Website critique/straw poll

Guys, gals, fellow orgers etc.

I'm looking for some help on reviewing a website at www.newpig do co dot uk

By way of thanks I can get you a branded hat/skip hat for any critique.

Can you please be as frank and honest as possible in any comments you provide.

If you can rate it 1 - 5 with 1 being excellent and 5 being poor on the following;

Brand
Usability
Interface
Functionality

Thanks in advance

(Mods - if this is inappropriate for the forum then no problems if you have to delete it)

Brand - 2
Usability - 3
interface - 3
functionality - 2

The site is quite good, lots of options and clear links to make finding the correct item easy.
Good looking interface, perhaps a bit gimmicky, not sure its that fitting for the product. The drop down menu is slow to react you have to hover for a good few seconds before it shows any sign of doing any thing. Not sure that i like the tick boxes for options, i think a tiered menu would work better, No visible (obvious) home button, its also a bit slow at loading the small images for each button(link)

^ just my opinions

brand -2
usability- 3
inferface- 2
fuctionality- 2

looks clean and crisp, well thought out and easy to use
as for problems, now home route button, and when the search came up dry no options to what you meant or possibly could have wanted,
products seem good and site seems more inviting that other companies selling the same hazmat style kit
hth

[Kalessin]

First of all, I'm not happy about 1 being excellent and 5 being poor. Normally, the higher the score, the better!

That said, however:

Brand

I don't see a consistent brand here. You have a logo, but it's not particularly eye-catching. You have "New Pig Ltd" next to it in a completely different font and they don't look as though they belong together.

There's also little consistency: you have a pig character in some places, a woman in others and a real pig in the home page animation. There's very little "brand" outside the header.

Score: 4

Usability

The site is pretty easy to use and all navigation items are where I'd expect them to be, but the entire site is deliberately blocked from users without JavaScript. This is very poor practice. Many companies' IT departments routinely disable JavaScript on users' machines (for security), so there's a whole market which has been actively prevented from viewing the site.

Score: 3

Interface

The site is fairly well designed, albeit in a generic, "modified e-commerce template" way, but there's perhaps too much use of black. The main three-frame animation on the home page is very attractive.

The third frame, "Tough top. Secure seal." has a weird thing going on at the bottom right-hand corner where two objects overlap each other. This is on Firefox/Mac.

If "Sooo-e-mail" is a joke, I don't get it

Surely "Pigalog" should be spelled "Pigalogue" (but I think "Catahog" would be better)?

Score: 2.5

Functionality

The whole site seems slow. I don't know if that's down to the code or the server, but it's frustrating...

... but not as frustrating as the drop down menu, which takes a while to load after mouse-over and is unattractive and replete with unnecessary effects. Looks to me like someone was using it to try out a new JavaScript effect they'd found online!

The three-panel horizontal scroller on the home page should really scroll three places at once. Otherwise, visitors read the three that are displayed, then have to click the arrow three times to read three more. Why not replace all three at once?

Finally, the online catalogue is a great idea poorly implemented. It takes ages to load and it doesn't cache, so it takes ages to load every time. I would have put a PDF online instead.

Score: 4

Sorry. I feel a little mean about the poor scores, but if you have any questions, feel free to give me a shout.

[DarrenSV650S]

The catalogue is annoying to browse because you have to keep zooming and turning the page, and it's difficult to read. And there's no linky for buying the items.

I would put a permanent catalogue link in the top banner, instead of the scrolling bit at the bottom. And the scrolling bit should scroll automatically.

The "Absorbents & Kits/ Spill Containment ..." menu looks good but takes too long to load. And when I actually click on the headings nothing happens.

Here you go..

Brand 2

The logo could be tied better in with the text font next to it. That part doesn't really work for me. However a brand is the sum of all the touchpoints and I think you've done a really good job of creating a fun, friendly brand with the tone of voice you use in the copy and the pig jokes running throughout. Particularly like the 'run all the way home' text that pops up when you hover over the logo.

Good job, but fix the logo!

Usability 5

As has been mentioned, javascript menus, javascript basket - very bad. Way too much reliance on javascript and it doesnt degrade gracefully ie if you turn javascript off, the site doesnt work.

Interface 3

Seems pretty intuitive, would have been a 2 but knocked it down to 3 due to slow loading of menu. Nice to see the full company address on each page as that inspires trust. Shame the company phone number up the top is in an image though - try not to put important textual information in imagery.

Functionality 2/4

Way too easy to break due to all the javascript but apart from that pretty straight forward

And something very important you didnt ask about....

SEO 5
Basically there is none which is not going to help your site being found in the first place. This is again due to in page javascript actions rather than a seperate page per item. Also the underlying code of the page doesnt promote SEO - no page titles, no friendly urls, no use of headings to promote content.


Sorry for some of the low grades, you did ask for honesty

The key things for me to look at would be the javascript and the SEO - unfortunately I get the feeling you might be tied into this because of the platform you've chosen to build the site on.

Thanks for the replies peeps.

Really useful and grateful for your honesty. (You've been an awful lot kinder than some other reviews).

It's good to get a lot of differing opinions and I can take what I've had to the client.

Thanks again