new web design in need of critique

[gamera~]

Hello all, I'm relatively new to web design and development so I'd appreciate any input you have on this site ( www.michaelhoywoodworking.com/mhww3 ) which is a redesign of www.michaelhoywoodworking.com.


It is still a work-in-progress but the basic layout is more or less final. I've tested it on Safari 3, Firefox 3, IE 6 and 7, so it should render OK on those browsers.

thanks!

~Mike

 

[gamera~]

44 views... either it's that bad, or you're all speechless ;-)

 

[Slash1959]

i like how it has a nice clean look. Its refreshing

well done

 

[samwich]

Yes it is very clean, I guess the only thing I could suggest is the navigation.

1) While you do put a breadcrumb in once you get into the pages, it appears backwards to the traditional way. For example yours appears as

bench | furniture | michael hoy

I think as far as a usability standpoint

michael hoy | furniture | bench

would be better (reading from left to right is more standard)

2) You only have the main navigation on the homepage. If I saw your bench on furniture and wanted to contact you I would have to go back to the homepage and then to contact. While it may not seem like a lot of extra work, people are lazy.

You might consider putting your logo on every page and underneath have the main navigation and underneath put the breadcrumb

Or another alternative would be to stick these main navigation pages into the footer

Otherwise it's a good site.

 

[gamera~]

1) While you do put a breadcrumb in once you get into the pages, it appears backwards to the traditional way.

Good point. I had thought about that, and for some reason I went with the backwards way... I think because I wanted the 'title' (e.g. Side Chair) at the left and in black, with link to the right and in gray. I'll try it out the other way too.

2) You only have the main navigation on the homepage. If I saw your bench on furniture and wanted to contact you I would have to go back to the homepage and then to contact. While it may not seem like a lot of extra work, people are lazy.

Aye, navigation is probably the biggest weakness here; I was going for a trade-off with simplicity and clean pages. At the bottom of every page theres a link to the contact page, but it's pretty small and unnoticeable. I'm going to experiment with expanding the navigation bar, possible with two rows.

i like how it has a nice clean look. Its refreshing

well done

thanks!

 

[trule]

The furniture is very nice however its a PITA to view it all, lots of click and back and click and back...

would benefit from a "cover flow" setup, or just next and previous buttons so that people can browse the collection.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Nice simplistic UI, but I would reverse the navigation bar at the top. You should think about adding a drop down menu or something so the customer doesn't have to click back and forth to view all your furniture. I suggest something like coverflow and BannerZest to do it.