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womble -> RE: Handscombes.com - your thoughts...?? (10/4/2007 10:11:17)
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To be perfectly honest, removing the flashing gif doesn't help that much. The site simply screams "1990s" and there's nothing on there that brings it alive - no graphics (apart from the two logos - do they need to be that prominent?), nothing about recent happenings in the financial world, nothing to show that anyone from the company's been there recently.
The navigation's overpowering - two columns of navigation? That's just too confusing for visitors because they don't know where to look. Don't do anything that makes them think! Steve Krug's Don't make me think!: A common sense approach to web usability is a book that every web designer should own, and really makes you think about the design decisions you make and how they affect users. All of the navigation also lacks any hover or focus state, so there's no visual cue of what's clickable and what isn't.
Colour scheme. Hmmmmm....purple on a mint green background? "UK Independent Financial Advisers Providing independent financial planning advice since 1979" in a font colour so pale against that background that anyone that has less than perfect vision is likely to struggle with the colours. Initial capital letters in a huge fond size in purple (on that mint green background again) - some words highlighted in purple - why? They're not links, you can't click on them. They just add to the confusion. Purple text on the navigation, and the body text in blue - the standardly used colours for links is blue, and purple for their visited state. Using those colours out of place goes against what users expect, and again can (unconsciously) confuse them.
A guestbook on a business site? I'm really not sure that that works.
"Other browsers" - again I'd question the wisdom of having such a page on a business site - and a rainbow of colours - red, orange, purple, blue. Some of them are clickable, some aren't. Again it all adds to the confusion.
In short, the site just doesn't say "professional company - you can trust us" - it says "built a long time ago and never updated". I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's the way I see it.
As Caz said, changing to CSS would be a major undertaking, but there are loads of free CSS templates out there such as at OSWD and CSS Design Templates that you can use "as is" if you're happy with the template - just drop your HTML for your content into the appropriate places. It would take some work getting the tables and stuff stripped out of your HTML, and changing some of the tags, but it's a lot less work than starting from scratch again.
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