watervole | Web page design

I'd really appreciate it if you could look at the four websites below and give me your feelings regarding them. The Dupuytren Society are looking to redo their website and have had various recommendations made to them. I'd like people's reactions to some sites that have been used as comparisons. We need a rather larger sample of reactions than we currently have.

British Heart Foundation

Dupuytren Foundation

Diabetes UK

Dupuytren Society

Please imagine that you are interested in heart disease/diabetes/Dupuytren's as patient/friend of a patient/doctor

What is your reaction to each of these sites?

Do you feel they are likely to have useful information?

Is it easy to find the information?

Does the site look interesting?

Does the site look professional?

Does the site make you want to carry on reading?

Does the site feel trustworthy?

What are the good and bad things about each site from your personal viewpoint?

It would help if you would say with your comments whether you consider yourself an academic or not (I have a feeling - and I don't know if it's right or wrong - that this may affect the kind of site that you prefer.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hope this helps...

I'm going to label these:

(1) British Heart Foundation

(2) Dupuytren Foundation

(3) Diabetes UK

(4) Dupuytren Society

(a) Do you feel they are likely to have useful information?

(b) Is it easy to find the information?

(c) Does the site look interesting?

(d) Does the site look professional?

(e) Does the site make you want to carry on reading?

(f) Does the site feel trustworthy?

(g) What are the good and bad things about each site from your personal viewpoint?

Answers:

1a) They might, but I'd hate to try to find it. The look of the site raises my BP.

1b) See above.

1c) It looks disgusting. Not the worst I've seen (no really bad CSS making it unreadable), but not at all good.

1d) It looks designed by a professional web designer, focussed on colour not content.

1e) No.

1f) Not really.

1g) Good: it doesn't require Javascript or Flash, and seems fairly CSS light. Bad: the colour makes me want to go anywhere else fast, the cutesy fonts make me wonder if they've tried having anyone with less than perfect vision read it.

2a) Yes. It looks from the start to have useful information on the front page and clear links.

2b) It seems to be easy to find information.

2c) The site looks interesting, enough information to draw me in.

2d) It looks professional. Nice cool colours, sensible fonts, not too cluttered.

2e) Yes.

2f) Yes.

2g) Good: restful and non-intrusive background, no major scripting needed (it does have some Javascript but I didn't find anywhere which seemed to need it), informative without being too verbose. Bad: font is a little small (but scaled well with no evident CSS errors).

3a) Yes, but not as much, it feels a little 'populist' (it may have common information but not the less common).

3b) Reasonably. There seem to be a lot of menu type things to go through.

3c) Reasonably.

3d) Yes.

3e) Yes.

3f) Yes.

3g) Good: nice clear font, easy to find stuff once you get used to where to look. Bad: a little cluttered, the pictures don't seem to add much and get in the the way (a bit like many 'news' sites).

4a) Yes.

4b) No. Far too many menu items on the left with hardly any obvious groupings.

4c) Yes.

4d) Not very. It looks almost like a Wiki, especially that long list on the left.

4e) Not so much.

4f) Not so much (see (4d).

4g) Good: It seems to have a lot of information if you can find it. Bad: the colour! And (lack of) contrast. Seriously, it doesn't make my eyes sore like the BHF one but I find it hard to read all brown on brown. And (see 4d) the menu on the left looks as though it has been added randomly, possibly with duplicated information. (Oh, I've just noticed that it makes more sense with Javascript on. There's no suggestion of that on the site, though, and even with it the subjects seem is a fairly random order.)

Thanks, that's useful.

Ok, a few comments:

The BHF site is a bit "in your face", I opened the link and almost mentally took a step backwards as I was presented with the "Angina Monologues" banner and Victoria Wood.

If you can get past that, it's pretty good, the sub-pages are reasonably well laid out with the menu on the left, information in the middle and "highlights" on the right (although I don't particularly like the font they've used on the top of the highlights boxes, but that's a minor niggle)

The Dupuytren Foundation site isn't too bad, although they waste a lot of space with the images on the left. Apparently research shows that people look at sites in an F-shape, ie looking across the top, down the left hand side, then across the middle, but on this site the visible part of the left side is occupied by pictures which don't really give any useful content and you have to scroll down to find the information About etc or look on the right hand side.

(It also annoys me where it says "Dupuytren's Disease is a benign condition which affects millions of Americans" as if nobody else in the world is affected by it!)

The layout of the Diabetes site is also a bit poor IMO, there's too much information crammed into the space without much thought for ease of use, Latest News/ Recipes/ Highlights. I almost missed the "Essential Information" box because it's on a grey background and gets "shouted down" by all the colour around it.

Finally the Dupuytren Online site says "Amateur!" in big letters. It looks like so many other "plug in your own content" sites. There is information there, but the left hand menu is poorly laid out and the sub pages lack good titles, highlights etc to draw you to the important bits.

PS A week or so ago there was a question on University Challenge asking which part of the body was affected by Dupuytren's Contracture and I thought "I know that!" :-)

Thanks!

I've only looked at the home pages you've linked to.

The BHF was very red. Once I'd got over that it was fine and the white text against colour was clear to read. The short list of links next to the banner ad for a fund raising function was not too long and covered an obvious mix for people coming in new looking for first information and those wanting to become more involved. I didn't notice the rolling news headlines below the banner ad at first, they may need at little more beef. The headlined boxes with pictures are very attractive. The page is a good size, it doesn't need much scrolling to read it all and information is still visible as a reminder even when you're at the other end of the page.

DF was in a much more restful colour. The layout was pleasant and easy to look at.Not too much on the page and obvious links to find what you need.

The only plus point for D UK is that it fits on the screen, you don't need to scroll to see all the information. It needed the news broken up more. The links in boxes with a longer sentence introducing the items, more like the recipes and languages on the right of the page rather than the large white block with text.

The DS page is much too long and full of text. A lot of the content of that long piece could have gone into a "read more" after the "Short Overview". Since they seem to feel that the warnings and waivers are important they could be combined and put in a box higher up the page.

Hope this is useful. I don't regard myself as an academic, but I do have a degree in physics and worked as a school lab tech until I retired this summer.

I actually liked Diabetes UK best, but agree it crams too much in. Possibly something between that and BHF. Maybe the BHF one sans in your face image.

The Depuytren Foundation site I couldn't access because I didn't have javascript enabled, and wasn't going to enable it just to look. As far as I'm concerned, a site that you cannot look at or navigate without javascript enabled fails. Enhance with javascript, yes. Rely on it? No.

Personally, as long as the site makes good use of white space so it isn't cluttered, has clear navigation and no overly distracting images, your guys should feel it out themselves rather than picking and choosing from other sites. They might come up with something totally fresh and interesting.

Web page design - help needed

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