Vast room for improvement...

Well, when I open the site I get two windows and I'm not sure which one to look at. I"m not even sure if they're part of the same site with the different colour schemes. I'm reading the pop-up and the text seems to be a little hard to read because of the awkward writing style. It's just not getting the point across fast enough.

Now that I'm back to the main window, I'm still confused. Is it assumed that people will know something about your product when they get here? I've gone on to the next page and once again I'm confused. There's a lot going on here and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at. "be unreasonable and get what you need?" What the heck? The more I look at this the more confused I get. I also find that you're saying the same things over and over again. There's too much to read just to get a basic understanding of what's going on here.

Take the "join" page for example - the first thing I'm looking at is the pricing scheme - it's big, it's clear, and its purpose is obvious, but when I look closer I get a little confused. What exactly do you mean by "application"? How do I know how many to sign up for? What kind of money is this BTW? (American? Canadian? Australian? Monopoly?). Now where do I sign up? I'm looking... looking... see something at the bottom about version numbers which is getting more confusing - something about standard and premium? What's the difference? How do I know what I want?

In short, everything here needs to be re-written and re-organized.

As for the design, I think that a white background would be more suitable for a site like this. You also need to have a more focused colour scheme - the green and yellow looks good toegther, but when you introduce other colours it looks terrible. I also think that your logo needs work, badly.

Megan Jack,

Thank you for visiting and your comments.

I apologise for the confusion. The top window you see is a welcome screen for people invited to evaluate the site whilst in beta, some of whom are existing customers invited by email.

It is possible to view the whole thing without this confusion by going straight to http://www.visualguide.com/beta/index.asp.

Thanks for the comment about repetition and confusion - I'll improve it.

I should have mentioned that there are 2 gaping holes at this stage. A method of payment and delivery of the required online training, development and support services. As luck would have it you homed in on one of them! Certainly the pricing will be made clearer when credit card processing is implemented.

About the white colour - do you mean as a background for the text?

Stephen

As far as design, the site needs to look far more professional and as Megan says a white background for the whole page (without coloured boxes) helps an awful lot. Stick to some basic colours for all sections of the site.

The Visual Guide logo & tick, look very blurred. I would look at redoing that to make it sharper.

I too was very, very confused and must admit to giving up trying to figure it all out!

webmistress,

Thanks for your comments.

I have now edited the original post to link to the site itself without the 'helpful' beta window popup. I hope that this will help make things less confusing.

I will attend to the logo as you suggest.

Given that there is now no blue popup, Are you saying the white should be instead of the green background, or of the yellow text background?

Thanks to both of you.....

Stephen

I would say just have a white background, instead of both. I just think it looks much more professional.

What are the dots at the bottom for - images width="1" height="0" ??

Also at 800*600 there is a horizontal scroll bar on the next page in.

The other confusing thing I find is all the pop up windows when you "Take the tour"

webmistress thanks again.

I'll think about the white.

You aren't meant to see the dots! I can't see them on my screen. They are gifs preloading, so that when you step to the second page the display is very fast. Do you know how I can hide these better?

I have now added a tag that explains the tour popup, and so this should be less confusing now.

I'll look into the 800x600 thing.

Thanks again.

Stephen

citron - this book might be helpful to you. This link is to a review of "Don't Make Me Think" - a usability book by Steve Krug. When I was reading the review I thought of your site:

"Don't make me think. It means that as far as humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory. I should be able to 'get it' - what it is and how to use it - without expending any effort thinking about it."

http://www.ecommercebase.com/article.php/443

I just tested your site on 1024*768. It looks good.

Regarding your page: http://www.visualguide.com/beta/products_excel.asp?company=C1&beta=

Links on your pictures don't work.

megan jack,

Thanks for thinking of me. I'll get the book.

Stephen

Fabien,

Gee thanks.

The link on the spreadsheet graphic isn't actually a link. It looks like one because of the hand mouse-pointer. However this is just the result of the dynamic rollover whereby the static gif gets animated.

Does anyone know how to prevent the hand showing???

Stephen

Quote: Originally posted by citron
You aren't meant to see the dots! I can't see them on my screen. They are gifs preloading, so that when you step to the second page the display is very fast. Do you know how I can hide these better?

To preload an image use a preload script rather than squahing up the actual image.

The main thing I noticed was that when I moved my mouse around on your site, I was bombarded by a lot of dhtml layers of text.. I really don't enjoy this, as I was trying to find somewhere where I could rest my mouse without these layers popping up!

I then click on the Tell Me More link and I get:

Permission denied

Which makes me feel unwelcome - and so I left..

I like your design though.. just try to tone down the layers.