Advice on Site Design

[pauland]

Hi Graham,

Your site looks better - it has some room to breath, but I'm still really confused.

It would help if you can tell us what is the intended purpose of the bettscomputers site? (Don't go to the website to look before answering)

Paul

[ss-kalm]

I too am completely confused by your site. Just what is the purpose of all the google ads. They are all over the place. just group them together on one side if you must have them, but I really soon got tired of going to a google place every time I clicked on something. I did manage to view the robots page (I know you haven't completed/edited it yet), and even with broadband it took forever to open it. I almost left before it downloaded - it could easily be broken into at least 10 different pages..

There is far too much information that seems completely irrelevant on your site. Not sure how much money you make on clickthroughs, but the ads definitely make me want to leave your site and go to your competition with my business.

And like everyone else, I still don't know what you do!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pauland]

Graham,

I know it may not look like it, but we're on your side. I'm sure we collectively give a nudge in the right direction, so don't take the criticism to heart, we just want to help.

I won't even mention some of the awful designs I came out with at one time, and for the moment, I've ducked the issue on my homepage..

Paul

[ss-kalm]

Graham,

Like Paul, I too am sure everyone here wants to help (or to be honest they would just ignore the post) and the critisism is intended to be constructive and enable you to think outside the box. You are so close to the site, and you know what button does what and how to navigate etc. we are trying to get you to think how a new visitor would use the site.

Best Wishes

Paul, Does your homepage actually do anything? - Last time I visited it looked like the only page!

[pauland]

LOL - it is the only page!

One day I'll do something about it..

Paul

[stlewis]

Graham

Just taking this a little further...

List your (say) 3 main categories of customer/visitor.

Then for each... Imagine you are in his/her/their shoes:

- what are their needs, wants, desires
- what will they be looking for
- what do they need to know to convince them to buy (price, spec, customer service etc)
- what are the steps you need to take them through?

[grahamb]

Thanks everyone,

Don't worry I know you are on my side. I know that because otherwise you would not give me the time of day. I am just having trouble interpreting that into a design.

My main users are students and teachers in secondary schools.

The site purely has notes and information on computing topics. That all the site provides. Free information on computing. I have some topics highlighted in the front because I wanted to focus the users attention to those parts of the site. I also wanted to pique some interest on a few of the pages and help the search engines a bit more.

What those users want is information to help them complete assignments, achieve better in exams or materials to help explain various components of computing in general.
I think the topic of Robotics is clearly defined spatially.

The column labelled "Useful HSC Resources", next to the Robotics is for students sitting their final exam before going off to uni. That exam is called the HSC. Transaction processing, information systems, Project management and Multimedia are amongst the exams they will sit. Is this area clearly defined? Is this a part of the confusion? All of these topics are one unit. Perhaps a Flash animation here could bring them all together and break up the page??

I think what is slowing down the loading of the various pages is not as much the content but the menus and the databases running the php pages. The home page itself is very slow to load. It is the menu that slows things down. I am in the process of fixing the menus. I am going to fix the database problem by moving the material off those pages into a normal html page.

OK. So that is an outline of my site. I might experiment with a flash animation. That way I can bring in images as well. maybe that would be too much...

My site does contain a huge amount of material. I don't know how to tie the navigation into a way of making it all findable and easy to use.

[pauland]

Hi Graham,

Sorry, haven't had much time to really give a long answer, but I think that your post helps a lot (though it's not the complete story since you are also selling local tuition and providing advertisement space).

I think that the key to your site is organisation and navigation. Imagine that the first page of your site is a newspaper or magazine cover - it has only enough content to draw the reader in, and not too much content to confuse them. Lastly the front page changes frequently to bring readers back.

My advise would be not to fix anything on the current site and certainly don't go running to flash animations to improve things - they wont.

One thing I think your site does show, is that the principle 'less is more' can work very well. I think you should viciously pare down your content because I think the amount of content is working against you. It looks as though you are writing a lot of content yourself and I suspect that your site would be far more effective with less, more focussed content. An alternative would be to have other contributors help you with content. I think it's impossible for you to do it all yourself.

If I am brutally frank, a lot of your content is probably working against your intended aims and turning people away from the subject and your site.

My gut feeling is that your really strong point is as a focus for explaining the organisation of the Australian education system and guiding people through it by explaining what students and teachers need to know (from their point of view), explaining how the system works and for different subjects listing resources for focussed study and teaching. Currently there is no way to relate your content to the education system, yet your content is supposed to exist to support people in education.

Rather than try and inform teachers and students together, it might be good to split the perspectives so that teachers find resources and information related to their teaching, while students find resources and help for study and understanding their educational path.

Those are my first thoughts - will be back again when I have more time and I'm sure that others will too.

I think the success of the site is dependent on organisational and editorial skills, not volume of content.

Paul

[stlewis]

Graham

Here is an extreme example: http://www.sportsforschoolsandclubs.co.uk/

Not much content but it guides you to where you can be given what you want.

[steve.ledger]

I'm with Pauland. Simplify and restructure the content and site mapping. It has a very ad-hoc feel to it. The UI isn't cross-brower compliant either.
(too big a subject to expand on here)
Personally I would drop the Google adsense, it's unlikely to generate real money but will syphon people away from your own site because (for many inexperienced surfers) they can look like your site menu links. Same with the Google Site serach, it doesn't really help your site.

Using PHP to connect to SQL databases is generally very fast which is one of the reasons it's become so standardised, it is also possible to work from 'flat-file' (text) databases which PHP can be written to parse and does away with the need for MySQL. Maybe your host can help with suggestions and the speed issue?