ESWC06: Website Critique, Dave and Bob

Bob stepped in as a last minute replacement for Sharon Housley for this Website Critique session. Dave Collins asked for volunteers for a scathing website review. I did make a note of most of the websites, but I think the most appropriate way to write this up might be to anonymize it!

• The page title of every page should be unique.
• Use keywords at the start of the title rather than the company name.
• Always show your pricing. [USD was recommended, and mostly supported. Some audience suggested it was easy enough to use Geo-coding to display appropriate currencies. Others felt that this was unreliable, and that having pricing in USD wasn't really a big problem to anyone.]
• Problems with big logos, or irrelevant photos. Wasting space, and not explaining the product clearly enough.
• Don't show the logo of your payment processor. Your user probably doesn't know who they are, it's just confusing.
• Some pages looked a bit homegrown, not exactly ugly, but they could be transformed very easily, either for ~$30 at pixelmill, or for free at oswd.
• Nice sites which suffered from bad color choices, like florescent green Download and Buy buttons.
• Don't use ampersands in your page title, write out the word "and".
• Avoid confusing or meaningless titles, don't use "Welcome" on your page.
• Don't post shareware awards on your front page, replace them with testimonials, or magazine review scores. Customers won't know who most of the sites are.
• Don't use blinking buttons, they are distracting.
• Dates have to be recent, and don't fill your product page with your release history.
• Watch what you choose for images, if the picture is the first thing you look at it's probably taking too much attention (unless it's somehow explaining your product).
• Don't have too many buttons and links on the main page.
• Don't overwhelm with information and text, there were a couple of sites which must have been 15 screens long. Way too much, impossible to tell what the product does. Just get to the point and give the details elsewhere.

Tags: eswc06 micro isv shareware web design