Hi,

I'd greatly appreciate it if you could check out this
website and let me know what you think of the design
and ease of use. Any suggestions are welcome!

http://www.orchardsandvines.com

Thanks,
Dahlia

The graphics seem to be elegant and look good but it seemed hard to navigate like everything ran together.

Hi Dahlia,

Quite a few pointers need to be made :

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Browser : MSIE 5.0
OS : Win95
Speed : Cable
Resolution : 1024x768
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Disclaimer : this is only advice from a web designer's point of view. It's up to you as to whether to take it or not. However, I provide advice so as to improve the usability of a site so that visitors will come back time and again.
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:bawling: <---- Problem sections

1. Ease of use. The links size is quite small and on the opening splash page, it takes a second look for me to realise they are indeed links.

But the biggest problem is the navigation system. Once on to the second page (orchards.html), it took me all of 17 seconds to find where all the major links was, and even then I had to look hard. 17 seconds is way too long and people will immediately click off the site because they can't work it out.

The links to the rest of the site is in the middle of the page, which means people at smaller resolutions need to either scroll down to get the links, or click for a 2nd time to get to 'menu.html' to get all the links. Having to click twice to get to menu.html is not good web design.

2. Following on, from first impressions it was lost on me as to what the purpose of the 'menu.html' page was. It looked like a Contact Us form for all I can tell, from first impressions. If you are going to have contact details, do it on a single page, not on multiple pages through the site. It's horribly confusing and very unorthodox.

3. Layout. In addition to the above problems, the layout complicates navigation further. To say it's quite unconventional is an understatement.

4. Because the site is titled 'Orchards and Vines', people who somehow stumble on to your site have different expectations and least expect to hear a band. The MP3 link on the front page confuses visitors further. You need some sort of description on the splash page so people know it's a band's official site, not something describing orchards, vines or wines.

5. Put the bee and globe with the links up the top, instead of the bottom on all 'secondary' pages. Please. Otherwise you'll lose visitors. On the 'home.html', it's not necessary to have text links next to the bee and globe. Put the text links on the bottom of home.html - that's where they belong.

6. In addition, at 'home.html', your buttons changes to a different state when you mouseover the buttons. Why not on the other pages??

:angel: :agree: <---- sections to be complemented on

7. The graphics and photos are of good quality and graphics wise, it's luscious. Very nice.

8. Color-theme is ok. I never really liked brown/yellow, but I think it suits your site reasonably well.


Overall? Initial impressions were unimpressive, and those impressions worsened as I attempted to go through your site. If I was a first time visitor and not reviewing your site, I would have immediately left because I couldn't work out where the heck everything was. It was quite unorthodox and not very user-friendly. A lot of work is required to overhaul this and bring it up so that visitors feel far more comfortable on your site and are willing to return again and again.

Thanks for your comments. I agree that the navigation is unconventional, so I'm in the process of changing over to a frames-based menu that will appear at the bottom of every page. I'm also going to be addressing most of the other points you mentioned, and I'll post another message when the overhaul is online.

The reason I had included text links next to the graphic links was for people who either have images turned off or have problems with the javascipt mouseovers. The mouseovers caused errors on some older browsers, and didn't work well on some Mac systems, so I decided not to have them throughout the site, just at the first instance.

I appreciate the time you took to analyze the site!

Dahlia

Man, what a nice site!

-that was put together so strangely... :) I think if you ask anyone (I'm about to echo BC), you'll find that the graphics are very well done. Everything looks very nice, just completely out of place. It almost looks as if there was a loading error and things that should have been here, ended up there.

I think you should build upon the layout of http://www.orchardsandvines.com/picks.html before going to frames, and although it might be a bit boring and traditional, I am guessing you could liven up the top part to make it look fantastic. Links up there on the horizontal bar. That navigation thingy (for lack of a better word), shown on the menu page, is sooo nice, I just don't know how I'd work that rectangle into the layout. If you can manage it, use it! :)

It really has many nice qualities, but unfortunately, navigation and useability aren't one of them. I'd drop contact forms from every page as well, but there are smaller ways of incorporating a "join our mailing list" form. You can put it inside the left table on the picks site (under the books heading). This kinda sneaks it in, but yet, doesn't make it the main focus of the page. Just a thought.

Originally posted by guest
Hi,

I'd greatly appreciate it if you could check out this
website and let me know what you think of the design
and ease of use. Any suggestions are welcome!

http://www.orchardsandvines.com

Thanks,
Dahlia
May be you should do more sophisticated intro image, and systematize your site.