Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
Random Website Critique #1
Quick Note
I thought it would be fun for me to do a critique of a website that I found in a “review my site” forum. I didn’t pick this site for any reason in particular, and I don’t personally know the designer/developer. I am going to try and do these semi-regularly to keep myself sharp, and to provide constructive feedback to those looking for reviews.
Site Introduction
The website I found to critique is http://www.townofgrandfallswindsor.com/. I found the site in the “Review My Work” category of the Freelance Switch forum. link
Standards
The first thing I always check when critiquing a website is standards validation. I don’t necessarily care what standard the designer chose to use, but I hold web standards in high regard. I go right to the W3 Validator to validate the site. The designer in this case chose XHTML 1.0 Strict, a fine choice. The site does not validate as of today, with one error, “there is no attribute “target”". In all of the “strict” specifications there is not an attribute of “target”. However, in XHTML 1.0 Transitional specifications there is. The way to stay strict in this case would be to use some javascript to open the link in a new window. That was the only standards concern, so we can move on to the next section.
Information Architecture
Information architecture is the bread and butter for SEO. To get a good idea of information architecture I turn off the style sheet. Doing so lets you see a nice hierarchical view of the site as far as information goes. If the site is well designed from an information architecture point of view, it should be organized and easy to read. This is also a good time to see the content by itself. This site starts pretty well, you get an <h1> of Grand Falls Windsor, which is the town that the site is about. I expected there to be a hyphen between the “Grand Falls” and “Windsor” because that’s how it is everywhere else. You a <ul> of navigation, pretty standard. Moving down, you get a teaser of copy, then an <h2> of “Reasons you should visit Grand Falls-Windsor”, followed by another <ul> of four reasons. Then, something very disappointing happens. Without any sort of separation from the reasons to visit Grand Falls-Windsor, there is a giant <ul> of links that have to do with different aspects of the town. I would have like to seen categories, or something to break down this large list of links. Below that there is “August 2008″ followed by all of the dates in august. I would have opted for a table in this case, because this is one situation where I would want the data represented in tabular form. After that there is “Upcoming Events” with an event underneath that, perfectly fine. “Latest News” with a news item. An “About Us” with some copy, and a “Links” section with a few links. Lastly a copyright notice. Nothing to complain about at the bottom, I sometimes wonder if “links” could be a more descriptive name in these cases, but it is very minor.
Layout and Design
Header Graphic
The first thing I notice when I arrived at this site was the large feathered image at the top. The page loads a random image/collage every time you refresh the page as well. After a few clicks on refresh I am undecided about whether I like this or not. Generally I don’t like the feather effect, and I think it goes back to looking at my high school yearbook with a feathered collage of pictures every other page. This is one of the better examples of feather I have seen though. The other comment I have about this header is the varying quality of photography. Some of the photos are interesting, high resolution (for the web), and colorful, while others are either pixelated, dreary, or just not very interesting. Another thing I noticed about this header graphic is that sometimes there is a translucent gray bar underneath the typography and other times there isn’t. I think it should always be there especially when using white text. The crest next to the type is also blurry, low quality, and doesn’t stand out like I think it should.
Navigation
I like the design and color choice of the background of the navigation bar. The pinstripes are a nice touch, what I don’t like is the cut-outs in the corners that look like they were done with a small eraser tool in Photoshop. I think I would like the cut-outs if they were a clean sharp curve. I also notice that there is no indicator of which page we are on with the menu items, clicking “HOME” also reloads the page even if you are home. The navigation is also somewhat deceiving, the only thing that changes upon click is a sub menu on the right hand side. This is somewhat odd behavior to me because I expect new content, especially from primary navigation. I noticed that this was an XHR request, so I turned off javascript to see if he was degrading gracefully, and BAM! exactly what I was initially looking for. Individual pages per navigation link, this couldn’t have made me happier. As well as there being a separate content page, we also get to know where we are. This is awesome, I would like to see similar behavior with the XHR requests, make me feel like something happened when I click a link, and tell me where I am once I do that. I think even minimally adding a header to the top of the sub menu would make me happy, telling me what the category the links are.
Calendar
I think that calendars can be very useful, if they are used. I do find the background graphic of the calendar distracting. It bothers me when something should be a bit distorted because of it is on a curved surface but isn’t, like the dates to the lower right corner. To me the graphic somewhat cheapens the calendar because of its low quality.
