Zane Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 I know it looks stuck together like duct tape and band-aids, but my main problem here is that I have way too much information to show. I have spoken with the client already and he wants to keep all of that information on one page, yet he also wants me to make the page more user-friendly. Also, I plan on integrating payment processing with credit cards, without the use of a third party payment gateway. I need some help. Some advice. I already have an idea of what a critique may look like, but feel free to critique away; you won't hurt my feelings. Also, I have already mentioned to the client that he needs a better logo, but he already has business cards with that plain sans-serif font. Without further ado, here it is http://www.reallycheapfloors.com Thank you Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Tell the client that it's difficult/time consuming to successfully stuff all that info on one page and make it user friendly and make it look good. Remind them that they hired you for your expertise, and that in your expert opinion their decision has the serious potential to ultimately hurt their brand/bottom line. Explaining it in those terms - "These decisions are likely bad for your business" - tends to get a client's attention. Is there a reason why they're afraid to have the user go to separate pages? It's just an odd request. But yeah, dude, that layout... not good. Lefthand navigation has kinda gone extinct in favor of header horizontal navigation. I don't like the popup info, especially since there's no X/Close button for it. And the thumbnail preview appearing below the last link on the left is too small, plus that's an awkward position to put it in, in any case. I can't imagine adding CC payment to that page as it stands now. How are you planning to do that without a payment gateway? Paypal? Suggestions: Get rid of the lefthand navigation. You'll get more screen real estate that way. Use a grid. A lot of your content is haphazardly placed. Go here to generate a layout grid. Use it in PhotoShop to help place elements before translating it to code. If you're going to stick with the one page site, don't just give your href's a value of #. Give them a real value, and then have your jQuery stop the default link behavior. I *believe* this will allow users to bookmark them (try it and see). Also, pagination. Especially if this is going to be a one page app. The JANKA Scale... oy. There's no need to have a paragraph from Wikipedia explaining it. Your client is going to have two kinds of customers: 1. Carpenters, who already know what it is. 2. Home owners who only need to know "The higher the number, the harder the wood." You can get rid of that page entirely and add the JANKA number as a column in the other listings. On the home page, the Polaroids look incredibly pixelated. Do you have photos of their actual stock? Similarly, for the about/contact pages, photos of the store? Of the owner(s)? Adding a touch of realism can be inviting. It says, "We do exist! Look at all of our real shit for sale! And our nice building! We want you to feel comfortable spending money with us." You already mentioned the font/lack of logo. --- That's all I have for now. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1350088 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mahngiel Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 Besides what Kevin touched on, there are other fundamental issues wrong with the design of that site. a) According to the 'Contact Us' form, the company's name is different than that URI, but that difference is not absolutely clear. People who spend their money online, generally want to know who the company is. b) Speaking of selling products, you should bring the fact that the intent of the site is to get people to spend their money at the aforementioned company's stores. There is nothing that says "buy this" or "you need this". Marketing is a bitch, but it's a large part of web UI/UX. c) Focus on the products d) Only use cursor: pointer when you have something to click, else it's confusing e) If he has business cards that read 'reallylcheapfloors.com' as the logo, tell him he needs new business cards. f) Everything on a page has a purpose, treat it thusly. You're disrespecting your own content when you just throw it at the wall and hope it sticks. g) The 'About Us' says the company has existed for nearly 40 years. Show their faces. h) if exists, Inform visitors of the support channels and how the company is willing to extend themselves to earn business. Hopefully this will get your mental ball rolling well enough. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1350333 Share on other sites More sharing options...
