feedback required

We went live recently with our website and forum. Forum is phpbb, site is based on SiteWorksPro V5. Let me know what you think!

www.eyesonsales.com

nice site! i like the header image with the falling guy . one thing i would personally like is a slightly thinner left menu, however thats just my opinion. i see you made it wider in order to fit your logo. besides that its a wonderful site.

Hey...

Nice customization!! Most sites that use the template, don't change it much... But this looks really good!

I agree with War-Angel... If you can, try to reduce the size of the left-side menu... It looks as though you have enough space to reduce it so that your logo will still fit there.

The falling guy looks great too!

check again..the left column has been adjusted.

Also integrated MailWorks Pro in the site...but ran into a bug when I started using this part of it.

Check again and tell me what you think now.

Much better! I'm still amazed at how you were able to customize the site so much that it doesn't resemble SWP as much as others have!

Good luck with everything... If you need feedback on anything else, feel free to ask.

Implemented a few more changes and a tighter integration with the PHPBB board. New is the Grill A Guru at the left and the "read more from this author" and "other popular articles" on the bottom of each article. Let me know what you think.

Looks pretty schmick!

Only thing i would do is can the date bar across the top. It's a waste of space. And most people would know the date

Also, after I stretched my browser window wider than 1024px - the left bar began to strech too. Might wanna fix it's width.

I like it.. but my favorite part of the site has to be the "Daily Coffee Break" section.. love that cartoon!

Wow. This site is packed with info and functionality.

I notice by looking at the sitemap and the content though, that is possible to review the articles in a number of ways. Given the extent of the content, it would be handy if there were a link to "Articles" and "News" on your top nav bar.

I ended up using the sitemap to browse the list of articles. It was only much later that I noticed the section in the left hand side - it blends in with the rest of the content and it wasn't obvious to me at a glance that the section was only referring to articles. It describes topics (i.e., sales strategy) and so could conceivably include links and news. I recognize in this case it doesn't but a user might not necessarily know that. If you're going to stick with the sidebar, it would be clearer if it had a heading called "articles" above it.

For these types of sites, I usually have two global nav bars (one with privacy, contact us, sitemap, etc) and then another with about, articles, authors, news, links etc (that gets at the key content in the site). On the articles page, you could have the various options: browse by topic, by date, by author, by popularity etc. Taking either a top-down and a bottom-up approach to the information architecture of the site, I believe that they would be the major sections of your site.

Not sure what sort of flexibility you have with Siteworks, but that would be my recomendation for what it's worth, from a wannebe information architect.

Thanks for your feedback. Very helpful!

Do you know of any sites that have implemented a similar approach? I'd like to see it, makes it easier to understand.

Impressive amount of content, quality and style. Quite a testmament to SiteWorksPro!

very professional look.... and the content-look ratio is right on the money.... very good job!

well, for example, Amazon.ca - you have books on your main nav bar and when you go to the books page you can browse by subject, by popularity (bestsellers) and by date (new & future releases).

They have another (less prominent) nav bar with other items like help, view cart, wish list, etc. and at the bottom there is another persistant nav bar with Privacy Policy and Conditions of Use.

I don't notice an ability to browse by author on the amazon site, but that's probably because there are way too many to include. In Amazon's case, given the sheer number, using the search mechanism would be appropriate.

If you have a manageable number of authors who write on a continous basis, its a nice feature to have IMHO and, in fact, you already do offer this (although to give you a little more room on the nav bar, I might shorten it from "Meet the Authors" to just "Authors").

I think you'll like the updates I will be releasing today. I took your advice and separated the content related stuff (authors, archive, forum, newsletters) from the more administrative (contact us, about us, privacy etc) items.

I thought about your comments regarding the topics listing in the left column. I had heard before that they blend in and do not stand out as navigation items. So, you'll see that they are gone in the update. Instead, there's a link to a central archive navigation page with (I think) some pretty slick search and navigate options.

Check back tonight or so. We should be up and running. Let me know what you think and if you have any other comments. I really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks!

That sounds really promising.



You obviously figured out what I was trying to say, but wasn't able to articulate as clearly as you just did! That's a very good way of putting it.

Okay, so it's one week later

Check it out, I'm fairly happy with the way it turned out.

Let me know what you think!