site as a whole. The second part that caught my attention was the credit card icons in the payment section. I think exposing the payment procedures on the front page is not a good idea. It might give people a negative impression of the comapny.
I then started looking at the content which bored me easily after some scrolling. I have to agree that long text is good for SEO but bad for the end-user especially when it is in the index page. Maybe it is just me or the design of the logo, I am waiting to see some strong graphics or surprises which I cannot find any.

Navigation
The navigation is very consistent thoughout the site. The left navigation menu is simple and effective. However, the sub-menus are not easily recognized. I had to do a few clicks before I knew how to use the sub-menus. Other than lightening the blue at the side, it would help by adding some bullets, icons or even some spaces before each label.
The breadcrumb looks cool but I not too sure of the

line above it. Maybe making the line thinner of even leaving it empty might be a better idea.

While navigating the site, I stumbled across a link exhcange page, ie http://www.sitecritic.net/
The title of this page is "Link Popularity Exchange Farms"....Hang on, Did I see the word "farms"? Mmm, this term seems negative to me. Term like these is prohibited in the SEO dictionary. The company might want to manually screen through all the titles of their web pages to make sure the titles are named approriately. The special char "" looks cool but might not be a good idea to use in the title.

Design, Layout And Content
I like the spaciousness of the layout but what impresses me most is the profiles of the employees at the top right hand corner. I am not sure if I like the male in the photo, but I definitely like the concept. This is what a company should sell; the people that makes up the company. It tells their customers that the company has nothing to hid and gives them a sense of security that they are dealing with real professionals rather than some ghosts from outer space.

The contents of the web pages are pretty boring especially those that needs scrolling. Perhaps more graphics could be inserted between the text to make them look more interesting. Alternatively, the banners on the right column could be changed more frequently. Very Often, I felt like increasing the width of the content area in the centre column. There are important contents in there but not enough room to show. In the worst scenario, I would change the layout to 2 columns just to fit in the contents and that would also allow for some interplay of graphic elements as well. I am not sure who started the trend, it seems that many designers nowsadays are very scared to show off their graphic design skills.

Conclusion
Visual Orange is obviously a commercial site targeting at people who are looking for professional services. With that in mind, I thought the site could be more professional by injecting some strong visuals and portfolio to showcase their talent. I feel that the colors, font selection and layout are carefully planned but I am not yet convinced of their design skills. Would I be tempted to use their services? Not at the moment.

W3C Compliant Website That Has Great Potential

2006-02-07T05:28:00.000-08:00

limeVista is a new web design firm located in Banbury, UK. As opposed to my counterparts in Sitecritic.net, I am more of a developer rather than a designer and that makes my taste of a well-designed site different from them; I like this site because it is W3C compliant...

Theme
The use of the sectional view of a lime as a logo blends in well with the name of the domain name and the company. Lime is used alot throughout the site. I thought it could be overused. The author might want to change the banner or the bottom-right image to give some variation... The nice gradient of green used in the site is smoothing and it makes me feel like drinking lime juice when I was surfing the site!

Navigation
The layout and navigation is simple and consistent. The mouse over effect for all the links in the site is almost identical. I though the top menu can be highlighted by using a slightly different effect to show its importance as compared to the links used in the body. The hyperlinks can be named with an underscore or dash to separate the important terms. If you search for "graphicdesign" and "graphic design" in different search engines, they might all return different results. This is not terribly important but I thought it helps abit in SEO.

If the author can find a way to extract the sentences used in the banner as text, it would be even better. I thought the words used are cool and they should be visible to the search engines. Another way is to make a part or the whole banner clickable. I am very tempted to click on the banner especially when I see the word "Click".

Content and Design
Though the layout is effective, I thought certain areas could be enhanced with nice graphics. Professional pictures and icons can really make an idea stand out. For instance, when the author is talking about their design services, I would be more convinced if there are some pictures relating to design beside the words. There are times when certain sections such as "Web Design" becomes too lengthy and confusing... Again, intelligent use of graphics can help out.

The black box description that appears beside each menu when mouse over is cool. The contrast makes the descripton stand out and is very useful in providing extra information to the user.
On further inspection, this site may look like a blog site using a template. I think it is important for the designer to add in some "business touch" and make it look more like a commercial Web Design site which will give more credibility to the company.

Compliancy
The site seems to be still under construction but is already showing great signs of success in terms of the code used. All the pages are extremely light weighted and the alignment is rock solid across all browsers.

Conclusion
It is a pleasure to navigate the site though I would love to see more graphics not related to lime but related to human interaction, services, design...etc. The coding is professional and will lay a strong foundation for future changes in web technologies.

About Bernard Peh
Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Website Design and Reviews. He works with experienced web designers and developers everyday, developing and designing commercial websites. He specialises mainly in SEO and PHP work.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Personal privacy hole is a real concern

2006-02-03T15:41:00.000-08:00

OnlinePharmacy.com.au is a web store selling various prescription drugs and medications. Headquartered in Australia, the company sells over-the-counter products all over the world. Citing legal restrictions, they do not offer RX medications outside of their home country of Australia.My visit to this site began rather uneventfully, although there were a few things along the way that raised some big red flags in my mind.

Site Basics
The site design is a bit plain, and not very tidy. Nothing jumped out as absolutely atrocious during my first visit, yet nothing seemed impressive in any way either.

The company's name is the same as their Internet domain name, and they display it promptly and often - the name is in the header located at the top left of every page. Of course, their logo (or lack thereof) is really nothing to speak of. It just doesn't stand out, and the colors don't quite match up between the logo's background and the site's background around the logo, giving it an odd sort of "boxed" look. Also, the site's width and top margin jump around a lot from page to page, and are especially noticeable at higher resolutions using a large browser window.

The font type is mostly the same throughout the website, however they use bold and italic text in various places for no apparent reason. They change font sizes all over the place, and even throw in a few different colors - all on the same page - which just makes everything appear jumbled and busy.The checkout pages don't really look anything like the rest of the site, and the shopping cart is obviously some kind of add-in that maintains its own look and feel separate from everything else. Consistent, this site is not.

Overall, the image of OnlinePharmacy.com.au was sloppy, and my visit there was just plain boring - at least in the beginning. Upon further examination, I was able to identify a number of things that eventually did catch my attention; some good and some not-so-good. In fact, one particular point definitely made things interesting, and the thought of becoming a victim was rather frightening...

A Large Personal Privacy Hole
A large personal privacy hole exists in the checkout functionality of this website. While credit card purchasing appears secure, the personal information side of things is definitely weak in the security (if you can even call it that) department. When it comes to keeping personal information safe, this site truly misses the mark.

After having selected some items for purchase and entering the check-out process, there is a page where you enter your personal information. (Not credit cards at this point; rather your name, street address, phone number, etc.) This is where the big problems exist. Instead of maintaining a "traditional" account with a username and password, this site simply allows you to recall a profile by entering an email address and a last name. That's it? You only need an email address and last name to pull up a whole personal profile? Yep. Scary, isn't it? That's insecurity at its finest, and just a plain-old bad idea.

The Upside To This Website
There are a ton of products available for purchase, and a lot of medical information put into layman's terms on this site. The site is fairly easy to navigate, and they have a very comprehensive F.A.Q. to help you get started. Oh, and at least the credit card area is secure using SLL/128bit encryption. Of course, you must ask yourself, "Would you trust a company with your financial information that is so irresponsible with your personal information?"

The Big Picture
OnlinePharmacy.com.au has a good idea and a ton of products at a great price. However, they desperately need the assistance of an Internet security specialist and a professional web designer. This web business has potential, but I just can't get over that security hole and how sloppy their presentation is. If their electronic store is this "dirty" and they are this careless with other peoples' information, what does that say about the quality of their products and services? Remember, they're in the medical/pharmaceutical field, where cleanliness, quality and privacy are supposed to be priority #1. Ouch.

About Dan Lineaweaver
Dan Lineaweaver is Chief Consultant with Skyward Thought, a hi-tech creative services company located in Jonestown, PA near Harrisburg. Dan has been in the industry for over 11 years writing software on and off the Internet, and developing creative solutions for companies large and small throughout the world. Dan regularly works with programming and database architectures such as .NET and SQL Server, as well as creative tools such as Sony Vegas for audio and video editing, Adobe Photoshop, and various others. To learn more about Dan and Skyward Thought please visit http://www.skywardthought.com/ or email Dan at danl@skywardthought.com.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Melbourne University Website Review

2006-02-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

Over the years, the University of Melbourne has established itself as one of the finest in Australia, if not the world. This website provides comprehensive information on everything you want to know about the Melbourne University.