possien Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 The wood background just doesn't get it and the tables are to difficult to sort thru. However, the mouse over effect is a good idea but in reverse. Have a block of sample wood images and when you mouse over them it gives you the table data in a more readable index card format that may also explain some of flooring jargon. You could group them with an accordion effect (i.e, maple, oak, etc) It just does not catch the eye. Consumers want to see the look of the item not a table of somewhat meaningless data. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1350430 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 I have to agree with most of the points above. With the amount of data on the page and since the client is wanting it all on the same page, I'd highly suggest looking at http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/personal for ideas. That's what I use on my portfolio (with some tweaks) - but it is technically all one on HTML page and when JS is disabled, the user can just scroll down and see all of the information neatly. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1350716 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zane Posted June 3, 2012 Author Share Posted June 3, 2012 That's it! Thanks Phillip, now I have a good idea of what to do. I don't know how I didn't think of it before. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1350889 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zane Posted June 25, 2012 Author Share Posted June 25, 2012 Here's the result of the advice given to me. http://reallycheapfloors.com Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1356944 Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 Much better. Some crits: 1. I'd make the images in the home page slide show as wide as the context block below it. There's a noticeable size difference in width between the two. 2. Pagination. Especially with the prefinished solid floors. There's just too many to comfortably scroll through. 3. Check your capitalization with the Sundries. With the first item in the first location, you have CHERRy. Why not run all of the data through strtoupper if that's the look you're going for? 4. The footer is hard to read. The gray font blends in with the wood grain. All that said, I think you're 95% there. Some tweaks are all that's needed. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1357052 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zane Posted June 26, 2012 Author Share Posted June 26, 2012 2. Pagination. Especially with the prefinished solid floors. There's just too many to comfortably scroll through. I was thinking the same thing. Though, I'd like to implement one of those infinite scrolling pagination techniques. 3. Check your capitalization with the Sundries. With the first item in the first location, you have CHERRy. Why not run all of the data through strtoupper if that's the look you're going for? Yeah, that's worth a try. The sundries have the oddest way of inputting their data. My client asked if he could just copy and paste from excel.. and do multiplication with the numbers at the end to generate a total price. Unfortunately, the client seems to copy and paste more than is needed causing the prices to be ridiculous. I may end up posting a thread on that since I've been having difficulties figuring out how to deal with new lines/returns, what have you... some in of CR/LF things I'm not used to working with. 4. The footer is hard to read. The gray font blends in with the wood grain. Yeah. I suppose I could put a background color on that. Preciate' the feedback. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1357058 Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 2. Pagination. Especially with the prefinished solid floors. There's just too many to comfortably scroll through. I was thinking the same thing. Though, I'd like to implement one of those infinite scrolling pagination techniques. I wouldn't recommend that, since it's a catalog/store. For people who may make frequent use of the site (contractors?) it'd be better if they could bookmark a particular page rather than always scroll through a bunch of items every time they visit the page. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1357062 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mahngiel Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 I'm on the side of the pagination / categorization techniques mentioned above. There are just so many that it loses it's legibility. If you could at least put a drop-down menu that anchors you to a particular wood type, that'd be a major plus. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1357088 Share on other sites More sharing options...
xyph Posted June 26, 2012 Share Posted June 26, 2012 2. Pagination. Especially with the prefinished solid floors. There's just too many to comfortably scroll through. I was thinking the same thing. Though, I'd like to implement one of those infinite scrolling pagination techniques. I wouldn't recommend that, since it's a catalog/store. For people who may make frequent use of the site (contractors?) it'd be better if they could bookmark a particular page rather than always scroll through a bunch of items every time they visit the page. If you build it using anchors, they should be able to bookmark a specific 'page' Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1357273 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zane Posted July 7, 2012 Author Share Posted July 7, 2012 I decided that instead of paginating, I would use a fixed position filter. Since they are selling nation-wide, I figured it would be easiest. Thoughts? http://reallycheapfloors.com Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1359932 Share on other sites More sharing options...
xyph Posted July 7, 2012 Share Posted July 7, 2012 http://reallycheapfloors.com/engineered.php The 'all' link goes to prefin.php Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1359942 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mahngiel Posted July 8, 2012 Share Posted July 8, 2012 I do not believe there is a proper singular form of the word "species" in the context you have. I had to look it up (sadly) to validate my concern, reference.com has a note saying can be confused with 'specie'. However, when looking up specie, it does indeed give an awkward use of the term. I'm not a grammarian, but I thought I'd bring it up. Otherwise it's coming along nicely. Edit: Oh yea, when the browser's at half-width, the z-index for the fixed 'locations' thingy is subverted. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1360006 Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Little Guy Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Only half the home page shows up for me. - The colors don't go well with the blue - The header logo is ugly get a real logo - "prefinished solids" and "engineered woods" pages are too long, paginate - When a nav item is being displayed, highlight the nav item - All your footers are only displayed half way across the page - Marquee only shows up on some pages (I'd get rid of it, its no longer the 90's). Don't you create a file that has all the header html, and just include that? - Too many colors: pink links, gray links, brown links, red links, white links, blue location menu, brown location hover Those are a few tweaks that I see. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/263431-help-with-friendliness/#findComment-1360985 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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