site review please

[Suze]

Hi there people

If you could please give me some feedback on our website

www.healthwithoutwealth.co.uk

Especially opinions on SEO would be great. Ease of navigation and general opinon....

Thanks everyone and thanks for all the help I've have had so far

[leehack]

My eyes, my eyes, wow that's busy. Bit too much going on for my liking, with that much going on, it all merges into one big blob.

[guccij]

It all seems to work fine ...

but I have to agree with Lee.

All that Flash stuff is really, really irritating. I had to screw up my eyes to minimise the distraction.

It's akin to a marquee tag which correct me if I'm wrong, was last seen on the internets in c. 1998.

However, if your customers are into in-your-face design, then I'm sure you will do really well.

[guccij]

There are some basic things which you could correct as well:

The banner doesn't link anywhere (visitors usually expect it to take them to the home page)

The email address at the bottom likewise. No point in having it displayed if you can't click on a mailto link.

If you're a ltd company, you must say so in your contact details.

VAT inclusive prices are de rigueur for a retail site.

[pinbrook]

Agree with Jules and Lee its far too busy.

Get rid of the scrolling marque and slow down the flash do it only rotates every 30 secs and is only on the home page... then i'll visit again.

Right now i wouldn't stay on the site, its death by info...

[Suze]

Glad to hear it went down a treat!! Will take your changes into consideration - yes there is a lot going on. Will slow down flash and keep on homepage only, subject to approval from the top. Thanks for the feedback keep it coming guys

[pinbrook]

take a look at your faq and t&c pages, there is a duplication of info here eg shipping info is spread across both pages.

personally i'd put all company info in one and all selling info in the other, if you decide to keep both rather than merge into one

and the headings are formatted differently

[leehack]

I think the main thing that fails is the color scheme and the sardine nature to the info. I don't think you can go catchy colours, if you give them no space to breathe or define themselves. Do one or the other, not both. The purple bg is very strong too, not sure that doesn't need lightening a little, on big screens it's very overpowering, making the site go backwards on screen, not forwards as you want it to.

[Suze]

Hi there
The homepage is temporary as I am redesigning one in dreamweaver - this will be external to actinic as our last web designer did this for our other site www.dentalshop.co.uk

I don't like the best selling items sections at all and will be redesigning this.

Have added homepage link to main banner and mailto link to bottom address bar. I quite like the colour scheme but may change the background purple to a lighter shade if too headache inducing?

[leehack]

I don't think you get headache inducing things really, people leave before that. For me it's just overpowering, taking away the focus from the main area where you want the focus. Design is subjective though, others may love it.

[animal dreams]

For me both sites lack white space and margins!

[Sean Williams]

I'm afraid I don't like the colours (personal taste though), but even if I did, I feel the main colour is too pale, leading to the white text not having enough definition and therefore impact.

I think the purple is too strong - my eye keeps being drawn to it and thus away from where it should be going.

Everything is too big and too densely packed - you need more margins/white space between all the elements to give clarity.
Reducing the menus text size would help balance things up a bit.

I think 'Embarrassing Solutions' is a mistake - this creates a negative feel and will drive people away - 'Personal' is less contentious.
I dislike anything that says 'solutions', but that's just a personal pet hate.

Not keen on 'View Order' in the top nav bar at all, let alone as the first item. If you must have it, make it the last item which brings it close to the Basket and Checkout area top right.

The Dental Shop box is an invitation for your customers to wander off to another website - they may never come back!

[Suze]

Thank you for your opinions everyone - I have taken the scrolling flash from a lot of pages but my boss wants it on the main prod pages.

Dentalshop is actually our company site as well so if we get sales on either site it is a bonus.

I used to like the purple myself but after all the negative feedback I am inclined to change it but it is not a priority right now as tons to do. We are organising the products into sections such as womens health etc so will be less chaotic

I agree it is very busy but we are pushing lots of products so this is kind of how it will be but I agree it could do with calming down. I have been told to copy chemistdirect.co.uk's style of presentation!

I have designed an external homepage
http://www.healthwithoutwealth.co.uk/home.html
but there is a problem with some code appearing at the top left corner
" /> " /> " /> " /> ">
Does anyone know how to remove this?

[leehack]

They are closing html tags, so i'd say there are quite a few html problems on the page. I suspect you will need to sift through ensuring each tag is open and closed, these look like errant tag closings. If they are at the top of the page, one can assume that the html at the top of the page is the problem.

[Suze]

it was an errant piece of actinic code which I have deleted which was, as you said, near the top.
Cheers!