Critique Briefs
sent in by readers during August, 2004
Review of: The Galvez Family Web site
Reviewer comments:
Some would think that creating a home page for your family to use all around the country/world is an easy task. You have a controlled audience and direct contact with the end users. It's not that easy, so I have found out myself while trying to create a homepage for my family.
- The columns are great! They make it easy for the user to view the most important information quickly, then delve in deeper if they want more information and have more time.
- The font size chosen is good and readable, but there are different fonts used throughout the site for body text. To increase readability, they should be kept consistent. Body text alignment too should be consistent (either justify it all, or don't). Both of these things make text hard to read and understand.
- As for color scheme, it only needs a little tweaking. I think you're on the right track. The brown for the font is an excellent choice given the El Paso area. I grew up in Alamogordo and visited El Paso frequently. The brownness of the entire area is well represented in that brown. The blue is a good choice as well. It emphasizes the bright, cloudless blue sky of the photo in the header. The gray is, however, sucking the life out of your site. It gives it a professional feel. That's all well and good if you're a lawyer…but this is for your family!! Have some fun with it! Maybe make the areas that are gray a darker color, and the black header a lighter color, so that they frame the other areas of the site to make them stand out and bring focus to the center where all the action is.
- One little thing that is irritating to someone if they aren't real internet savvy is that some of the pictures have no indicators, other then text instructions, that they are clickable. Most people don't want to have to think that hard about it. (There was also a broken link in your News section under the 12/25/04 log, Gonzalo's website.)
- Under the News section, the list of all the e-mails for the entire family is a bit overwhelming. Maybe it should have its own section that you have to click on to get to. It takes away from the other things on the page. Then, maybe move the "Family of the Month" up to the center column. It gets lost down at the bottom.
- The Galvez Golf section's menu is hard to find. The links don't look like links. Maybe they should be in the green bar just underneath the picture and be rollovers so that they scream clickable. When I clicked the "Player" link, I was surprised to see a different format, because the rest of your site has a consistent layout. Different formats confuse people and make them worry that they have left your site. (sad, but true.)
Design seems to be your strong point, but work on the usability. Just a few tweaks and you'll have a beautiful and usable site for your family to enjoy! There is a great book I have just started reading. I've only read the first 5 chapters, but have already learned things that are useful. It's call "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usabilty," by Steve Krug. It's a thin book and easy to read (lots of pictures!).
Happy designing!
Debbie
Review of: Mountain Monarch Adventures
Reviewer comments:
This site is very informative for the traveller, who are planing to go on the adventure treks, peak climging, Cultural tours in Nepal, Tibet tours and treks. It has very attactive layout and lots of link are created so the viewers have required information from any page.
Reviewed by Pradip Kumar Limbu
Web Review Comments: Sorry Pradip, but our reviewers had a bit different reaction. The site seems to be too cluttered with little or no separation between sections that should be separated. Additionally, the font sizes utilized are far too small for good use.
Review of: http://www.nomadink.com/
Reviewer comments:
My observations is as follows.
- 1) The colors of the site are very contemporary with the uses of grey and having orange as an accent.
- 2) The structure of the site is interesting splitting your fine art work with your design work in a grid.
- 3) It is interesting that you have your site as bilingual. My problem with that is there is no deciphering between the english and spanish. You might want to either change the color between languages or change font styles (ie italic vs roman)
- 4) some of your artwork seems to be a little bit fuzzy I would sharpen it.
Overall the site has an original look and feel. I think if you make some of these tweaks, you will be all right good luck
Reviewed by jerry tamburro
Web Review Comments: Jerry missed one element that should be mentioned: the fact that it's all either graphics or SWF files means the user cannot change type size in their browser. Our reviewers found the site unacceptable because the font size is sub-7 points, unreadable on the web. This designer is not careful to support a wide array of monitors and systems.
Review of: Google Yahoo Msn Positioning
Reviewer comments:
Our reaction to the site was that its content, tools and links were helpful to Webmasters and Internet marketers. It would be difficult to come across the free online resources, listed on the site on one's own; we will bookmark it for future reference.
The page loaded quickly, due to the few graphics on it. The bare-bones "HTML" lay-out of the homepage was probably intentional to emphasis it's content and eliminates diversions; however, it would be more interesting with some effort to design it, and to add colors to an almost completely gray-motif site.
It is questionable whether so much should have been placed on one page, but because of the easy to read "print-format" design it navigated
Reviewed by Linda Rosario
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