Maeve's Unmentionables

[bigdaddypagan]

I'm going to be revamping the index here soon. I'd love any critiques and especially hearing what you would change and how. I'd prefer critiques from both a usability and buying customer stand-point.

http://www.maevesunmentionables.com/

Thanks guys!

~Tristan

[BerksWebGuy]

In my 10 second look. Its a good start...it looks like a regular Frontpage site.

You have some good products, but you have a lot of information on one page. Most visitors want to get quick information, so keep that in mind. Also it seems like someone could get lost in the site. Get a menu bar that is constant through the site...so that doesn't happen.

Good Luck :cool:

[bigdaddypagan]

Berks,

Thanks man. Thats on the to-do list to get it more streamlined. Keep em coming!

[Kitchensink108]

The first page, at least, is too long. Split it into its individual sections: maybe keep the 'about us' section, but put the news and possibly new items onto separate pages. You're pretty ad-heavy on the bottom of the page, also. For one thing, nobody will ever find the ads so far down on the page.

I'd suggest using a vertical navigation, and aligning it to the left as it's currently taking up too much space and knocking the content out of view. Also, left-align the text. I don't like entire pages having centered text.

Your page title is too long. It looks like you're trying to spam search engines with keywords. Trim it down to just "Maeve's Unmentionables - Custom made Renaissance clothing" or something. Don't repeat your title text at the top of the page. Choose that or "Your one-stop Renaissance Garb shop!" as your "slogan" or something, and use it once on the page (maybe incorporated into the banner, or fitting with the banner).

You have too many link colors. I can't tell what's really a link and what's just underlined text because of this. Bring it down to, preferably, one link color and possibly one alternate link color (used for different kinds of links).

I don't like "bookmark us" links. If I want to bookmark the site, I'll do it myself.

I don't like the sub-nav under the image nav. Not quite sure what to do with it, though.

[bigdaddypagan]

Kitchensink,

Thanks for the tips my man. I was thinking about a left aligned nav also, but I'm having trouble implenting it and having the page still look good. Thats my own learning hurdle to overcome.

Left aligning the text is something I'll play around with for sure.

I think I'm going to take your advice about the "one stop Ren. Garb shop" being the only text as the "slogan." Looking at it more objectively, the way I have it is rather annoying.

Link colours will be scaled down to just green with yellow indicating ~new~ links for a certain time period.

The Bookmark Us link I'm keeping. Since implenting it, we've gone from 8% bookmark rate to 45% of all visitors. Our sales have increased accordingly, so that link is my friend!

The image/text mixed nav is being ditched in favour of a much slimmer image nav.

Keep em coming! Ya'll are getting my coding fingers twitchin'.

~T

[bigdaddypagan]

Updated the whole site. Feels much easier to navigate now.

Any suggestions?

[BerksWebGuy]

Much better navigation, but the green links are hard to read on the dark background.

[YvetteKuhns]

I agree with the other comments. The left vertical navigation menu would be better. Include your Home and View Cart button links in your navigation menu, so they are easier to find. Once visitors scroll, they cannot see those buttons at the top. Move the logo banner to the top of the page. If you keep the horizontal links menu, include links at the bottom of each page or a Back to Top of Page link.

Two animations on one page is distracting. It is difficult to watch one image slideshow while another one is showing. It is like watching two televisions with different programs at the same time! Have one slideshow in the center of the page. The NEW product images can appear on a new items page or in their own categories to shorten the length of the home page.

On your product pages, you could make the td background white for the product images. That would look nicer since all of the images are different heights or widths. Speaking of width, your pages have some horizontal scrolling at 800x600 screen resolution.

Personally, I prefer a solid background color behind text for easier reading. But the background image is subtle. The green link on the purple background is difficult to read. Paragraphs of text should align to the left. Do not underline text that does not link to something. That confuses visitors.

The about us page should be more professional since this is a business site. But you can include some personal info and pics. Just include them on one link. The banner ads are below the copyright info and will probably be ignored. There is also too much space between them which makes the page longer.

Overall, the products are nice and the site is fairly easy to read and navigate. Consider exchanging links with related sites. You will need to add a link to your links pages, but you should not name the pages links.htm. Use names that are appropriate like medieval-resources.htm. If you have more than one, simply number the pages.

[Builder]

OK, this is a pet peeve of mine -- your opening page is brutal on dialup. 350+kb of data to load is waaaaaay too much. Many people on dialup will not wait the 2-4 minutes it takes to load and just leave. The 2 biggest offenders on your page are the 2 animated images at the top. Lose both of them. The individual frames of the animation on the right are repeated as individual pics further down the page anyway, so a visitor is essentially loading them twice. And I like to be able to view several items at the same time, which you can't do with those animations. Anyhow, to get back to my original statement... The closer you can get to under 100kb per page and/or under 15 second dialup load times, the easier it will be for potential customers to see what you have to sell (and then buy :)). Others have already mentioned splitting the page into several smaller pages; that will also help. Maybe have a "What's New" link with a single "teaser" graphic/picture to another page that has all of the new stuff pictured, etc. That would get rid of another 3-4 pictures and 40kb or so.

Good luck,
Kevin

[bigdaddypagan]

All great suggestions. Thanks guys. Definitely open to more.

~T

[bigdaddypagan]

Berk - I've lightened the link colour. Is that easier to read?

Yvette - Thanks for the suggestions. The About Us page will likely stay the way it is. The customers in our realm of business much prefer personal over "business-professional". They like to feel they are connected to the person who is hand-making their clothing, and we like to feel the same. If I were selling auto parts, that would be another story entirely. :)

Builder - I've lowered the file size on both the gifs. Would you mind letting me know how fast (slow) they load now? I'm keeping them for now to see their impact on traffic. I will very likely remove one and leave the other, but in the meantime they stay.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.

~T

[Builder]

Hey, hey, hey! About 20 seconds to load. It may be that some of it loaded out of my cache. But the animations loaded much faster.

Kevin

[bigdaddypagan]

They were brand new files, so... hooray!!