First Impression
The gracious logo in the middle captured my attention when I first entered the site. The clever interplay between blue, white and multi-racial images communicates well to the end user of what the web site is trying to sell, the quality of their services. Actually, I am convinced that this school is the best simply by just visiting the home page. This is a good example of a well-designed academic site.

Design and Navigation
The navigation is well organized. Extreme care is taken not to clutter the pages with too much information. However, the switch from 3-column to 2-column layout and vice versa in some pages sometimes confuses the user. I thought the mouse-over effect could be made more effective by avoiding yellow background as the hover. Some of the inner pages uses underlined red effect which I think is better....But then again, it is just me and may not work for everyone.

At times, the left menu seems to drop down a little which seems odd but most of the time, the menu is well aligned. All the information is organized and separated by using green dotted borders, making it easy for the user to read. However, I was abit confused with the sub-menus within each categories. I thought they might be easier to read by adding simple bullets or graphics. The images used are also appropriate and touched up nicely which again shows the professionalism in designing the site.

The only part that I really do not like about the site is the footer...I think too much information is given there and most of them are useless to the end user.

Conclusion
Overall the website has been well structured, consistent and precisely presented. I hope more academic sites can follow the footsteps this one.

About Joe Edwards
Joe Edwards is a freelance web designer, currently staying in Adelaide. He is one of the core designers of sitecritic.net. As a crazy soccer fan, he spends most of his weekends watching the ESPN channel.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Web design flawed, but content solid

2006-01-30T04:34:00.000-08:00

At first glance, I was certain I would be disappointed with my experience at scribbleskidsart.com. While their name and logo are simple and their message clear, my first take on this website would not exactly be defined as highly impressed. However, after a time, my opinion of this website changed for the better...

Overall Look and Feel
The home page design reminded me of something thrown together by an amateur website designer in their spare time using the most basic three color template available. The overly simple blue leftbar and plain white body with virtually no formatting leaves the visitor initially unimpressed.

As I perused the website, I noticed that any formatting present was primarily either a simple left-aligned paragraph or centered text. Everything is displayed using a relatively medium-large, boring font, and page headings usually contain some simple, yet relevant clipart. Most pages are sectioned out by basic red horizontal lines. Some of the pages displaying multiple pieces of artwork look a little sloppy, as the graphics were not cropped to common sizes.

The overly simplistic nature gave me the feeling that this site was designed for five year olds. It's definitely no corporate masterpiece. Then it dawned on me...that's exactly who it was designed for! It is consistent and simple - even if boring and a little messy at times - and even the most novice web user would most likely understand what they're looking at right away.

Moving Around the Site
Navigation is extremely simple. There is so little to the style and design of the site that it's just-plain-easy to get where you want to go. All of the main topics are listed on the left, and most pages have clear blue hyperlinks within the body text that take you to the next logical place you would want to visit. There's nothing confusing about this website at all.

If a link takes you away from scribbleskidsart.com, they present the target website in a new window, keeping your visit to this website intact. Nice touch and properly done in that respect.

Strength of Content; Power in Ideas
What made my visit to this website truly intriguing was the nature of the content. There's just a lot of stuff to read and look at, and a lot of offerings in the way of contests, art education, art history, articles, and other resources. They are targeting youth artists, and seem to stay true to their mission. There is wealth of knowledge here, and you're not flooded with advertisers and sponsors at every turn. This site is also obviously always evolving and current. Nothing felt stale. Monthly awards offered by this website to various contest winners ranging from art supplies to blue ribbons and a place in their "Hall of Fame" for things such as "best artwork" and 'first to answer the monthly quiz correctly" keep their visitors coming back and contributing to this growing community of young artists.

Conclusion
The website's content is right on the mark for its target audience. If you're under 18 and an artist or interested in art, then this website has something to offer you and there is true value to the information held within. I highly recommend spending more than a few minutes browsing its pages.That being said, this site could use a major design overhaul by a professional website developer. There's a ton of potential here. A touch of real art-in-design could turn this diamond-in-the-rough into a real gem!

About The Author
Dan Lineaweaver is Chief Consultant with Skyward Thought, a hi-tech creative services company located in Jonestown, PA near Harrisburg. Dan has been in the industry for over 11 years writing software on and off the Internet, and developing creative solutions for companies large and small throughout the world. Dan regularly works with programming and database architectures such as .NET and SQL Server, as well as creative tools such as Sony Vegas for audio and video editing, Adobe Photoshop, and various others. To learn more about Dan and Skyward Thought please visit http://www.skywardthought.com/ or email Dan at danl@skywardthought.com.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

An Artistic and Resourceful Website

2006-01-26T19:18:00.000-08:00

The Drawing Center is a dedicated online art gallery that blends historical and contemporary art. This website can be a good resource for all creative artists.

Home Page
The front page invites the user to venture into the neat and clean website. The colors used in the site is very calming, consisting of red and grey. The logo is text based and eye soothing as well. Navigating the site is a pleasure which can be simplified to match with the overall theme of the site. However, I realized that the page alignment could be more effective in higher screen resolution.

Inner Pages
- Simple and multi facilitated menu on top of the page for easy navigation.
- Vivid fonts with excellent color combination for titles, sub titles, links etc goes well with the theme.- Consistent standard footer.

Content
The site is very informational. From exhibitions, publications to membership details, it basically covers everything that an artist would like to know. The intelligent use of images and photographs on different categories breaks the monotony of the site and gives extra value to the text. Though the contents are well presented, I would like to see abit of variation in terms of color or layout because after spending 15 mins reading the text, I felt abit bored.
The name of the web designer or design company at the footer could have been avoided. Let the work speak.

Conclusion
This website has succeeded in the artistic representation of the subject, giving full justice and launching pad to prevailing art in the ancient backdrop. However, more design elements could be used to spice up the site. I really hope to see more surprises.

About the Author
Joe Edwards is a freelance web designer, currently staying in Adelaide. He is one of the core designers of sitecritic.net. As a crazy soccer fan, he spends most of his weekends watching the ESPN channel.This article is accurate at the time writing and is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Nice Craft Site: Knitty.com

2006-01-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

Knitty, the quarterly publication, is dedicated to the art of knitting. Members can find patterns, articles, and tools related to the craft. Kitty.com is a nice website for the knitting artist or hobbyist and is packed full of information – though navigation the site may be a bit of a challenge.

Branding
The Knitty brand is very effective for the particular subject matter at hand. The logo exemplifies creativity in a casual text, with a witty tagline “little purls of wisdom”. The logo and tagline are prominent on each page, creating a consistent brand. In my opinion, the name and presentation is an excellent choice and is easily remembered by a passerby.

As the user ventures off of the homepage, the brand encounters a few hiccups. The “Feedback” page, for instance is nothing like the other interior pages.

Design
The design of the website is a 3-column design with top, left and right navigation. The homepage is predominantly allocated to a large photo, expressing a featured project in the current issue. In my opinion, this is a huge waste of valuable real estate. I would recommend scaling down the photo and adding some descriptive text and links that correspond to the particular issue – similar to what is found on the “Features” page.

There also seems to be unnecessary space separating the three columns. This type of padding actually breaks up the page and makes it seem incomplete. I would like to see a border on the right and left of the column, with the three columns flush to their respective anchor elements. For example, push the right hand column up, making it flush with the navigation bar.

The vibrant color scheme promotes the site objective and gives it a fun but dignified feel. The color scheme for the left and right columns, mainly black background with white text, could use some attention. Trying to read white text hosted on a black background puts quite a bit of strain on the eyes. The text itself is presented in a non-standard font and adds to the difficulty in reading. I do like the effect the black gives in relation to the remainder of the presentation; however, I think it can be placed elsewhere in a less important area to achieve the same effect. I recommend creating some section within the body, possibly to highlight a feature and use the black/white color combination. A little of this goes a long way.

