Part Three: Detailed Website Assessment (excerpts)
To ensure thorough and unbiased results, this assessment was approached from the 'user's point-of-view'. Since every user is unique in terms of the information they seek, their current knowledge-level of ACME, and their level of Web navigation ability, it is important to assume that your visitors are not necessarily familiar with your organization, or the industry, and to make their web-experience logical, interesting and free of confusion.
At the same time, we have to respect the users who are familiar with the site - who use it for functional purposes - and ensure that their experience is equally efficient and never laborious.
Your site and product-service suite is rich in ideas and solutions; however, the way in which you express what you do and why you do it is unfortunately weak and disorganized - and this is precisely why you sought an independent assessment of your marketing pitch.
Much of the material appears to have been written by a variety of people, in a variety of language styles and tones so after this assessment is reviewed and discussed and any concerns are clarified, I will re-write the new site with a single voice - one that reflects the true nature and attitude of ACME.
In terms of page layout, many of the issues have already been addressed in Section 2 of this report (fonts, colours, justifications, etc.) but other more page-specific comments are mentioned in each pages' individual assessment.
Some of these comments may not apply - assuming other recommendations are implemented - but all comments are listed in the event that you pick and choose what to change, instead of an overhaul, which is my ultimate recommendation. Otherwise, these comments will serve as guidelines for consideration during the re-writing phase of the project.
Overall Site Comments
- Three instances of the two versions of your logo appear - and this likely causes unnecessary confusion with respect to your official corporate look-and-feel
- The secondary ACME logo at the bottom repeatedly reminds me of the CGI logo (Is this a coincidence?)
- Success through Client-centred Solutions appears twice as well
- Animated gif at the bottom of pages: it's a nice little touch but the wording/messages will have to change - as will the ACME logo (depending on which one is or becomes your official logo)
- Get In Touch button below address is an unnecessary duplication
- There are far too many conflicting colours on your site
- Should your site be bilingual since you are based in Ottawa and often work with the federal government?
- Use of UPPER and lower case needs to be rethought
- Justification: use centred-text sparingly (it's hard to read and looks odd)
- Top of Page link buttons are unnecessary in a well-designed site
Selected Home Page comments
- This page needs a whole new design; one that captures the high-value of ACME's offering
- You have two different and competing ACME logos stacked on top of one another in the top left corner; ACME should only have one distinct corporate logo
- Adding depth to the logo in the side-bar will better-define it and 'bring it out'
- This page follows the exact page-layout scheme as the inside pages and while continuity is good, your home page should stand out from the others - in a sense it should be thought of as an advertisement to get them to want more (it is often your first impression and therefore its design and appeal is extremely important)
- Consider hiring an artist to create something special and unique - using your existing images - or with new vibrant images
- Whatever you do in the redesign, strive to keep it simple, clean, professional and interesting
- The page needs a more powerful intro message or paragraph (to be addressed in the re-write)
- Page width appears to be variable (100%) and this is good - but centering the whole page would make it more balanced
- There are currently 10 different fonts on your homepage and that's seven or eight too many
- Fonts: assign a headline style, a sub-head style, an emphasis style, a call-to-action style and a body style - including colours - site wide
- ACME title should not be underlined as that still indicates a link to many people
- Download free products' icon: it doesn't seem appropriate to ask a browser to download something so early into the visit (on the home page), before they have had the chance to look around the site
- Having the 'Contact our Webmaster' box in the side-bar is not a good idea; this is ACME's site, not your Web developer's site (you can leave the 'site designed by' blurb and link it, as is done, but don't invite people to contact them
- Why upper-case 'Client'? Sure it's an important word but EVERY word is important, otherwise they don't belong at all (also, it's grammatically incorrect to do this); you should use bold or italics - or another colour - to emphasize it
- Get in Touch doesn't sound professional enough to represent ACME's image
