need a critique - need to deal with annoying client

[webgator]

Please help us out.

We designed a website for a client and no matter what we do they don't like it. The company wants their website to resemble their catalog, but that isn't exactly possible. Their catalog designer thinks that we can simply reconstruct his catalog pages on the web. The site is at:

http://www.primevisibility.info/corpkit-beta/

It will have its own domain when its done.

Is this site completed or under construction?

It is almost complete, although the shopping cart part isnt active yet.

Who is your target audience?

its a B to B site

How important is it for your site to rank well?

very important since we do SEO too

How important is usability?

we think its important, the client has no clue

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)

to sell products online

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?

sure

Do you want design suggestions?

definetly, give as much critique as possible so we can send it to the client

[Glo]

Out of curiosity, is there a way to view the catalog? There are elements I don't like about the design but they are only personal preferences. I don't like the yellow box in the navbar on the front page or the yellow and black on the other pages. The yellow and black remind me of a construction site and the bright yellow in the blue navbar on the front page makes my eyes hurt.

Since the design is bold with a sharp contrast between the blue and black, the white space around it isn't pleasing to the eye, at least not to my eye. I'd like to view it without the white space and have the page size to any size screen. I'm viewing on a 14" screen, it could look different on a bigger screen. I noticed that the internal pages fill the screen, i.e. no white space around the edges.

I think the layout it great! It's easy to navigate and the product is well displayed. Not knowing what the catalog looks like, I can't imagine what the client doesn't like about the overall design (in relationship to the catalog). I'm betting they have that yellow and black in their catalog, right?

Color combinations and design are so subjective it will be interesting to read what others have to say.

[CawfeTalk]

Just to clarify:

I work with WebGator, and have had experience with this client as well. The way they design for the web is to take the page of their catalog, print it out on 8.5X11 paper, and hold it up to the screen , expecting us to replicate that on the web, AND have it search engine friendly.

That's what we're dealing with. Thanks for your continued Input!

~B

[scottiecl]

Welcome to the forum, Cawfe Talk! :hi:

I think that is a relatively common issue with some types of clients. I'm guessing you went through the whole "designing for the web is different than designing for print" speech with them already.


The yellow and blue are jarring to my eye as well. Other than that, I've seen plenty worse sites! It's not too bad. Fairly easy to navigate. It's not pretty, but if I wanted to buy something, I think I would be able to find it easily.

[amica_webmaster]

This doesn't look so bad, we've all seen MUCH worse. But I did have a couple of concerns about ease of use. Some of the type is very small, and may be hard for visitors to read. And I think visitors who don't have a lot of web experience would have a hard time finding the links to the homepage.

[Blue]

Hi webgator, and welcome to the forums CawfeTalk! :hi:

One of those kind of clients huh? :rolleyes: However, you can, IMO, get your clients to "see the light" by using a polite yet forceful strategy of imparting your knowledge through demonstrating your proven methods. Good Luck!

What's below may seem harsh, but please take it in the spirit of friendly constructive criticism...

My critique:

1.) Your site doesn't render well at 800x600 - it has the dreaded horizontal scroll. I'd fix this first!

Home page:

2.) You aren't utilizing space well at all IMO. The "books" graphic is way too large and takes up valuable real estate that could be used in presenting relevant textual information - which will also help in the SEO arena.

3.) I'd move the "Corporate Kits..." and logo over to the left edge.

4.) I'd move the phone # up to the top, and right justify it.

5.) I, too, am not crazy about the color scheme. It doesn't say "This is a Corporate Kits website" to me. The contrast between the books and the background is not there at all. If you keep the black BG, you need some kind of contrast there, like a glowing edge or......?

6.) The yellow text isn't legible enough to me, both in the body and the navbar. I'd re-think the background.

7.) I also wasn't crazy about the "specials" box. It doesn't look .... even, and the colors aren't complimentary to the site.

8.) I like the logo and think you should build the home page and the rest of the site from there, brightening up the "books" image and rethinking the color scheme. The navbar should stand out as just that.

Inner pages:

1.) All the above about color schemes apply here as well.