The interior pages of the website follow the lead of the home page, with one exception. The “Feedback” portion of the site is nothing like any other page. I highly recommend replacing this page with one that fits with the theme of the other pages.

Navigation
The navigation on the website is fairly straightforward and easily accessible. The top navigation links directly to interior pages without the need of dropdowns or sub-category menus. The left and right hand columns on the home page house additional ‘feature’ options as well as legal and other standard informational links.

Though the navigation is easy to understand, the choice of using non-standard fonts makes all navigation areas difficult to read. Even at a resolution if 800X600, words and links are difficult to decipher. Though I like the choice of fonts, I would like to see their use minimized in order to create a more user-friendly interface. These fonts would be appropriate as attention grabbing text (in a larger font size) and would aid in the overall feel of the website.

Advertising/Promotion
Knitty does not show any type of self-promotional areas on the home page, or include any standard section on any interior pages. I would like to see more attention drawn to joining the members’ area and even submitting articles. The existence of the “Knitty Shop” is left to the user to discover. Simple advertisements are a great way to promote areas such as these, and one doesn’t need to be a master at marketing to develop them. For example, a simple ad with the words “Shop Knitty Now” with a nice little graphic and call to action would work well – especially if it appeared on each interior page in addition to the home page.

Advertising and promotion are very easy to accomplish. Self-promotion may not turn your business into a goldmine, but any advertising is better than none.

Conclusion
Knitty.com has the right attitude and outlook for creating a very nice, community driven website. With some attention to problem areas, such as fonts, lack of advertising, information flow (particularly for the home page) and some color considerations, the website could easily come together as a nice presentation for the art of Knitty. This website is loaded with information and any knitting artist or hobbyist would be in heaven.

About the Author
Leslie Fredericks-Leamon has been in the web design business for 8 years. During that time she has freelanced as well as taken full-time in-house design positions. Currently Leslie runs a freelance operation under the name of Muz Media, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What started out as primarily a web and graphic design studio, Muz Media has turned focus onto other aspects design and development, such as multimedia, SEO and online marketing, and integrated them into the business, bringing many important elements of web-presence to our clients without the politics of a large advertising agency.http://www.muzmedia.com/This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Wow Website

2006-01-19T18:38:00.000-08:00

Lego.com is a reputed online toy store and community website with very handsome traffic. The journey throughout website is exciting and I am sure many kids will be attracted by it.

At a first glance
At a first glance, the website looks very cool, giving the user a pleasant impression. Flash animation is part of the website, although the website is still loading very fast. The logo and graphics look awesome and striking. Anyone can understand what they are trying to say and the service that they are providing.

Branding
Lego.com brand is uniform throughout the website. The top menu is consistent for each and every web pages, providing a cool surfing experience. Relevant colorful icons are used in the top menu to enhance the navigation system. The web site is designed for English and Deutsch version and it looks extra-ordinary on each and every page.

Design
Overall, the design is clean and neat. Creative Images and colorful icons drive the theme of the site. Flash Animation on the homepage shows that the website is updated on a regular basis.
The color balance is good and very effective for catching the user's attention especially for kids. All the images are optimized very well and the positioning of each images are planned properly.

Navigation
The Navigation system looks very nice, but from SEO point of view, it is not suggested to use images in the navigation system. Alt tag is not used on images. But, other than that, it is awesome. - The Quick links enhances the navigation system. It provides all the necessary links to user with different topics like products, club, shop and legoland.

- The Powerful search facility provides easy solution for users to find stuffs on website. There are 2 search boxes, one on top and the other at the bottom section of the site.

Promotion
There are 2 sections on their homepage that are reserved for product promotion. The Featured product is packaged in an attractive flash animation, which is update regularly. "What's New" is a section that includes promotional news with images and links which is again, another good example of product promotion.

Conclusion
Lego.com is very nice and the most professional looking website I ever seen. The navigation system is easy to understand, images and flash animation is extra-ordinary, simply awesome. If I were to give a rating to it, I would say 10 out of 10!

Website With Professional Touch

2006-01-17T14:33:00.000-08:00

The British Council is an organization in the UK that builds mutual cultural relations with the UK and other countries, promoting education, art, science and culture. BritishCouncil.org is an excellent, user friendly website packed full of information and visual artistry.

Branding
The British Council brand shows the prestige and interest of the organization without being presented as ‘stuffy’ or pretentious. The royal blue against a white logo is a nice contrast and sets the stage for an aesthetic theme throughout. The logo itself is simple in design yet gives the British Council a strong image.

The only brand element I would like to see, in addition to an attractive logo, is a tagline. On the home page, the words “Creating opportunity worldwide” appears to be the tagline to use, however the presentation of this may inhibit the message. (fig. 1) I specifically set out looking for a tagline and unconsciously ignored this particular header many times before finally reading it.

Design
The design of the website, a standard 2-column throughout the website. On the home page, the addition of photos and design elements create an artistic presentation though do not distract from the purpose of the website. The balance of white space to design elements allows for proper flow of information. The user is able to visually move freely from section to section without confusion or difficulty.

The color scheme consists of royal blue and various shades thereof. As one of the most popular colors, blue is known to promote calmness and relaxation, as well as professionalism. As a branding principle, this color works very well for this genre of website.

The photos are professional and relevant to content available through the website. I would however, like to see the media component transition a little smoother. The ‘jumpiness’ of the transitions can be a little distracting.

Navigation
The navigation options are straightforward and contained in easy to find areas of the website. On the home page the top navigation bar is directed toward the user’s interest in the British Council opportunities and education. The bottom navigation bar is dedicated to the organizational aspect of the British Council. By separating the interests and the organizational aspects, the user can easily navigate to any desired section.

The JavaScript menus in particular are very nice and eliminate ‘link clutter’ that is found on other websites. The design is clean and the code seems to be well managed, producing a streamline, non-glitchy menu.

One element of the navigation that I particularly like is the very top text tools that give users frequently used options such as Print, Email this page, Add to favorites, etc. (fig. 2) This feature is very nice for this type of website, and the Text only option is superb – giving access to those who have dial up access, or just wish to navigate the page without being distracted.

Once the user has left the homepage, particularly through the top navigational menu (Arts, Science, Society, etc.) the website navigation changes to topic specific navigation. (fig. 3) I like the themes and variations on specific topics, however, the main navigation from the home page no longer exists, nor is there any immediately noticeable way to get back. I would like to see at least a link that specifies “Return to the British Council Home Page” or something to that effect.

Advertising/Promotion
The advertising and promotion on the website is predominantly found throughout. On the home page, there are four components that represent good methods of self-promotion. (fig. 4) Each of these mini-sections is effective in creating user interaction by allowing them to watch a streaming video, find out what countries are involved with the British Council, send an E-card, or other. Given the unofficial 3-second rule (the online standard of interesting the audience in 3 seconds or less), the user is immediately given something of interest to ‘click’ without feeling forced to read information.

Conclusion
Overall, the British Council website provides a clean, effective, and efficient presentation method for providing the wealth of information and opportunity they provide. The organizational structure is well managed and the entire site is aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. With some minor adjustments to the navigation on interior pages (or interior sites, to be more exact) the user will have no difficulty exploring and learning.

Leslie Fredericks-Leamon has been in the web design business for 8 years. During that time she has freelanced as well as taken full-time in-house design positions. Currently Leslie runs a freelance operation under the name of Muz Media, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What started out as primarily a web and graphic design studio, Muz Media has turned focus onto other aspects design and development, such as multimedia, SEO and online marketing, and integrated them into the business, bringing many important elements of web-presence to our clients without the politics of a large advertising agency.www.muzmedia.com
This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Popular Digital Picture Frame Website

2006-01-16T20:43:00.000-08:00

Ceiva is a photoframe gadget that displays a screensaver-like slideshow of dgital images shared by friends and family. There are already some good website reviews on the company.

Content
This site immediately reminded me of the adverts that fall out of your Sunday newspaper supplements, and rather appropriately it’s for an unusual gadget. Ceiva is essentially a digital photoframe, showing a slideshow of images that can be directly uploaded from a landline (USA only), receiving images from emails or mobile phones. Whilst they have taken great care to aim the marketing to all generations, the underlying message is that it is for grandparents who don’t want a computer in the house, but want to receive images from their family.

