Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

A number of us have been commenting (criticizing) the site Peter D'Aprix's initially refered to in LED 2064 (patinawoodfloors.com). We (myself included) are all good at finding problems with the designs of other people but we seldom comment on the good things about that same design. For example, I would like to say to Peter that, among other good points, the images on that site are excellent and really convey a feel of what the product is like and I apologize for coming on so strongly about some of the other things that I, personally, feel are problems.

The trouble is that, when we do nothing but talk about the bad (in our own view) parts of a site design, we basically force the designer to to defend him / herself, regardless of their own real feeling about that particular aspect. We  know nothing about the process that led to any particular design decision. While it may have been made on the spur of the moment or may be that designer's own approach to that aspect, it may also have resulted from hours and hours of discussion and a final decision by the client. Anyone who has ever done much site design will appreciate that.

And you can't really expect the designer, whose site we happen to be picking for criticism at the moment, to say "I know it is bad but my idiot / stupid / silly / unreasonable client insisted we do it that way." - that would be a fast way to go out of business.  Anyone who has ever designed a site for someone else, be it professionally as your major income source or casually to assist a friend, know that ultimately, after all the discussion, the client has the final say and that final say may not be the best approach.  In fact, what some of us may see as bad design may have been forced on the designer and/or may actually be a brilliant compromise solution between what the client demands and what the designer knows is best.

So here is something different to critique.  I have three different sites that I would like fellow LEDers to give their thoughts on. These sites are being brought to your attention, each for a different reason.  I am only going to mention one site here, I will point you to the other two in two future posts.

The first site is called Fables, Fantasy and Fairy Tales.  The owners (whom I have met - they live not far from me) sell porcelain dolls they make dressed up as fairies at a variety of higher end craft shows, as well as world wide via the Web (they have a large number of collector customers, my daughter-in-law included) and have been in this business for about 15 years. I know their product and the fairies are every bit as whimiscal as they appear on the site. They are also pricey because they take a lot of time to make.  The site has won the Golden Web Award five years in a row and was designed and created by a local company.

The site can be found at http://www.fairys.com (make sure you have your sound on).

And if your browser settings are such that you don't see it, scroll to the bottom of the home page and look for a link on the lower right side that says "Click here for Media info" and follow that link.  Even full screen, my browser does not show the link without scrolling because I have two special purpose toolbars installed. There is a Quicktime video on the page the link leads to that gives some real background info on the owners as well as other info about the site.  Also, to enter the door into the Collectors Club, the password is "imagination".

It is a fact that award winning sites are not always the best designed sites for surfing purposes so the questions here are: "In your view, is this award winning site well designed for the surfer and does it deserve the award?" "What is good and what is bad about it?".

Tom Aman

When I checked for the Golden Web Award Web site, it no longer exists.  I attempted to call Alexis Carter, owner of the site and the phone number is disconnected.  Don't know what happened to Alexis, but hope all is well.

Since the Web site is no longer up and running, even by IP address, I must go on memory.  As a note, all of the sites for these awards or even the IAWMD.com Web site no longer exist.

The list of sites included:

iawmd.com

diamondwebawards.com

platinumwebawards.com

goldenwebawards.com

tlance.com

cgisrus.com

The last recorded version of the goldenwebawards.com Web site is from April 1, 2005 as indicated by the Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.goldenwebawards.com).

The Golden Web Award was given to anyone who submitted for it.  It did not mean the site qualified or met any specific criteria. However, the higher awards, such as Platinum and Diamond, offered through that site did have some strict criteria.

Alexis was smart even in the early days when links were not as valued as they are today.  Simply by giving away buttons for awards the attention Alexis received was great.  Does it mean that the site, www.fairys.com, warrant any special considerations in design? Not really.

The Wayback Machine, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.fairys.com/, shows the site started in 1998.  The style of the site hasn't improved since then. Is there anything that I would consider a plus in their design? Unfortunately not.

The splash page is old-school - couldn't with the audio since I don't use speakers on computers - with the internal splash page causing too many jumps to get to the information.  The site needs a total redesign with a stronger attempt to make the site more user friendly.

Lee Roberts

applepiecart.com

Interesting!  When I sent in my original post (Jan 4), the Golden Web Award Web site was still functioning (as well as the IAWMD.com site, if I remember correctly).  Your further comments show just how meaningless some Web "awards" can be.  I didn't know this background about the award, but I did wonder about what it took to win one (sounds like not much).  I do remember hearing comments a long time ago that very often sites that won awards were often showing off the latest and greatest but were not necessarily very user friendly.

> The splash page is old-school - couldn't with

> the audio since I don't use speakers on

> computers... The site needs a total redesign...

Lee, the audio on the splash page is the sound of a waterfall (to go with the moving image), the next page plays "Dance of the Sugarplum fairy" for the Nutcracker Suite.  Both are cute the first time through but rapidly become very annoying.  Glad to see your reaction to the site design / layout matched mine.

Tom Aman