Redesigned Weight Lifting Website looking for Tips & Pointers [Archive] - Web Design & Web Development Forum: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP

alvo

23 Sep 2007, 02:14 AM

My first complain was with the home page, wondering why I had to click a second time to get to the site. I did realize later that the splash page is at one domain and clicking on the "enter" link leads you to a different domain, but still, it's a pointless exercise to a visitor to have to click through a page with absolutely no content on it. Why not just point the domain name to the other site and be done with it?

Your navigation is confusing to use. You have one set at the top of the page, a second set of four colored boxes a little below that, a third set that comes and goes just under that, a stacked set of links at the bottom of the page and below that a fifth navigation set of links. Why so many? What's the difference between them and which one(s) am I supposed to be using? There doesn't seem to be any real system to how the links are organized and it makes me feel unsure of what to click on to find content that would be valuable to me. A good navigation system will present to me clear options to choose from, and then once selecting one of them will give me another set of clear options to choose from, if applicable.

For instance, I click on "Programs" and I get a page with four main categories, basic, programs, advanced, beginner, each with some additional kinks. Then, directly following that are programs broken down by muscle groups; programs, advance and basic. Didn't I just have those three among the four choices you just gave me? (Note: they go to the same pages as the links above with the same names.) Huh? I'm lost to what all the links are supposed to be for and I'm confused by what relationship they have to each other.

What you need to do is some simple usability testing to see how people unfamiliar with the site use it and how they manage to find their way around and what they're thinking as they choose the links they do. I'd recommend you get a copy of Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think which covers how to do this. It's also an amazingly well though out book on how people use website and how to build websites that work. A quick read of the book will give you some basic things that can turn what you have into a really well organized site that people will return to.

One thing that is missing is photos of bodybuilders. I would think that they would be inspiration to visitors interested, but there are only three that I could find, and all women. I expected to see more of a magazine-type collection of various men and women throughout, but there are none, not even on the pages that give the exercise information where demonstrations of those routines dictate them.

I've found the best place to put ads is where people will see them when they're at a point that they're deciding what to do or where to go next; a stopping point of sorts. This is usually places like at the end of an article (immediately following a "related items" link or two). Once someone is done with the content of a page they then stop and decide if they're going to go someplace else within the site or maybe go some place altogether different. What they decide is one thing, but the moment they pause to make that decision, as brief as it is, is the time to entice them to click on an ad.

They weren't going to do so at the beginning of the article, as they navigated there for that content; they're likely not going to do it during the reading of the article (unless the content isn't what they were looking for); but they are the most likely do do so when the content is finished.

A couple of years ago I moved ads from on top of the pages on a site to the bottom (the site owner was skeptical about doing so), and even though the ads were seen less, the click-through rate increased substantially.