Given this subtext, I felt the site would benefit by being pared down to reflect the simplicity and ease-of-use of the product. Instead, I felt barraged by marketing information – there is a great deal to read here for one product, and they don’t miss an opportunity to sell, sell, sell. However, the site has obviously been put together by people who know what they are doing: there is a clean, consistent look throughout the site; the Flash transitions/animations are effective; and features such as registering and uploading images work quickly and efficiently. The light blue colour scheme goes towards opening up what could be a claustrophobic site, as does the choice of stock photography, though using these anodyne images loses some of the personal touch the site could really do with. There may soon be redemption as the ‘community’ page, which mainly contains newsletters, claims it will soon have a section where people can upload their own images – this would really boost the friendliness factor.

Functionality
Navigation through all the information works very well. Simple rollovers of the main sections are on the top of every page, revealing subheaders. There is also a listed site map at the bottom throughout browsing, making it easy to hop around. There is a comprehensive FAQ section with a search option and was easy to navigate in itself.

In the members section, you are able to send images to other emails and your contacts who own the Cevia – and so is an important portal for consumers. Uploading images is very easy and a very similar process to adding an email attachment, though the site doesn’t optimise files, so if a large image is sent through, it could take a very long time for the person owning the Cevia to upload via a dialup connection. The option to upload an image to send to an email address worked quickly, though you have to hit a link to their site and view a slideshow of the uploads (including a frame promoting the product), and it is difficult to save the files. This all seems somewhat superfluous as you can easily use your email provider.

Conclusion
The site is crisp, yet cluttered and would benefit from a good editor to create more focus on the product from the start, rather than the offers. The site’s corporate look and desire to sell sometimes overshadows the message of community and warmth that the product is meant to bring. Paring down the information and giving it space to breathe would go a long way.

About the Author
Tim Jukes is an artist and designer, born in the UK and currently based in Berlin. He has worked in marketing for a number of years with arts institutions including Chelsea College of Art & Design and Camberwell College of Arts. He works as a freelance web and print designer and also exhibits regularly as an artist, investigating the relationship between technology and the handmade.This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Design and Look Taking A Back Seat

2006-01-15T20:23:00.000-08:00

The Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU) is a non-profit society which promotes Internet development in Australia for the whole community. ISOC-AU is a chapter of the world-wide Internet Society.

This is a site that clearly embraces accessibility as a key concern, stating right at the start that it supports international web accessibility guidelines - see http://www.w3.org/WAI/. Creating a site that is accessible is so important, not just so that disabled users can access the site, but also so that your message can get through to people no matter what computer, what browser, or what plugins they are using. The flipside of this is that accessible websites aren’t the most attractive of sites and can scream normality.

Accessible sites often means that a specific design or look has to take a back seat – text size, font, and hence layout need to be chosen by the user’s settings rather than the designer’s aesthetic sensibilities. That’s not to say that it’s impossible to create a beautiful and accessible site – it shouldn’t be an either/or situation – just that a lot more thought and flexibility needs to go into planning.

So, how does ISOC-AU stand up to these challenges? Design-wise, the site does look very ‘normal’ – a very simple HTML text-driven site using simple tables and anchor points and bog-basic links. The choice of colours compliment the logo, and the few photos used add a feeling of friendliness, though hovering over images with the mouse doesn’t reveal an .alt tag – this is a very useful function for blind users as speciaised browsers can be set to read out the image descriptions.

The design, such as it is, is consistent throughout the main sections of the site, but on further browsing you find pages and documents with different looks and uses of typeface. A great deal of information and resources are available and parity seems very important – meetings are minuted and accessible to all. As the site is text-based with lots of links, Google ‘spiders’ (the little mites the search engine giant uses to index pages) will love every page and is more likely to give it a good rating. Interestingly, the Society says that a similar method is used by spammers to detect email addresses and as a result, the ISOC-AU site shows all contact addresses as ‘bill(at)hotmail.com’ rather than ‘bill@hotmail.com.’ This is all well and good, though it prevents you from simply clicking on a link to email someone.

Navigation is available throughout the main headings, but clicking for more information often leads to another page with no navigation. There isn’t much ‘flow’ to the site, and it is easy to inadvertently skip to other sections. Unfortunately, as there is no breadcrumb menu (eg. Home > About Us > Objectives of the Society) and the section being browsed is not highlighted, so remembering where you are can sometimes be difficult – especially when clicking to a link for another, very similar looking site. Other solutions to this could be using frames or opening some content in a new window, however both these options have accessibility issues.

Conclusion
Sometimes a victim of its good intentions, the site clearly communicates what it is about from the start. The main sections work well, though on further browsing things can get more labyrinthine. Adding a breadcrumb menu would really help matters, as would a clearer structure and a site map. For a society focused on the internet, it’s surprising that an enthusiast hasn’t created a more effective site.

Website Review: Gostats.com

2006-01-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

When I first visited the site, I felt I understood exactly what the company did just by looking at their logo. Their name and slogan says it all. The line graph was a good choice to reinforce to the visitor that they're a statistics company above all else.

Design
Their home page design is clean for the most part, if not very exciting. Colors and fonts are consistent in their look and feel, however the bulk ads, annoying pop-ups, and links to external sites such as "Adult DVD Movies Download" gets to be a little much after a few visits. I started to wonder if these people even knew who their advertisers where or cared what kind of image and standards they projected.

As for the internal pages, things get a little ugly, especially if you have log-in problems. There is absolutely no continuity in design or font choice on the error page. The functional pages such as Profile are a bit better looking, and tend to be more consistent in look and feel.

Navigation and Ease of Use
Once you're logged-in, there is a simple menu to your left with all of your options for the site. Of course, the expectedly simple act of logging-in is rather difficult if you have a new account, since you can't use their main log-in screen right away and have to click a link on the failed log-in screen to go to another page to enter your username and password again.

While the internal features of the site are fairly straight forward, it was a bit of a chore to figure out exactly what to do next. Ads, A topic and the fields in which to enter data are all that greet the user on most pages. There are no additional descriptions of the pages' functionality or help text of any kind. Ease of use rates so-so at best.

Service
Their core service is simple enough and useful enough for most small websites needing a counter and statistical tracking. Their downloadable toolbar, which offers up instant access to your sites' hits data, is an option for some, but isn't feasible for those that don't like extras installed on their computer.

In Closing
I was not impressed with gostats.com. There are too many ads. There was a lot of amateur design errors throughout their site, it was not very user friendly, and their service just doesn't compete with the statistical tracking available with most website hosting packages available at many quality ISPs.

B & Q - diy.com Website

2006-01-12T18:08:00.000-08:00

Located in the UK, B&Q is a DIY (do-it-yourself) home improvement and garden store. The B&Q website is a good example of what a retailer should strive for on the Internet.

Branding
The B & Q brand is exceptional. It is evident that this company has taken a great deal of time to create an effective color scheme and image for, not only the company, but the website as well. Overall, this type of branding works well for the home improvement and do-it-yourself retailer.

Design
The design of diy.com is very clean and effective. Categories are nicely placed with complimenting design elements and separated into respective areas. (fig. 1) The color scheme, predominantly shades of orange and white, is enhanced by the addition of color such as green and blue. These color additions bring in and attract interest to a variety of products and areas throughout the website.

The three-column design of this website works well and divides information in a way that the user can easily navigate beyond the home page. In general, the form of this design gives the user the image of professionalism and comfort needed in an online environment.

Navigation
The navigation of this website is very clean and concise. At first glance, I was impressed at the amount of navigational options presented. The tactful use of multiple navigational elements caters to many different types of users. These elements display products and links in many different ways to attain user interest, whether the user migrates naturally to the search area, the left or top navigation, or straight to the body.

In addition to the multiple options, the navigational categories are also divided up into sections – those relevant to products and services, and those relevant to the company. This makes it extremely easy for the user to find his or her way around without having to hunt down what is needed.

Advertising/Promotion
The advertisements and promotions on this website are definitely noticeable and, above all, they are not offensive. Tactfully, diy.com has placed most advertising elements in the right hand column while various color deviations bring the offers the attention they need.

The top navigation also includes a “Special Offers” section that leads to a page dedicated to discounted merchandise, making it convenient for the user to view current deals.

