RE: FN-FORUM: Site Review

date posted 5th May 2008 10:58

Hi Tony,

I'm glad you found the comments useful - let me clarify on your questions:

1. Yeah - I see your point; I guess the static content made me thought these
were bespoke pages, and not generated from a CMS system. I think what I was
probably thinking of was something along the lines of a blog (of sorts), to
show some dynamic content on the site. Museums can be static (I use this
word advisedly), but hopefully a blog can be used to show something of the
life at the Museum - it looks like it is one where people act or play the
parts of tradesmen from yesteryear? Maybe talk about projects that the
Museum are involved in, perhaps?

2. The site is crying out for some form of gallery - it does not need to be
elaborate, but something to provide a little more visual interest. As a
starter for ten though - how about trying to incorporate it into the
rollover image set you have on the main page? You will need to adapt the
code a little, but it should not be difficult.

3. My browser shows a dark green menu bar along the top of the screen - is
this not the case with you?

4. Fair point - the masking would be useful, but if they already have a spam
system in place, then this would probably be OK.

5. Check out http://www.bclm.co.uk/map.htm - this is the map which is on
white background, but the site sits on a yellow hatching pattern. However
most other pages I view show the main text also on the yellow hatching, and
not on a white background - http://www.bclm.co.uk/corporate.htm is a case in
point. The menu system appears on a white background - is this what you
intended? I have checked in FF2 - I now know what you mean; this shows a
white background across all of the text, whilst the site is sitting on a
yellow hatching background. I think this was what you wanted, correct?

6. Hehe - I browse the same too, unless IE7 is playing tricks on me, from a
WinXP Pro system! (I would not put it past Microsoft...). I think this point
of mine stems from an article published by .net magazine sometime ago, on
how to produce what I think they called "boxouts". As you only have these
yellow boxes on some pages, and not all, I probably thought "maybe there is
a better place to put them, so that the left hand menu is more consistent?".
How does this strike you? Let me know if you want me to dig around for the
article - I think I still have it somewhere...

Overall it is a nice site - it serves its purpose, but I can see why your
client would like a refresh, as I think there is so much more that could be
done on it, to help better promote the museum. One thing I would point out,
which I am not sure I have already done - you have menus in 3 different
places, whereas I think a text only menu would be better at the bottom of
the screen, and more made of the menu on the left. People are lazy by nature
(yep - a very generalist comment I know, but I think still true) - if you
put links at the bottom of the page which could lead to money making
possibilities, there is a good chance some people will miss these, as they
have not bothered to scroll all the way down to find them. A text only link
at the bottom will still be accessible if the l/h menu system stops working
for any reason. The other thing that I think I would look at is the menu
system is not consistent across the board - check out
http://www.bclm.co.uk/shop.htm and http://www.bclm.co.uk/index.htm, and I
think you will see what I mean..

Hope this helps,

Alex.

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL REMOVED] [EMAIL REMOVED] On Behalf Of Tony
Crockford
Sent: 05 May 2008 10:09
To: FN-FORUM / [EMAIL REMOVED]
Subject: Re: FN-FORUM: Site Review


On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 10:28 PM, Alex Libby [EMAIL REMOVED] wrote:
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> I've had a look - I hope the below might help with some ideas:
>
> 1. The site is very flat - my first idea with this was that it is
> almost crying out for something like Wordpress. This will allow them
> to add news themselves if they want (or you, if they don't have time
> or expertise). This will allow them to put up the extra "static"
> pages as well, which are probably not going to change too much. The
> theme used can be customized - it is written in PHP, or you can download
and install a theme if you wish...

it has a bespoke CMS - but builds static pages.


>
> 2. Lightbox! This would really give the site some much needed
> dynamism - I think you may have heard of it, but if you have not, it
> is a lightbox magnification effect written in Javascript. Check out
> http://www.huddletogether.com - it is a link on this page...

yeah, I've heard of it, but where would you use it?




>
> 3. The top and side menus make the overall effect confusing - do you
> need both? Plus - the top menu is in green, which makes it harder for
> visually impaired people to see it. (Yeah - I know - that old
> chestnut. But it is important!).

of course, but Green? where do you see Green?


Also - the menu at the bottom has to be scrolled down to, to
> see it; are people going to want to do this? Particularly as there is
> a link for the shop. (Now there's an idea - would they consider a
> small online shop, selling higher value presents, etc, that may be
> sold in addition to those at the museum??)

that is being reworked. and they do want e-commerce.


>
> 4. Work through the site and see if you can get some javascript "masking"
> code for email addresses - this will help towards reducing any spam
> that they may get.

I doubt masking the address will reduce spam - they have a decent spam
system guarding their mail and most spam i get is based on dictionary email
addresses, not actual addresses, but point taken.



>
> 5. There are some inconsistencies with background colour - eg. the
> map of the museum grounds is on a white background, whilst other
> pages are on a yellow background. I think the white background would look
better, maybe?

all the content is on white, the site itself sits on a hatched yellow
background.

not sure what you're seeing - browser and OS?



>
> 6. Some pages have a yellow box in the left hand menu system - eg.
> the group visits page. This is not consistent across the board -

it's a hightlight box for info they wanted to highlight

perhaps it might be
> worth putting this as a CSS styled boxout towards the top of the
> page, on the right hand side? I think that I read somewhere that
> people look at that part of the page first on a newspaper, so the
> best ads are put there. Would the same work on screen, I wonder?

apparently we browse differently - left hand and top left to right, middle
left to right - an F shape.


>
> Hope these help - if I can be of any more help, please say.


very useful feedback, thanks for taking the time to confirm my thoughts on
what needs changing.

Cheers!

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