“Idea Garden”
There is the second feather job I have seen, and this one I don’t appreciate as much as the first one. The first thing I notice is that the white box below show be above the feathered image, not below it. The copy also doesn’t makes sense to me, it seems it should just be a contact us, like the page title says when you arrive there. This link could also fit into the primary navigation at the top, as it is a something that people come to look for. I also question the choice of the green in the link color, I don’t know where it fits in, in the color scheme.
“Reasons to visit Grand Falls-Windsor”
I think this section is pretty effective. The title is bold in color. The points have nice spacing and typography. The added detail with the unique bullet is nice.
Footer
The footer is another feathering. I am over-feathered at this point and I don’t think the translucent gray box helps at this point. The three columns isn’t bad, and I think it works here. The yellow headers are a bit much, and I don’t think they compliment the background color. White text as body copy is a tough call, it is always hard to read especially in a seriffed font, on top of an image. The email address link in the copy is unreadable to me. I think the photography feels a little forced, and I am fine with just plain text. When there is text my first concern is reading it, don’t put it on top of an image please.
Overall
I think this site is a strong, pretty effective design. I like the general color scheme, tan, red, blues, white. There is a few single instances of colors that I question, and I would like to have been something that fit a little better in the scheme, but nothing major. The typography is nice, it left me wondering what it was, and I think it fit the style of the site. The feel was classic, symmetrical, rich, with nice details. I am just noticing that I might have like to see what the menu looked like with a detail either side of the text instead of just the left. The site was also very close to being strict XHTML 1.0, with a minor change it will. I like the progressive enhancement with the javascript, without the javascript the site is still intact. I think the people of Grand-Falls Windsor will be very happy with their new site.
Further Critiques
If you want me to critique your site, leave a comment letting me know that you are interested. I will contact you and get you on the list for next time.
Static is the New Dynamic
Are you serious?
Yes. Absolutely yes. Static content is the lightest, easiest, and fastest content on the web. There was a time, when I was all about the latest and greatest in CMS technology. I have spent many a hours trudging through the bowels of Joomla, Drupal, and Mambo. Slashing the foliage of MovableType, Mephisto, Typo, and Wordpress with my machete. All because I needed the most flexible, extendible, hackable, and mashable solution to manifest my off-the-cuff projects.
Why use plain ol’ static pages?
The first reason, is that static pages “just work”. Yeah, you can make typos, mismatch markup, and break links, but even with the most abstracted CMS these issues still exist. With static pages, there is no “moving parts” so to speak.
Automation
Static content doesn’t mean you have to write out every single piece of HTML by hand. In fact, there is excellent software that you can run locally to build shared layouts, generate blog entries, and leverage dynamic templating. You run a build command and the software pumps out static pages ready to upload. You can even automate the upload/syncing process.
It’s cheap!
You can sign up for the least expensive hosting package, and that will work just fine for a very long time. It’s cheap in terms of resources too, web servers (software) are usually very light weight. Storage and bandwidth will be the only variables you have to worry about. Storage is not a problem, scaling storage is easy and relatively inexpensive. Running out of bandwidth means you are transferring a lot of data, which is usually a good problem (people are visiting your site). Maintenance is minimal, you still need to call your web guy to make edits and updates, but problems will usually be simple fixes.
SEO
Static content is ideal for SEO, the search engines see everything just as it is, plain ol’ static HTML. Search engine spiders were built with static pages in mind. The spiders can quickly and easily parse through all of your pages without a hangup. In terms of SEO, nothing beats static content.
When static pages won’t cut it
Web Applications
There are plenty of situations when static pages won’t cut it. In terms of web applications you are out of luck. Even the most simple applications use some sort of dynamic technology to exist. Every form you see uses a dynamic technology to process the information. That isn’t to say that you must say goodbye to static pages. Applications can still have a large amount of static content.
What about blog?
Blogs can be pulled off with static pages, and I am still intrigued by the idea. With a static blog, you don’t get the administrative dashboard, you don’t get plugins, and you only kind of get comments. Why am I using this database driven blog software to run this site instead of generating static content locally and syncing it up? One of the few reasons that I am, in fact, using a dynamic blog engine is because of comments. There are ways to have comments without using a database, but it wasn’t compelling enough to me. I also like the web interface that lets me publish from any computer with internet access.
Conclusion
Static pages are great because they are quick and easy to create. They are ideal for sites that showcase a company or product. Some clients might ask if they will be able to edit a page, and you will tell them no. The truth in this situation is that aside from just plain body copy, a client won’t really know how to change anything else even inside a CMS. I would prefer to save the upfront hours I would spend setting up a CMS and spend them on these minor updates and changes. Static pages stay completely usable even if you do decide that you need a little more infrastructure, you just pop them in as pages in your new CMS.