Conclusion
Overall, this website has been well planned and organized. B&Q has successfully given the user an easy to use and aesthetically pleasing interface. As an online presence, diy.com shows strong branding, design – both layout and navigational, and really knows how to indulge the user.

About the Author
Leslie Fredericks-Leamon has been in the web design business for 8 years. During that time she has freelanced as well as taken full-time in-house design positions. Currently Leslie runs a freelance operation under the name of Muz Media, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What started out as primarily a web and graphic design studio, Muz Media has turned focus onto other aspects design and development, such as multimedia, SEO and online marketing, and integrated them into the business, bringing many important elements of web-presence to our clients without the politics of a large advertising agency.http://www.muzmedia.com/This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Do not forget Branding in Web Design

2006-01-10T14:50:00.000-08:00

HomepageSeek.com is a search engine and directory service that caters to smaller websites. Unfortunately, this website is in dire need of help. Any service offered has the potential to succeed, and in this case, the presentation is less-than-acceptable and puts a huge damper on prospective success.

Branding
Though HomepageSeek does have the name of the website consistently shown at the top of each page, this is in no way a brand – or even a logo for that matter. (fig. 1) In my opinion, HomepageSeek should invest in a logo – one that is professionally designed, that they can grow with. Presentation is of the utmost importance and with the lack of identity (a logo or brand) the idea being presented is one of poor quality and lack of self-respect.

Design
The design of this website is just as good as the brand, and that’s not saying much. For any type of search engine interface or directory, there must be a level of professionalism involved. This professionalism comes from a design scheme, color combinations, and tasteful graphics – none of which appear on this website.

I would like to see, in addition to a proper element of identity, directory listings contained in the body on a white background with a color scheme appropriated by the identity and logo. The yellow and red color scheme that is in existence now is difficult to read, not to mention the fact that most links are presented in all caps, which makes it even more difficult to interpret. The search element should be contained in an area, separate from the logo – as this is what most users will be utilizing. The alternate navigation contained in the “What would you like to do?” dropdown should be located conveniently at the top or bottom of the page and transformed into text links.

As it stands now, this website has no form – a two column design is barely evident, however, enhancing the separation would make a huge difference. With the addition of professional-grade graphics to replace the animated gifs, the interface could easily rival that of the competition. Furthermore, utilizing CSS for color and font allocation would save time and energy on updates and additions.

On another note, I would like to see the "recently added" links as part of a right-hand menu with some design element drawing attention to them, followed by the "smart shopping links”.

Navigation
Though it is easy to navigate through the directory, there is no real navigation. The links present at the bottom of the page seem arbitrarily placed, and the dropdown at the top would serve better as text links in a space dedicated primarily to those options. The “Hot Spots” should also have more attention directed toward them, as they are user “special interest” tools. I would also like to see the “Hot Spots” occupy a section devoted to it alone.

I do like the idea of the easy to use directory, but without a proper page design, I am reminded of MLM (multi-level marketing) internet pages that lead a user into a sea of ads, pop-ups and more pages without giving any direction.

Advertising/Promotion
As for advertising and promotion, there are no methods exhibited here. I would like to see more emphasis and calls to action on URL additions. These calls to action should be placed above the fold, aesthetically pleasing and attention drawing in design. I do see many advertisements from outside sources in typical ad format, or text links, however, more attention should be given to HomepageSeek and its services than to outside companies.

Conclusion
This website needs a great deal of help all around. I would suggest starting with a proper identity and researching the competition in order to gain a perspective on what is acceptable throughout the web in terms of design and advertising. From there, I would re-analyze the current website and bring in more form, contrast, and overall aesthetics. In my opinion, the service offered is unique and has the potential to make HomepageSeek an asset to many users, however, without the presentation this service will not be taken seriously.

Survey Scout Website Review

2006-01-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

Survey Scout is a subscription-based service that maintains and provides access to a database of paid survey companies and opportunities. Though Survey Scout does a great job explaining their service, they have forgotten their most important assets.

Branding
The Survey Scout brand is consistent throughout the entire site. The logo, located at the top of each web page, is attractive and relevant to the business image they wish to present. The tag line, “Where your "2 cents" are worth more than you think!” is clever and also relative to the service that is offered.

Though the branding is attractive and consistent, I did find myself completely ignoring it when maneuvering through the website. Since it is pushed to the very top of the browser, for me, it gets lost between the browser tools and the website navigation area. I think if the layout of the web site were reconsidered, a more suitable spot for the logo and tagline could be found.

Design
The design of the website takes a very straightforward position to convey information. On each page there is the logo and tagline, navigation bar, and a large area of informative text that includes calls to action. At the bottom of each page, a simple text navigation area and legal information links are contained inconspicuously and provide the user with another area of standard navigation.

The layout of the website is a standard body layout with no columns and centered within the browser. Considering the scope of information provided, a two or three column design may better suit this type of website. The color scheme consists of a pleasant green, gray, and white combination (the color green psychologically gives the impression of money - something the website is promoting) and works well for this genre of business.

The testimonials are buried at the bottom of the text, and are contained in a gray area, written in green type with a not-so-standard typeface - this makes the text difficult to read (fig. 1). This display of testimonials, an important marketing tool, should be in an easy to read typeface and color, since these are major selling assets for the service. I would like to see Arial or Verdana font, similar to the remainder of the text and highlighted in a white box with a green border or moved to another column and taken completely out of the information body.

In addition, throughout the website, there are very few graphics. On a web site such as this one, I would like to see professional photos of people. Bottom line - 'people' sell. When a photo is presented with a testimonial, for instance, it draws attention to the testimonial and gives the user a genuine impression and the idea of sincerity.

Overall, the aesthetic design of the website could use some work. The color scheme works, however the introduction of another color (such as orange) would do more to interest the user and, if used correctly, could make the site pop. Aside from the color scheme, I think the most important issue to re-evaluate is the layout in general. To create a successful flow of information, design elements can be used to break up large, often daunting, areas of text and give the reader information in a tactful manner. Too much text can overwhelm a potential member, causing them to abandon the site early - design elements can help to fix this problem.

Navigation
The top navigation on the site is easy to use, to the point and relatively attractive. The tabbed format makes it easy for users to navigate and know at all times where they are on the site. (fig. 2) It is consistent throughout the website and is typical in format. Users can easily locate and understand the navigational options.

In addition to the top navigation bar, the text links on the bottom of each page are common and standard in design. The area they are located in is familiar to the individual user and provides easy access to the legalities portion of the site, as well as simple navigation to deter the need to scroll to the top of a page to move throughout the web site.

Advertising/Promotion
There seem to be two main aspects of advertising and promotion on this site. First, the testimonials (fig. 1) are located throughout the website where they are positioned within body text or at the very end of a page. As stated in the Design portion of this review, I would like to see more attention directed toward the testimonials. The separation of testimonial and informative text are important for the user to get a clear picture of what the site is about and how the service can benefit the user. More specifically, I would like to see photos and testimonials in a right hand column, implementing design elements to grab attention. People in general are more comfortable reading or listening to other people's experiences than they are reading 'convincing' marketing text.

The second element, which is the most important is actually the call(s) to action located throughout the website. On the homepage, which gives the first impression of the site to the view, contains a call to action at the bottom of the page. (fig. 3) It is buried and users, given the amount of text they must read in order to get to the call to action, may never see it. I would suggest placing it within designated areas throughout the page, and follow the same discipline throughout the remainder of the web site. The call to action should be one of the first elements that the user sees. I would like to see this contained on the left, right under the logo and navigation bar in a three-column layout with appropriate design elements and directive. There is an identifiable lack of attention to the prospect of conversion. The only noticeable element relevant to the call to action is an animated gif located above the fold (fig. 4) with one major mistake - it is not user interactive and it is the only thing, other than the menu that the user may want to click on. I would like to add that the personal letter on the home page is a nice touch, though it took me many times looking at it to realize it was indeed a personal message. I think I would like a photo to accompany that section as well.

Conclusion
In general this website has good potential. The logo is nice, the color scheme is pleasing aesthetically (though I would add another color to the mix), and the information is useful and to the point. Having said this, I think Survey Scout should pay attention to overall design and try to up the ante with design elements to make their site more appealing and less daunting to the user - ultimately making the website work hard instead of the user.

