[thelist] Site Check

[A. Erickson]

> url: http://www.2cs.com/tradebridge

I haven't read the other responses yet.

I'm on WinME and IE 5.5.

First off, I'm not wild about the pop-up and it's not just because it's
a pop-up. The typical annoying pop-up usually falls into one of two
categories: either its an ad or it is a way for the designer to pen us
into a certain size format. In the latter case, the parent page usually
has little to no information which is what makes yours so confusing. 

It's like you're popping up a mini-site of the site underneath. They
both have similar navigation and have a similar look and style. It's
confusing. I'm going to close the pop-up and ignore it and address the
main window.

First of all, I think the color scheme is really fun. The design in the
background with the squares is really fun to look at. For whatever
reason, though, my eye keeps getting drawn to the right. It could be my
monitor size which makes that big area of blue on the right look so
weighty. Perhaps centering the content would be better?

Also, the information hierarchy is just sort of confusing. Where am I
supposed to start reading? The nav bar is offset slightly at the top
from the rest of the content. It's above the logo which sort of doesn't
work in terms of importance of information. What if you did a grid
pattern where the logo is top left with the text description to its
right. On the next line you have new sites and then the portfolio
buttons. Underneath those, perhaps aligned with the bottom of the blue
is the nav. Just something to try if you want.

And, my last beef on this page is the text at the bottom which is
graphic text. It's fuzzy and too hard to read. This kind of text
(addresses and phone numbers) is *exactly* the kind of text that people
want to copy and paste into their address books, into an email, etc.

I don't mean to trash your site, it has a nice look to it but you just
need to take the polish further and really analyze how you're laying
things out and how clear you're being to your audience.

- amanda

___________________________________
amanda at gawow.com + http://gawow.com