Looking for some feedback on my new design. I'm interested to know the following questions:

1) Do frames cause problems for you?
2) How does the overall look and navigation feel?
3) Loading times?
4) Any java applet loading errors?
5) Would you purchase anything form this site?
6) Recommendations?

In return for your valuable time and constructive feedback, I will provide you with a free game or screensaver from my site. It's the least I could do.

Thanks,
-Joe

1) No
2) The screenshots need to be nicer (yours are very blurry) and it's kind of small but otherwise the layout/design looks fine. Get rid of the jelly bean background on the order page.
3) Takes forever (see 4)
4) Java takes forever to load and hangs IE while doing so. Considering you are using it to just display a text scroller thing, considering using JavaScript instead. For me personally it's a huge turn-off to an otherwise nice site.
5) Probably but it would help your case to have some CC logos or something of that sort on your site. It just doesn't give much impression that I can buy things on it.
6) No Java, no beans :)

Good work overall!

If you can avoid anything extra that has to load (javascript, etc), it makes the site come up faster.

Also, the site seems to be arbitrarily small. Unlike most of the web browsing public, I like to use 1280x1024, and I like to keep my web browser at full screen. Your site seems to arbitrarily lock it to a small resolution, meaning that things look cramped to people who use larger resolutions.

Also, when I go to the site, my immediate impression is....nothing. I have no idea what this site is. The name is all compressed together, so I kind of skim past it without realizing it is called "Web Apps To Go". My eye is drawn away from the top bar, which seems very plain, to the center, but it doesn't feel like I have a focus.

Your news section doesn't have headlines. I don't know if I am reading a blog or what. Again, this is contributing to the lack of knowledge of what the site is about, and most users will leave right away.

A title might make your site seem more legit as a business.

In essence: the first impression of your site is that it doesn't seem to really inform potential customers what it is. What is WebAppstogo? Is it the premier spot on the Web for finding small apps? Is it the place to go for new and interesting programs? A simple phrase or line describing the site under the title will definitely help.

I just clicked on the link on the bottom right (although you should really have something more there that would encourage me to do so), and it opens in the frame on the left.

Frames are one of those things that people use even though the HTML standard has been pushing for CSS. Opening your pages in that frame kind of makes navigation (and copying and pasting links) kind of hard.

Frames make baby jesus cry.

I'm gonna be really negative. But please don't take it badly, I want to help you. First there are some specific points:
* The font seems needlessly small.
* Why is there an unused horizontal scrollbar ?
* You should be consistent with the capitalisation of "WebAppstogo"
* The green jelly beans make it hard to read the 'Ordering' text.
* The applets don't fit in the box they are displayed in.

I'm afraid that fixing these points won't really help though. There is a fundamental problem with the look and feel. I would not purchase anything from this site, because the look and feel is so bad. If you have good products then I would say this website design will hold you back. It needs to be redesigned from scratch by a professional.

There, I said I was going to be negative :) Just being honest.

Thanks for the input and honesty. All points noted :)

Jason: Where do you see that I'm using capitalization of WebAppstogo inconsistently?

Lizardsoft: Do you know where I could find a decent 'Top Nav Bar' menu script?

Thanks,
-Joe

Dear Joe, I was thinking that "WebAppsToGo" would be more consistent than "WebAppstogo". And of course, when you don't have spaces between words it makes it a lot easier to read. In fact, why don't you have spaces between the words ? :)

Hi Joe.

I'm running at 1600 X 1200 resolution and the site is VERY small and therfore very hard to read. There's also some tiny little white spots around the border and under that header the break the flow of the green.

On the upside everthying does load very fast for me.

agreed 100% on the screen res thing. I dont expect to see scrollbars when surfing at 1280 1024. Looks very small...

First of all: take everything I say with a ton of salt... I'm like a usability nazi ;)

1) Do frames cause problems for you?

Not really (at least technically), but there are search engines which don't like em much. Also no one will be able to link to sub pages (people really don't like writing things like "go to blabla.com then foo then bar etc").

2) How does the overall look and navigation feel?

Too green/too bright... font is too small. And it's bad if the scrollbar isn't at the very right (it's much easier to hit if it's the right border, because you just need to adjust the height of the curser position and then just to the right [as far as you want to] you can't miss it).

The thing is... there are users out there with really really bad mice. I had to use a opto/mechanic spare mouse last week and I almost got mental. I had totally forgotten how hard it was to click some tiny icons. Optical mice are really sweet, but you can't rely on everyone having one of those and/or perfect hand/eye coordination.

Make things hard to miss. Especially the things you'll need often (like scrollbars).

3) Loading times?

Good. Well, I got broad band.

4) Any java applet loading errors?

I really like java, but I have applets disabled. If it makes sense for some of the applets you could also "port" em to webstart (you can also start applets via webstart as long as they are jar-ed... all you need is writing a jnlp file).

5) Would you purchase anything form this site?

No. Right now I would just leave without looking at anything.

6) Recommendations?

Use a validator. The source is horrible. I was actually surprised that my browser was able to render it (you have things like doctype and the html tag in the middle of a page).

Use a simple clean layout with a scrollbar on the very right side (if necessary) and there shouldn't be a horizontal scrollbar at all. Basic layouts: http://www.glish.com/css/9.asp (that one is really sweet if you put it into a ~600px wrapping div)

The green is nice, but it's just way too much of it.

The first place people will look for a menu is the left side, then top, then right and then bottom.

#1 Make it easy to get information

Use a smart structure and show the details everyone is (most likely) interested in right away - eg the price, operating system... filesize next to the download link etc. You can write a checklist of common customer tasks and then go through em and check how long it took to gather enough information.

What's the page about? Slap everyone with a cluebat at all common "trace entry points": window title, headline, first menu entry. It should take less than a second for a new visitor to get the idea.

Aha... it's about <stuff> (eg games). So which kind of stuff? Show all the details, which are needed for quick interested/not interested decision right away. Tumbnail, genre etc.

Things like that.

#2 Make it easy to navigate

Basically: make it hard to miss things a user wants to click and make it easy to miss things a user doesn't want to click. The former means big buttons or extending the clickable area of a text-link to it's "tab box" size (css) and the latter means don't use things like a menu (or tower banner) on the right side... if there is a vertical scrollbar users will accidently click it sometimes and they will really hate you for that ;)

If you keep these things in mind you can't do much wrong.

HTH :)

As an example of a page design I think you might want to mimic, check out http://www.retro64.com

You'll note that the site explicitly says what it is about, and the links also have short descriptions and a button that you can click on to say explicitly PLAY NOW!

Also, the menu is at the top, so it is easy to find and also easy to navigate.