About the Author
Leslie Fredericks-Leamon has been in the web design business for 8 years. During that time she has freelanced as well as taken full-time in-house design positions. Currently Leslie runs a freelance operation under the name of Muz Media, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What started out as primarily a web and graphic design studio, Muz Media has turned focus onto other aspects design and development, such as multimedia, SEO and online marketing, and integrated them into the business, bringing many important elements of web-presence to our clients without the politics of a large advertising agency.http://www.muzmedia.com/This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

SEO Company Website Review

2006-01-07T20:14:00.000-08:00

Ineedhits.com is a popular SEO company on the internet and has done alot of advertising. As a SEO company, they have good Google PR and Alexa ranking. I heard alot of stories about the company and decided to visit their website and try out their service.

Company's Image
I thought the logo is well designed. The dot on top of the "i" looks like a target and the word "hits" in red sort of emphasizes the idea of "bringing hits" for your website. By looking at the logo alone, you feel that the company has the capability to achieve great SEO result for you. The blue is also used consistently on every pages. The gradient on the navigation menu and header gives people a smooth feeling.

Design and Navigation
The navigation is very simple and easy to use. The 2 tier navigation system is effective and loads quite fast on my modem. On closer look, you will find that all the url are optimized for keywords. For example, The link for "online advertising" is http://ineedhits.com/advertising/online-advertising.aspx and so on.

Red is used effectively to highlight important news such as sales or advertisements. It is not overwhelming and does blends in well with most of the pages. The title and meta-tags for every page is also very well optimized for all the pages.

Service
They have a live chat service which is very useful if you want to find out more about their products. I asked the operator many SEO questions and it seems to me that they are more eager to sell me their products rather than telling me the details. Even their emails contain alot of links asking me to buy this and that...

I decided to sign up their Traffic Trifecta package just to test out their service. I also paid for premium submit which cost $100 in total. After a few days, the optimization was completed and I found out that only 1 of my pages is optimized for title and meta tag. I was also told later that only 1 page is optimized every month with a monthly recurring fee. I wanted to quit the the plan immediately but was persisted to stay for 3 months by their operator. The operator keeps copying and pasting her answers on the screen and that puts me off completely.

Conclusion
Overall, the site is well designed and easy to navigate. It has great appeal for people to use their services. On further investigation, I found that there were too much emphasis on marketing...you see discounts everywhere. A good website should gain the trust of the end-user and therefore should not boost or maket too much but should instead give more details of their products. (Too much advertisement is the problem with most web sites). This is only my experience, it may be different for you.

Website Reviews: Consumer Protection Company

2006-01-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

Consumer Protection Company reviews websites and programs of internet businesses with the protection of consumers in mind. They rate Online Surveys, Mystery Shopping, Ebay Auctions, Real Estate Auctions and Loans and document their findings for future individuals who may be interested in participating in these online money making opportunities.

Overall Impression
This particular design is not very appealing to my eye and I do not feel I would visit it again – instead searching out a more professional source of consumer protection services. I was not exactly certain what the site was about in the first seven seconds. I like a visual clue of what the site is about – it is the first thing I look for. The “As Seen On” logos demand more attention than the big WARNING in the middle. The logos should be reduced in size, and moved to the bottom, allowing more room for more content (a third usable column).I much prefer a fluid width design vs a fixed with a repeating filler background on a left justified design, and on this one, the background just does not match or blend with anything. The overall look and feel of this site is outdated and could do with a fresh coat of paint.

Header
The header, and the images that make it up are a bit bland. There is no logo, and with a site meant for “Consumer Protection”, I feel that should be connected to a brand. A image that connects a user with “consumer protection” would be an advantageous move – Flags are old school...

Graphical Navigation
The use of images to act on behalf of text is a no-no, why? Because search engines cannot see what the images are saying – they see nothing. Furthermore, the navigation is too big and chunky. The text on the buttons is a bit fuzzy possibly making it difficult to read for some. The only thing that makes the use of these buttons “ok” is that it is a small site – too many more of these would be overload – I would have liked to seen the blue left column extended to the bottom of the page.

Search Engine Visibility
This site makes no use of meta tags, description, or keywords – They need to think about giving an 'alt' attribute to all the images site wide, this way search engines can see the images as text.
UsabilityThe usability of this site gets a 7. The good thing about this site is it has a good amount of content – however the inside pages became very long. A bit of color blocking to draw your eye, and shorter linked pages would be better for this amount of information. I would prefer some visual elements to coincide with the information I am reading – like a call to action button or a small photo that connected me with the information.

Standards Compliance
For several years now, web development has been moving over to and CSS for layout and presentation. This site was marked up in tables, which is not a great idea in the long run. They produce messy code, are not compliant with current standards and are slow loading. This site did not validate as HTML in the W3C validation tool – there was no DOCTYPE listed in the markup – standards adherence is key to a winning site, and unfortunately this one completely misses with 38 errors.

Download Time
I found each page on the site to download very quickly on a Cable modem, but would assume a heavier pull on 56K due to the use of so much imagery in the frame of the design.

Hyperkit Graphic Design

2006-01-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

Hyperkit are young London-based graphic designers Tim Balaam and Kate Sclater who create websites and print work for art, design and architecture firms.

Hyperkit.
Graphic designers for artists, designers and architects. With a name and a client base like that you somewhat expect their homepage to be aching to impress with Flash effects, grand manifestos and an arched eyebrow. How refreshing it is to arrive and find a simple, well laid-out site that is impossible not to want to root through – which makes a lot of sense as you discover that they love flea markets and have a penchant for high Modernism. Hyperkit obviously put a lot of themselves into the site, even including excellent colour photography from their visits to places that inform their work. If you can contain your jealously for their jetsetting, it is easy to get wrapped up in their headspace and forget that you are essentially looking at a piece of self-promotion.

The site contains a surprising amount of content which, and this is key to a good site, is updated regularly. Laid out much like a journal, each project is put into a Polaroid-like box with a small, quickly-loading image and a brief description. Most of these link to further details about the work or the client’s shiny new website – however, they do seem to be falling off their high horse and seem to be adding less detail with each new project.

Navigation is surprisingly simple and visible on all pages – big buttons at the top for the main sections, a bar of projects, and click on an arrow to see more. Finding their clients’ websites is even easier – just a pull-down menu list in the Work section opens the site in a new window. This no-frills approach is not out of laziness – it allows you to concentrate on the work rather than the fluff. The site is well laid-out, but it may annoy some visitors that they can’t see all the content on one screen – a fair bit of scrolling is required, though I feel it adds to the impression of rooting through an interesting range of work.

Conclusion:
A great website with a deceptively simple approach using HTML. Excellent typography and photography create an attractive site with a cohesive and open feel.

About the Author
Tim Jukes is an artist and designer, born in the UK and currently based in Berlin. He has worked in marketing for a number of years with arts institutions including Chelsea College of Art & Design and Camberwell College of Arts. He works as a freelance web and print designer and also exhibits regularly as an artist, investigating the relationship between technology and the handmade.This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Citi Bank

2006-01-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

Citibank, part of the Citigroup family, is a global provider of financial services such as investing, banking and insurance. Though Citibank holds a strong presence in the financial arena, the company’s presence on the web falls short of their leading reputation.

Branding
The Citibank brand is consistent throughout the website. Each page houses the “citi” logo in the upper left with a royal blue border at the top of the page (fig. 1). Though consistency is evident, I am reluctant to call a logo placed on a page an actual brand. The lack of a tagline and traditional brand elements throughout the remainder of the website contribute to an impersonal and uninviting presence.

Design
The design of the website is very clean, consisting of a white background, promotional flash element and sections devoted to user tools, quick links, and ads. The top navigation area and brand is consistent on each page, though once the user navigates from the home page, the design takes on a more informative style, eliminating promotional advertisements and dropdown.
The layout of the website, in my opinion, could be better. There is no flow of information, only a sea of dropdowns and ads – especially on the homepage. The user is given a plethora of “where do you want to be” options, however, no hints to show the user the right path to take. I think Citibank could have eliminated the “Products/Services” page and instead included these links in categories on the home page with the optional “see all” under each category to save space. The interior pages lack all and any type of design element – merely a body full of text and a meager right hand menu that does not convey any message Citibank may want to present.

