Hi All,

The site http://www.georgestreet.co.uk/ needs a major overhall. The site owner has asked me 'what is wrong' with the existing site. I thought it would be nice if I said well here's what I think we need to change and what my peers think.

So please don't waste your time on the minutia of accessibility or code errors (the client won't understand) just hit me with your general thoughts and idea of what you think about the site.

Regards and Thanks

Carju1

Honestly, there's nothing much wrong with the site. It's organized nicely, clean, easy to read, etc.

The problem is that it looks like every other furniture store site I've ever seen and the promo copy on any given page reads like all the other furniture ad copy I've ever read or heard on the radio / TV.

Now here's a furniture site that gets my attention:
http://www.gaiamobili.com/

Now, perhaps they're targeting a different income level, but just because your client is targeting a lower pay range, that doesn't mean they should lower their creativity. In fact, it probably means they need to be all the more daring!

I hope this is useful to you (and your client).

All the best,
John

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Visit Horror Author John D. Harvey at
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"The Cleansing" by John D. Harvey
Arkham House Publishers - Shocklines.com
http://store.yahoo.com/shocklines/cleanbyjohdh.html

The site looks pretty good - neatly organized, intuitive navigation. One thing that probably turns away less than persistent visitors - what's up with the funky arrow cursor over the links, and what's wrong with the standard "palm"? I feel that being different is not always helpful.

Those mouseovers are obnoxious.
the navigation buttons at the top are kind of hard to find. All in all the site isnt horrible as is. I think it needs more content though. If you click on any of the departments you get a little 2 sentance statement. I want to know what it is you have. Need more info.

As far as that gaia site goes. I thought it was "neat" but not would I would try to head towards. To much going on, to many clicks to find anything out about the product. And slow loading too.

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Just some cool free software everybody should have:
http://www.soloenterprises.org/free/free-software.php
And some shameless Orange County Computer Service promotion

The site is almost fine if all you want is an online presence. Hours, location, branding. But if you really want the website to make sales at the store or online you've got a lot of work to do.

First - Not enough readable text. Search engines want 200 + words/page INCLUDING the home page.

Next - Usability. The departments should be named on every page and easy to click on to go to the right page. You have to make the website easy for the visitor. The discreet dhtml pulldown isn't enough for a store.

Once I get to the correct department, I should be able to shop without having to go to a separate section called "shop". I'm at a store! Thats like having the sales department across town from the display floor.

I agree about the funky little arrows - loose them. Useability is about putting things in a place that a visitor would expect and any deviation from normal use loses sales.

How about a link to the home page?

I would definately like to see hours and location on the about us page. Any Brick and mortar store needs these items.

Other than that, the site is very attractive, it just isn't very usable.

JM

http://www.crucibledesigns.com

I ignor banners. So it took me a long while to see the info in the flashing banner. (BTW Wales largest should be Wales' with an apostrophe.)

Alt tags for images?

The previous designer ran out of ideas when he/she came to the footer.

The right hand blue is not the same blue as the left hand blue. And what's the right hand blue for? I'm frightened to leave the home page as I can't get back to it.

Is the store's font Times bold? If so it should be used each time the store name is used.

Is this cheap, medium or expensenve furniture? Graphically I don't get many clues. The present style is certainly not expensive. But nor is it bargain basement. So it must be medium.

Yes - location and opening house must go on the front page...

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Paul Bilton design services ~ Sites not Sights

Hello,

Here are my opions on this website:

General Layout & Feel
The layout & feel of this website is inviting and gives the correct impression of a furniture store.

The major downfall i see with this is that the navigation is not clear, it doesnt stand out and say "here i am", im not talking about a bright green background but possibly take advantage of the space on the right hand side of the page to incorporate that navigation.

Another problem with the Navigation is there is no Back to Home button, so as soon as you goto another page you can go to the home page again.

Design & Style
Unfortunatly today design is becomming an art and there are some very good designs that would appeal to the customers eye, without making them wait days to download.

The Design is very simple and seems unfunished, i would suggest adopting a bottom curve on that design and have a line down each edge of the design to ensure that its boxed in and easy to view.

General Notes
I would suggest that you encourage this guy to go ecommerce on his website, the industry is growing and you only have to do a search in google to see the amount of furniture companies in the UK. If he doesnt want to go ecommerce, he should certainly put prices of his products on the website, this will encourage the customer to buy and not think "hmm i bet thats expensive" and goto another website.

OnMouseOver on his links should be set back to the standard hand, this will throw customers and they may not relise it is a link. Alot of internet users have been told that a link has a hand when you hover over it, keep it simple.

From the image thats within the banner on the first page, the store looks very clean, tidy and approachable, maybe a bigger image would be nice.






Sorry for the book, but im sure it will be usefull for your customer to read.

Regards

Matt Lanham
Swan Web Solutions

The general layout is OK, navigation has already been commented on.

1. Don't mess with my mouse set-up, I hate it, I feel its an intrusion into my privacy.
If you do 'have to' change my mouse set-up then do it properly. I see a diagonal double arrow which is the standard symbol for expanding a box at the corner. Thats just plain stupid.