2.) The books are where the navbar should be. Currently, at both 800x600 & 1024x768, a visitor would have to vertically scroll to just navigate the site. Not good for usability. Put the navbar where it is most easily seen.

3.) Find a way to keep the books image, but put it in a place where it's seen but out of the way. You may have to resize it to do this.

4.) The products are sort of placed on the page in a helter-skelter way with seemingly no on the page organization. For usability, I would expect the pics, descriptions, model info, and links to be presented using the same positioning for each product.

5.) Consider using (again for usability) less font styles/sizes.

Overall:

I think a redesign is in order. You need to really think about what kind of a layout and color scheme will fit this client. Sorry to say, but IMO, you've completely missed the mark.

[madrone]

Hi Webgator,

I might have better suggestions if you post specifics about what they aren't happy about. But here are some general thoughts.

When educating clients on how the web is different from print, I've found it helpful to share the Stanford Web Credibility research with them.

http://credibility.stanford.edu/

and the whole report is here

http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/news/report3_credibilityresearch/stanfordPTL_abstract.htm

Just in general, I find it helpful to present corroborating research when my recommendations are counter to a client's design requests.

In this case, I would dig up some research in color psychology and how color schemes affect credibility.

Regarding their "not happy with anything" have you considered having them sign off on the design so you don't get caught up in endless iterations and last minute changes of direction for which you are not paid? Also placing a cap on iterations in the contract is sometimes a good idea.

Some code suggestions: you need to add a charset - if this is english only, try the following:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

You should link both the css and the javascript into external files and include <noscript> for the javascript.

Both the css and the javascript need a file type specified E.g.
type="text/javascript" and type="text/css"

If you use text for your navigation styled with css instead of images, you could eliminate almost all of those images and speed up load time as well as make it accessible.

check your attributes, some are incorrect and some are missing (e.g. there is no such thing as table height attribute, etc)

After you put in a charset, you can validate it at w3c.org and the validator will give you the specifics.

Hope that helps!

[webgator]

Great advice from everyone, please keep it coming.

Madrone, just so you know, the basis of the design is from their catalog designer, not us. We did not choose the layout or the color scheme but are trying to work based on their ideas within the constraints of the web. Unfortunately they don't understand the constraints of the web as well as good seo and usabilty.

Thanks

[madrone]

Hi Webgator,
Yes, I saw that bit about the design. My suggestions assume that web credibility is a constraint of the web.
I know it may be too late in the game for you to use that in this particular project. I just thought I'd throw it out there.

For what it's worth: I've had two clients who sound similar. Long story short: I assume that by hiring a web professional that a client wants my expertise. If it appears that a client thinks they're hiring a glorified secretary who just needs to wave the magic web development wand, I won't hesitate to fire them. I can't afford the time and aggravation.

good luck!

[stevew]

I won't hesitate to fire them Absolutely right. If a client doesn't understand that business has to be profitable to BOTH parties, then they have to go. I'm sure we've all had our (un)fair share of people who discount our time and efforts to zero, ignore our expertise, or plain just want to pick our brains for free. After all, that's how we need to start, to build our portfolio.

The day I first terminated a ridiculously unfair client contract was the day things started to get realistic.

Of course, it should be the exception, not the rule ... :D

[pielover]

I'd see about the following:

Making the logo and header regular graphics and not background, which you may find you need to do to make the pages "flexible" anyway. That way the Logo can be a link back to the home page.

Sites with navigation on the left and top are a bit confusing to me. The tabs on this page are hard to read and too plentiful. You may have to convince the client to put the products in category "buckets" to reduce the amount of nav links.

I'd build on Blue's previous suggestion: move books to upper right (and smaller), then move yellow tab navigation to the left side. (I don't mind color scheme except for the yellow tabs.)

This page's layout must be an example of what your client wants:
http://www.primevisibility.info/corpkit-beta/do-it-yourself.html, because it is really choppy.

As to your client ask them this: Who normally orders your products? (My guess is a adminstrative assistant for a lawyer.) Then tell the client to have their AA come into the office and use the catalog-style site to find a specific product (unassisted). A usability test could be that simple and prove your point. Or tell him/her to have their spouse try it at home that night.