Overall, the aesthetic design of the website is fairly bland. There are no color deviations, design elements, or photos to separate areas of interest. I would like to see more color used to draw attention to areas such as the “Look, Apply, and Find” sections. Without photos or other design elements, the user is forced to find their way around the website on their own without any direction from the company.

Navigation
The top navigation bar, consisting of “Welcome” and “My Citi” is standard. Each tab contains relevant information to either the member or the visitor and appears on each page for easy user navigation. The switch between the “Welcome” tab and the “My Citi” tab can be a little confusing, considering the sub-menu changes when the main tabs are rolled over.
Aside from the “Sign In” area, the left hand menu on the home page is nothing more than a few drop downs that may or may not be relevant to the individual user. These dropdowns are not self-explanatory and the layperson would seemingly have to find what they are looking for through trial and error. These particular dropdowns on the left hand menu, at first glance, cater only to the business owner or investor – an area the individual may avoid.

The dropdowns in the body area – “Look and Apply” – are effective for both the individual and the business owner; however, these sections are in no way displayed to convey this. As I mentioned in the Design portion, the “Products/Services should be contained on the main page and appropriated toward the individual, the business owner or investor. Nearly the only dropdown that makes sense on the homepage is the “Apply” selector. This option makes it very easy for the user to apply for an account of their choice.

Last but not least, the navigational text links on the top and bottom right of the page are fairly standard in web design. It is common for users to look in either area for links to specific types of information. These links, along with the top navigation bar consistently appear on each of the pages for easy user access.

Advertising/Promotion
The Flash element on the home page is non-offensive and tasteful. Having said this, it is not memorable either. With no color deviation throughout the overall page design, the Flash ad is lost and does not draw the attention that it should. Another issue with the Flash ad is that it stops at the end of a promotion and does not generate a new promotion unless the page is refreshed or revisited. I would like to see a constantly active Flash element that keeps the non-offensive approach but brings in the user’s attention.

The small thumbnail ads placed at the bottom of the page fall into the same scenario as the Flash element. At first glance, I did not realize they contained promotional information and thought they were simply unpleasant design elements linking to various portions of the website. In addition to the lack of attention these promotions are given, they are difficult to read. I would like to see promotions like this included in the Flash element – one that is constantly, but subtly, moving through promotions.

Conclusion
The strong point of this web site is information and the amount and readability of that information. If a user looks long and hard enough, they will be able to find the information they are looking for, however, looking long and hard is the problem.
Overall, http://www.citibank.com/ could use some organizational and design help. Adding design elements and restructuring information flow would not only present the website better aesthetically, but it would also give users some direction in their search for information in navigating the website. It is fairly evident that the planning for this site was accomplished through the eyes of the company – what they thought the user would want and need – and not through the reality of the user’s wants and needs.

About the Author
Leslie Fredericks-Leamon has been in the web design business for 8 years. During that time she has freelanced as well as taken full-time in-house design positions. Currently Leslie runs a freelance operation under the name of Muz Media, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What started out as primarily a web and graphic design studio, Muz Media has turned focus onto other aspects design and development, such as multimedia, SEO and online marketing, and integrated them into the business, bringing many important elements of web-presence to our clients without the politics of a large advertising agency.http://www.muzmedia.com/This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Website Review: www.broadsandrivers.org.uk

2006-01-03T15:59:00.000-08:00

When first landing on the home page, my initial impression of the site is that it is somewhat crude with little emphasis or thought having been given to the design elements of the site. However, the links indicate to me that the site may have plenty of information to impart, and as that’s the primary function of the site, as a user, I would be tempted to delve deeper. The use of imagery also helps to stimulate interest as they add a human touch to the site and hint at a wide scope of projects.

The logo needs some attention as it has been resized within the html code, and therefore has a larger file size than necessary and has lost some of its clarity on the screen.

The links on the left hand side of the page are a little puzzling. You only know that some of them are links as the cursor changes to the ‘hand’ symbol. As a user, I would prefer for all the links to behave in the same way when I roll the mouse over and as an expectation that your site is kept current, there should be no need to inform me that some of the sections have been updated in this way. I would therefore suggest implementing simple rollover behaviour such as the text changing colour on each link so the user knows that clicking on it will take them to another location. Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for this function will eliminate the need for images and some of the JavaScript which is currently used on the page and will in turn reduce the file size of the page to increase page load speed.

In terms of content on the home page, I would like my interest to be spiked a little more by maybe including snippets of some of the most recent projects/highlights you have worked on and what they have achieved.

Usability of the site
I have touched on the navigational links in the section above, and think you would be well served to alter them so they are all consistent and indicate more clearly that they are links.
More crucial, however, is the need to carry the navigation throughout the site. Clicking on any of the links from the main page takes the user through to a page which they cannot then navigate anywhere from. In order to return to the page they just came from, they need to click the ‘back’ button on their browser.

As a stop-gap, an easy to implement stepping stone would be to at least ensure that your logo links back to your home page. Users expect a logo to be a link to the home page and at least this would give them the most basic method of navigation. It would also be really useful to have a sitemap somewhere as I get the impression that there is a lot more to the site than I have actually discovered.

Design
There is certainly nothing offensive about the design elements of the site, but it is also not slick in any way and it’s my feeling that its simplicity and crudeness doesn’t do justice to the information you have available. Your introduction page has a link to the Natura 2000 site, and it would be great to see your site having a similar kind of impact (there’s no reason why it couldn’t).

Consistency
The site maintains a good standard of consistency throughout the internal pages. The layout is the same on each page (with the exception of the Links page which is left-aligned rather than centred), and the fonts and colours used are constant all the way through.

Structure and coding
Without wanting to become too involved in the coding of your site, there are several fundamental elements, which are missing from your pages:

DOCTYPE – every web page should be headed up by a DOCTYPE (short for Document Type Declaration). This informs the validator which version of code (ie. HTML or XHMTL) you are using, and your pages cannot validate without one. Omitting the DOCTYPE, as all your pages do, suggests to the browser that your page is written with invalid markup and code.
Meta data – in basic terms, including meta tags on your web page can help inform some search engines what kind of content your pages contain, eg. what the purpose of your website is. They can therefore be very useful in optimising your site for search engines to try and drive more traffic to your site.

Cascading Style Sheets – the code on your pages could be reduced significantly through the use of CSS which would improve page load times. It would eliminate the necessity to use tables to present the data and would make your pages far more accessible.
Alt tags (this is the text which appears when you lay your mouse over an image) – adding alt attributes to your images is one of the simplest ways to make your website more accessible. It may also aid any search engine optimisation efforts.

Messaging and content
The content on your site is very informative, but it’s presented in a manner which renders it a little dry and difficult to absorb. There is huge potential for livening up your content and presenting it in bite size chunks which people can then choose to explore by delving deeper into the site.

Conclusion
In summary, the site needs a significant revamp to make it work harder for you. If I were to rank the points I have covered above in terms of priority, the navigational structure of your site would be top of my list, followed closely behind by a rethink of how you present the information on your site. The work you do facilitates valuable and really worthwhile projects – now it’s time to let visitors to your site become excited about them too.

About the Author

Etherington is a common sense marketer with a no-nonsense approach to maximising the online presence of small companies. Her business, Azure Marketing, provides marketing advice and web design services to entrepreneurs and small businesses. Please visit http://www.azuremarketing.com/ for a more in depth look at some of her work or contact her directly at vicky@azuremarketing.com
This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Website Review: www.pbskids.org

2006-01-03T15:52:00.000-08:00

PBSKids.org is a great website for children full of games, stories, music, and more. It features links to all of the great children’s programs on the PBS television station.

The website is a cheerful combination of playful circles and bright colors (Fig. A). The prominent PBS Kids logo appears in the upper left and features a rollover effect when placing the mouse over the text links to the right. The rounded squares near the middle of the page provide a simple contrast to the circular images above them and help them stand out as the four main links to fun for the children. The rectangular appearance near the bottom holds links provided for adults and parents and creates a dividing line between the main choices for the kids and the more technical information for adults at the bottom of the page. The contrast of circles and rectangles successfully keeps the eyes drawn toward the upper half of the page where the fun is.

While the main page is simple and playful, the lower contrast of the light purple portion of the background against the white text links makes these links more difficult to read.

