Please QA my left hand nav

[paulbeckett]

Hi

I have implemented a new left hand nav on my site which I am rather pleased with but I wonder if my customers are? Sales have dropped since implementation?

I would appreciate it if you could QA my left hand nav from a design and techincal pov. Any comments would be appreciated!

www.kjbeckett.com

My original left hand nav was plain and simple html - with a list of all the product types and brand names. However as new ranges were added I was running out of room and I also felt the plain html looked unprofessional.

Do you think your average user would respond to this?

From a technical perspective, I THINK everything is okay (thanks to Jo, Norman and Jont) and have tested on the latest versions of FireFox, Opera, IE, Avant, and Netscape.

Many thanks

[smold]

Hi

I have implemented a new left hand nav on my site which I am rather pleased with but I wonder if my customers are? Sales have dropped since implementation?

I would appreciate it if you could QA my left hand nav from a design and techincal pov. Any comments would be appreciated!

www.kjbeckett.com

My original left hand nav was plain and simple html - with a list of all the product types and brand names. However as new ranges were added I was running out of room and I also felt the plain html looked unprofessional.

Do you think your average user would respond to this?

From a technical perspective, I THINK everything is okay (thanks to Jo, Norman and Jont) and have tested on the latest versions of FireFox, Opera, IE, Avant, and Netscape.

Many thanks

Looks good! I like it! Was it difficult to do? I always think long lists look awkward but then you always have to cater for the lowest denominator the customer.

Every time I look at somebody’s site I realise I really need to pull my finger out on mine.

[Hitman]

Look great, it was easy to use and got to the info quickly.
It's just that time of year.

[jont]

Looks good Paul - especially like the "socks" link that I kept mousing over to see the letters change colour - blimey I must be bored at work

[paulbeckett]

Thanks.

Based on my research I THINK even the most novice of web users would understand that they would need to click on one of the three lines to make further options visible. I was concerned that perhaps they wouldn't know to do this.

In my experience you would be surprised the lack of understanding there is out there. For instance alot of people dont realise that if you click on my "View more details" buttons which are linked to most products - you will be presented with more info. I need to make this more visible.

Quite easy to do. Just some basic Java in the head of Act_Primary and then a table containing dhtml in the body. All I had to do was change the gif names, alt tags and links.

Thanks

[jont]

Hi Paul - just taken a look at the View More Info link an you are right - it needs to be a little darker to stand off the page.

It may also be worth adding the supplier links such as "About Babette Wasserman" under button covers to open in a seperate window as this is taking people away from the product (where the money is)

[DaveT]

I have a suggestion. Currently you activate the expansion of the link by clicking on an <a href="#"...>

This has the effect that if you are halfway down a page it wil scroll it back to the top.

It could be better with <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="<do your stuff here...">, rather than <a href="#" onclick="<do your stuff here...">.

Very nice though.

[paulbeckett]

Dave. Thanks. I will have a play with this suggestion.

I think the general consensus is your average user WILL understand how this left hand nav works. The fact that all the wording for all the different products and brands are now hidden is a disadvantage but then again there simply wasn't enough space to have the lists open.

Jont - Thanks for the comments - will incorporate.

[DaveT]

Just another point while I had another squiz - even on a large screen of res 1024 X 768 a lot of your pages scroll horizontally.

Any way you could make them narrower?

[PeteN]

Hi,
I took a look and it wasn't instantly obvious to me how to navigate to the desired section via your new links, it only took a couple of seconds to find the answer but I have been using the web and Actinic for years, some of your customers may not be that web savvy. I think the links are great and was puzzeled why I didn't instantly 'get it' After some thought I've come to the following conclusion:
The search function is directly above the links and reads
'search this site' and directly under it
by product
by designer
by style
I think the links may be being mistaken for editorial content relating to the search function. Personally I would move the 'Bookmark' link above the content links to help separate then and also make them more visually obvious that they are infact links, I don't think black is a good choice for a text link. To make it even more obvious you could add an instructional text directly above the text links ie

these links
access site

by product
by designer
by style

It would be very quick and easy to test this summary. As has already been mentioned sales are very slow at the moment, we have had record lows for January and February
Peter

[paulbeckett]

Peter

Thanks for the feedback. I will look to incorporate these ideas in.

I also considered having one section open as standard - which is more recognisable as a left hand nav. The problem with that is - that if I set the standard open as By Product if the customer clicks on a By Designer - and say Babette Wasserman - the Babette Wasserman page will open - but the left hand nav will revert back to the open By Product setting. Not sure if this would confuse or not?

Paul