Revamped site

[figment]

Hi

Have just revampe dmy site www.justalittlebitdifferent.co.uk. Would appreciate any comments/suggestions.

Many thanks

Steve

[leehack]

Things I noticed were this:

1 - The navigation links down the left hand side have no hover effects and look a bit messy if i'm honest. I'd recommend adding some effect to them. same goes for the navigation across the top, add a little interactivity in there, maybe that nice blue off the right hand side.

2 - Your logo is left aligned, leaving a huge space in the middle top of the screen. Either centre the logo, or use this space wiser, this is one of the very first areas somebody will encounter when they hit your site. Im viewing on 1200x800 so maybe looks worse for me, however if you are going to have a fluid site, then cater for everyone etc.

3 - When i go into one of your sections and click on "more info", everything is fine, i get taken to a new page and i can navigate "back" to where i was previously (this is perfect). However if i click on the image, i go to a new window and cannot navigate back, i have to close the window, which is a serious no-no for user friendly and enjoyable sites to browse. **ADD** this inconsistent navigation is not exclusive to the products, make sure you check all your links to ensure this isn't happening. I recently read an article that put this point in the top 10 of things people hate on websites, when the site tries to control your navigation OR its inconsistent.

4 - I may be alone on this one, but i hate having to click "more info" once i have clicked on a product. I always aim to give as few clicks as possible. If you had masses of information on the products i could understand, but you haven't. I would only use "more info" in your case if i have multiple images etc. I'm sure search engines prefer this approach too as it has to be creating more content rich pages and has less clicking to get to where you want (this point may be exclusive to me, i just hate what i perceive as pointless clicks). I note that on some of the pages when you click "more info" you are then greeted with another page with another "more info" link. On most products you have an image, user clicks this and then gets a sentence or two on the product and then gets another click to see a larger image, for me that is too much and as a browser i would certainly get annoyed. If you keep with method, could the second "more info" link not say "larger image" instead. People will think there is yet more info and then be a bit deflated to find its just a larger image. Your larger images sometimes do not fit into the pop up window and the info at the bottom is not readable unless you scroll. Have them all the same size and have a pop up which will always ensure that everything is visible.

5 - I'm surfing at midnight on a 4MB connection and your site is quite slow for me and was unavailable for a couple of minutes. I did check a large Actinic site during this time to confirm it was not my connection and it seemed fine. Just a note to keep an eye on your hosting etc.

6 - I like the light blue links on the right hand side, i think this colour would blend well on the site a bit more, its bordering on too much of one colour for me, but once again that may be personal to me.

7 - Sizing list at the bottom of the products would be IMO much better at the top. If someone wants to know what your sizes mean, then having them scroll to the bottom to find out isn't great. Some people may not even browse that far down, with the info at the top, then your users can use that info on other pages onto which they browse. (maybe the void space at the top is ideal for this very useful and purchase aiding info)

8 - Be careful with itallics, i have seen them look quite awful on some screens.

9 - Terms & conditions and the privacy links go off to pdf files. I dislike this approach, keep things simple and accessible to almost anyone. People without a pdf reader would need to download one to be able to read them.

10 - Send Mail is either timing out or exceedingly slow, i stopped it after 45 seconds of waiting. It did the same on a few other tries. It came up with smtp error, this may have just been a coincidence while i was trying, worth checking though.

Hope that doesn't sound a bit negative, on site reviews i concentrate on the things i don't like rather than the things i do, as you may get some tips on how to improve your site. You may also read this and think negative fool, i like my site - which is also cool. Its all about opinions and its all good. The images are nice and clear and the fluid layout is laying out nice on my screen.

PS - My wife just gave me the usual kiss goodnight and noticed a screen full of ladies underwear, i of course presumed she'd think i was looking for xmas pressies, but alas, she said "night perv" and toddled off. sheesh.

[Duncan Rounding]

Apart from the above:
1. On the cart page you have two logos one above the other.
2. The Netbanx logo on the payment page gives a page not found (http://www.netinvest.co.uk/). Note that http://www.netbanx.co.uk/ also fails. (payment check appears to go thru correctly though)

[pinbrook]

Further to Lee's comment about 1280 res, the site requires left to right scrolling on 1024.

it seems to me the site was developed in 1280 with no consideraton paid to smaller res. It does highlight one general issue of logo placement, which is if you have a logo which only takes up 275 px wide what should you do withthe rest of the width of the page.

Where an image is not to high,this can be left alone, but this logo is 123 px high thus creating a huge waste of "selling space"

The flashing xmas tree is a waste of effort is doesn't really do anything to add to the xmas experience of shopping. It would be better placed in the right margin.

BUt back to the logo and space, please take a look at the 2 screen dumps I've attached to see how the site looks in both 800x600 res and 1024. I know a lot of people nolonger design for 800, but i've added it to illustrate the point.

ie you open the page and half of the visible impact is blank.