Navigation from the main page is simple, either choose a show from the list of links on the left, which take you to sites designed specifically for that particular TV show, or choose from the four links near the middle of the page to present a selection of activities grouped by task. The pages linked to the four main options are also linked together in a linear fashion, however the linear structure only moves forward. While the images on these pages are cute, there is nothing to describe what they link to. The pages rely on the image “alt” text to appear as a tooltip when the mouse is placed over the image as the only means of describing what the image links to. A better practice would be to include descriptive text under the image rather than making the user mouseover each image to find out where it leads.

While the lack of descriptive links and low contrast text hinder ease of navigation, the overall presentation of the site is fun and playful. The design elements are appropriately geared toward the site’s intended audience. The PBS Kids website is a great launchpad to explore all the fun each individual TV show provides.

About the Author

Nicole Arnold has been a web developer since the late 1990’s, specializing in the use of open source technologies to create custom web applications. http://www.vividdigitaltech.com
This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact.

Website Review: www.brainbox.com.au

2006-01-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

Since the IT boom times of the early 90’s, IT jobs have been restructured, retrenched and revolutionalised in great numbers. Unfortunately, a lot of people who had based their career pathways in IT found themselves unemployed and proceeded to get angry via complaints boards on the internet (and who could blame them?)

In 2003, Paul Knapp decided there was room for a recruitment site with a difference – it would contain meaningful short articles on the state of the industry and have real jobs that people could apply directly to employers for, thus cutting out the frustrating middlemen of the new age – job agencies.

Paul Knapp’s idea has been cemented in his Brainbox website, and he is to be commended on providing a helpful and much easier experience for IT jobseekers.

The website itself loads up quite fast, using a combination of forms, frames, html and javascript. The colours used are quite bland and put the viewer in mind of an IT worker (note the greys are the same colours as those used on most computers and mice!) while the logo has a daring dash of green which makes the site just that little bit more exciting and a little bit more professional.

The ultimate success of this website is in its layout. The left menu contains the key elements of Forum, Job Search, Advice etc and the middle white box contains lists pertaining to the main subject clicked on (eg, Forum posts). On the right side is some trivia, statistics and advertising, which viewers can feel free to ignore if they wish.

Brainbox is browser compatible, using frame percentages to shrink or expand the window appropriately. The viewer is assured of an easy-to-navigate, easy to follow website with content that is updated frequently. My only critique would be that more colour is needed….and not necessarily in the advertising!

Suzanne Day is a graphic artist by day and artist by night. She is internationally published as a humourous, contemporary poet and operates her own website design business at http://www.shortandsweet.net.au/. On the weekends, Suzanne is an avid rockhound. She lives with her partner and daughter in Pascoe Vale, Melbourne.

This article is published in Sitecritic.net - Web Reviews, Design Ideas and Articles. You may reproduced this article only if this section remains intact

ShopZilla - Online Shopping Website

2006-01-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

Straight forward comparative shopping is the main goal on Shopzilla.com. This site is all about finding your product quickly, comparing prices among the sixty-five thousand merchants and balancing between the lowest price and best supplier before buying. The look and feel of each page is consistent throughout the site. The two different shades of orange-yellow are original and work well together. The Shopzilla.com logo reinforces the purpose of this web site.

THEME

MENUS AND LINKS

The designers of this web site had the insight to give its customers a few options when searching for goods, which indexes over twenty-nine million products. Customers can search by category using a standard “run of the mill” tabbed menu at the top. There is a handy search by keyword option that can quickly lead you to your destination. The search function also automatically spell checks your keywords. This can be as bad as it is good. Some manufactures misspell product names on purpose, such as using a “z” to make a word plural. On the left-hand side there is also a long list of more specific categories to lead you toward your destination. This list also includes the more popular products that are being search for. It does make for a long list in which you may have to scroll down a good ways to find your link.

LAYOUT

The layout of the Shopzilla.com is simple and appealing, offering more than plenty of white space between the different sections. The page widths are set to 100% of the browser window so that all available screen real estate can be taken advantage of. This is important considering the amount of information that is available. Yet popular products on the home page are featured in only one column, which again creates a lot of scrolling down. The extra white space could be used to make a second column for featured products. The price comparison page is arranged in well thought out columns and rows that make it easy to spot the best deal.

OVERALL

Overall, Shopzilla.com is a good web site scoring 8.17 out of 10. With a little bit of tweaking it could be excellent. Most products that I was searching for was easily found. I did find that a few products that I thought would be popular items were only listed with one or two merchants. Of course this didn’t offer much of a price comparison. This is understandable though, as new products surely take a little time before they are listed adequately. Quoting their slogan, Shopzilla.com surely is “The Smarter Way to Shop.”

About the Author

Eric Griffths is the owner/operator of Netevo Internet Solutions in Marietta, Ohio. He has been designing, maintaining and consulting web sites for about 5 years. He specializes in client updateable dynamic websites that are database driven. http://www.Netevo.net

Website Review: www.moneycentral.com

2006-01-01T18:38:00.000-08:00

After visiting so many finance and investing sections on different websites Money Central is the most consistent site that I have ever experienced.

Colour of brand
For a user a website should be eye catchy and colours are the most important thing to make a website more lively and attractive and msn is doing a great job in maintaining this area. The colour combination used in the header and the background is eye soothing and it is proven that the combination of white n blue is already revolutionary. Every section has been properly presented and the important topics under these sections are widely expressed. The presentation done via pictures and flash movies gives kind of vitality to the section.

Going Through
The navigation on Money Central is way too smart, since the main theme is same as MSN network. The top of the page gives direct links to the MSN homepage, MSN Hotmail and log in section. Also there is a search bar which is quite handy.
Then there are the various sections of msn Money listed on the dark blue bar. The selected tab gets highlighted with white color. Which, gives a soothing look. Also there is a left navigation which lists the various quick access links and other sections like News Centre, Banking, Investing, Planning, Taxes, Community, Notifications. etc. But the country selection tool should be given on the top or on the right navigation instead of at the end of page…
Also due to the use of less no of Flash movies and .swf files the page is not so heavy to load even for the dial up users. As per the designing part graphics are superb, at places certain illustrative charts are also used so as to have a quick look as in the market update section.

In the end
http://www.moneycentral.com/ is really an impressive site, having a parental look of MSN, still lively on its own. Good hard work done which can be seen through the organized section and the look and feel.

About the Author
Tarun Rohilla and is a student in india, persuing my Bachelor's degree in Engineering in Information and Technology. Tarun S Rohilla http://www.tarun.co.nr/

Website Review: www.cj.com

2006-01-01T18:01:00.000-08:00

Commission Junction is a popular online advertising company and has a number of big clients including ebay in their portfolio. This site has a strong corporate identity and a very user friendly navigation system. I usually judge a website by my first impression and this site certainly got my attention.

Identity
The corporate colors are used effectively on every page. The headers of each section are highlighted in strong green, providing a good contrast with the white background. The faint CJ graphic embedded in the flash movie on the top right provides a subtle reminder of the brand. Looking at the CJ logo, I thought more characteristics of the circular shape or some curviness could be used throughout the pages.

Navigation
The site utilizes an easy navigation system with the top level "Solutions, Our Clients, About Us" on every page. All the links are easily visible user friendly. The client login system on the home page is very well thought of. However, the country navigation script on the top right hand corner seems to be abit slow.

The navigation trail in this site is hard to see because its color does not contrast with the green background. The links below the page have the same problem. The flash is not heavy, so it does not slows down the loading time. Overall, the site loads quite fast even on a dialup modem.

Design
All the pages in the site are very consistent in terms of typography and layout. Important headings are bolded and all the texts are easily readable. The layout is effective with dotted lines separating different sections. The spaces around the text and images makes the page neat and tidy, improving user experience when navigating the site. The orange color is well used to balance out other colors on the page.

Most important of all, the graphics used are appropriate and presentable. (Graphics can spoil a great site or makes a crappy site looks great.)

Conclusion
www.cj.com is well organized and presentable. The web site designers must have gone through a long planning process to create the site. It is all worth the effort.

Joe Edwards is a freelance web designer, currently staying in Adelaide. He is one of the core designers of sitecritic.net. As a crazy soccer fan, he spends most of his weekends watching the ESPN channel.