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Design

Posted by Rick Rakin
Rick Rakin
6,531 Points

Please critique first website, version 1.0

My first complete website and I'm sure there is much to improve.

Since this is version 1.0, it is not yet responsive. That will come over the next few weeks.

I haven't written the parts catalog yet, so that link won't work. I plan to add a contact form when I learn the php to do this, probably no later than this fall. I also plan on a speedometer gear ratio calculator, perhaps in Js, down the road too.

Thoughts/opinions/criticisms?

Edit: Need to warn on the CSS. It's bloated, probably inefficient and redundant and could use a work over. That might be next.

2 Answers

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

The design itself is fairly clean, that's always good however the UX leaves a lot to be desire. Firstly nothing stands out, there's not a lot in terms of visual hierarchy.

When I first arrive I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do there, it has a pretty poor user journey.

After poking around some my guess is it's a business that sells parts. So I would think your catalog would be the most important thing a perspective customer would want to look at. Then finding the part isn't intuitive and once you find a listing in the catalogue, what is the customer then supposed to do to order it.

So reading up on using color & typography to convey hierarchy, also reading up on UX in general and user journey's in particular.

For the catalogue I'd suggest using list.js which automagically gives you searching, filtering and sorting on plain HTML lists.

Rick Rakin
Rick Rakin
6,531 Points

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to thoroughly review these links. Yeah, I feel like it might be too drab and need something more interesting at first glance. I wish the client had some shop photos or something but this is not the case.

I see what you mean about the UX. I'm going to try and bridge the gap a little to give visitors a clue as to what things are about. It just sort of jumps right into content without explaining what the content is, I see now.

As for the confusing parts list, I do not care for it at all. But this is how the client wants it to be. Client doesn't want customers to order parts themselves, because they will "screw up and order the wrong things." I think good design would minimize this and the list's design is why customers would screw up. As it is, the whole catalog system, from ID numbers to part descriptions is awful. But that design is out of my hands and has to stay as-is, unfortunately.

The customer base is of highly knowledgeable hobbyists that tend to scour junk yards looking for vintage parts, but need a little help in identifying certain markings to get the exact items.

The client isn't really interested in increasing business, oddly. It's to get the old site at least beyond 2001 standards. Here's the original. Probably could have made nomination for that 90s website contest a few weeks ago.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Client doesn't want customers to order parts themselves

There doesn't have to be an a way to order parts, I can see the value in a mail order business just wanting to convert a paper catalogue into a web version.

The customer base is of highly knowledgeable hobbyists that tend to scour junk yards looking for vintage parts, but need a little help in identifying certain markings to get the exact items.

Having a search/sort function could help knowledgeable hobbyist greatly.

Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points
Erick Bongo
Erick Bongo
8,539 Points

I'd close the spacing between each of the sections. Going vertically down the page, there are massive voids of space, which from my personal perspective as a user, is fairly annoying.

Rick Rakin
Rick Rakin
6,531 Points

Too much spacing between sections. Okay, thanks, will work at this. Was attempting to go for the effect of where one flick of the scroll wheel on a mouse spins the user to the next chunk of content. But guess I didn't get it quite right.