2. The only thing the website tells me is that its about a furniture store. Its starting point is the seller not the buyer. The buyer doesn't care about departments, the buyer wants to know if you sell kitchen chairs (my conclusion is probably not, only fitted kitchens), reclining chairs (no idea), PC corner unit for the kids bedroom (probably not, depends what "wide range" means). Would I travel to Newport on a rainy Saturday morning based on this information? No way.
Tip, when you design the webstore make sure the software can handle several (hiererchical) structures, one per department (if its needed) another by product grouping (useage/room/location), and another by material (pine/leather/steel) and yet another by trade name. This allows different users to browse lists of your products in the grouping that THEY want. By all means add a product search but most people hate searches on product websites because they have to guess what YOU call you products otherwise they get zilch out of the search.
Lists work much better and aids in secondary selling (oh .. they sell mirrors aswell)

3. Where are you? Newport Australia?, Newport US (which one) ... geographical location is important to a real-world shop so make it clear at the top of each page. Plus, the Welsh are (stereotypically) nationalist so make them feel at home, with offending the (import) English on both sides of the border. Put 'newport, wales' together on the main page, contact page, in the footer line and also in the main heading ... and in text, not (only) in the image. No the .co.uk is not enough.

4. You should be scoring high in Google on many furniture related words plus 'newport wales' but ... the directory lists score better than your website!!!! Where are your furniture related words? Like for example 'furniture' I only see furnishings and furnishers which joe public is not going to search on. The words in the images don't count BTW.


5. Newport used to be in monmouthshire (I haven't lived in the UK for 20+ years so maybe its changed) but it would an important geographical location search word ... I couldn't find it anywhere so Google won't either.
I dont see 'wales' in the address. UK or United Kingdom or England appear nowhere. They are all words people will used to locate a shop near where they live.

6. Trade names. You sell Parker Knoll, but you are way down the list in Google on 'Parker Knoll newport'(and you are only there because of an alt tag). You should, and could, be number 1. Use the words in the text, Google will love you for it.


7. The offers section is completely empty. Bad news.
Even if there are no offers there should be some sort of text explaining about offers in general. Currently it looks like the website offers program has failed.

Like everyone else says the curser.
I am not fond of the yellow and blue together. It seems flat to me. I wouldn't mind the yellow if it was in various shades as well somewhat like the blue.
there is nothing on the offer page, why not have some comments on what that page is for.
The layout isn't bad the copy text seems to large to be classy.
There are some drop shadowing going on, but it's not carried thru-out the site or in the layers of items, like the logo box has a drop shadow, but I couldn't see one with the g. Like some one was playing with shadows and beveling here and there.
Get rid of the yellow border on the pictures, they look to hard on the soft pictures, i would like to see some larger pictures of the furniture. Maybe the pictures need to have a soft fade.

I fond the very dark blue edges to be claustrophobic, and I agree with everyone who has said the blue and yellow don't work well together. I'm not keen on the way the information is organised in the navigation. There are plenty of departments, but this is reflected in only one tiny link to "departments" at the top, easy to miss. I would relegate less important pages such as "about us" and "contact" to the footer and put up links to the most popular departments instead, with a "more departments" link for the rest.

I'm actually thinking of buying a bed, but the promotional copy on that page doesn't work. It's too promotional, "aren't we fantastic", without going into much detail. Bunks, cabin beds, sizes, materials, made in Britain or elsewhere, prices, delivery costs, pictures? None of this is forthcoming, and it should be. To find out more the customer has to email, which is fatal. Nobody wants to give away their email address before they've made a decision to buy.

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Freelance Writer's Database
Polyphonic ringtones

Love the inverted yellow roll-over links (sarcasm). Love the cursor change (sarcasm).

About Us section, obviously a copywriter can fill it up with pages of neat stuff considering the company is 50+ years in the business.

The navigation of the departments are not intuitive. Why just leave it on that one page? http://www.georgestreet.co.uk/departments/index.html

It can be used acrossed all the pages, thus a user can access each department with 1-click from every page. Similar to Webproworld's left navigation.
Home >Sofa Beds, then >Bedroom

Home >Departments >Sofa Beds, then Departments >Bedroom

3 clicks verses 5 clicks, it is 1 added click between each transition from department to department. Does the company not want to showcase the departments more? What is their main purpose of the website?

Just by including the departments menu navigation on all the pages, the company has already grown 10 fold on the net.

Page template needs more consistency, it jumps too much from trasition to transition. A little to the left verses a little to the right, and the margins should be set to zero for all the pages, not just one or two. Who did their QA control on the site?

How can a company page leave some pages blank? At least it has a 3 for page rank. :)

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Static HTML Shopping Resource Promotion
Herbalife Products - ShapeWorks

I agree with a lot of the comments already said, especially homepage link, color change, prices on furniture and cursor. When I arrived at the site, I clicked on the banner at the top. The page it loaded was completely empty.

I do think the links need to be bigger and more attractive on the homepage.

The pictures are nice but definately needs more content like someone else said also.

The spacing is nice, easy to read.

Being in business that long is definately something to be proud of, but I wonder if there's something else that could be said that would make me pick this store over another similiar store.

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Ann Jordan
IAB Healthcare

Hi,

Absolutely. Leave it alone and concentrate on the real issue, which is:

Total site redesign would probably mean in this case getting the wireframe organized and working out how to reduce the number of unnecessary clicks the user needs to make. Make use of the front page. You need: (1) Good copy. (2) High-quality images. What you've got now is standard brochureware and you're not leveraging the potential of your brand with this approach.

Cheers,
Matt

Many thanks one and all for your input on this site. Most of your comments were along the lines that I felt.

I met the client today and he asked for a copy of all your comments. The client is very nice but the web designer who did the site you all looked at went bust and the client had to get one of his sales staff to look after the site for the past year, so they aren't that struck on us as a profession.

Brian_ilp just so you know I think Newport has changed county 3 or four times in the last twenty years. It went from Monmouthshire to Gwent and then after a few quick changes (including back to Mon I think) it is now officially Newport, Newport as in the city of Newport within the County Borough of Newport.... Yeah right but it kept the council employed for months and printers made a fortune....

Carju1

128 markup errors on the homepage, and that is fine?

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