Check my site for useability navigation, please?

**BoSolaris** · 10-13-2008, 04:39 PM

My site is www.ptipackaging.com, let me know how it works out for you and if you see anything that can be done better or differently.

We have a high bounce rate and I am trying to figure out why, so ANY feedback is appreciated.

**vangogh** · 10-13-2008, 11:29 PM

I think the issue may be less about the navigation and more the the site seems very busy. When I arrived at the page there was so much in front of me that I didn't know where to look. In fact I missed the main navigation at top at first.

Your pages could definitely use a little space around the edges of the content. The content is touching the blue bar above it which makes it feel very busy. Adding some space between the bar and the content would help. It's not the only think making the page feel busy, though.

You have 3 sets of navigation (top. left, and right). Are all 3 necessary? I'm thinking 2 would be fine. You probably don't need all those popular searches on the right. Maybe list a few toward the bottom on the left.

The save 5% text gets in the way where it is. I know you want to draw attention to it, but it's not in a good location right now. You also have 2 different messages in that same area. They don't go together, since they're 2 different ideas. The contact info could be placed in it's own unit and just give the phone number and the hours. The rest is irrelevant.

As for the 5% that information could also be moved elsewhere. Maybe inside a box within the content area. Removing both lines from the top would clean up that area of the page and make the top of the page feel less busy.

**BoSolaris** · 10-14-2008, 09:47 AM

Wow, I never would have guessed about the 'too busy' business. I guess I have always compared our site to this one.

So it is too busy because:
Promotion & Contact Header Bars (cuts off and makes upper nav nearly invisible to the eyes?)
Right navigation, simplify or remove?
Main content is too much, simplify?

**TwistedMethod** · 10-14-2008, 05:03 PM

I would agree totally with vangogh about the 'busy' issue.

When you look at a page, your eye should be drawn to certain places in a certain order. You can use this to draw the eye to the important parts of your site, like the 5% promotion.

Padding out your boxes would be good to make sure the content of each doesn't touch the edge - it just looks nicer that way.

I personally would remove the right hand column 'popular searches'. I feel it almost gives the visitor too many options. You have a product search feature underneath the product categories on the left and on the top bar, this should be plenty.

Removing the right hand column will give you more space to spread out your products and will make the page easier to digest for the visitor.

Hope this helps

**Mark Henderson** · 10-14-2008, 07:45 PM

MY EYES!! IT BURNS!

Joking aside, that is way too busy/messy. Upon opening your page i am immediately drawn to the sidebars that are bunched up with way too much text, is that where my eyes are meant to be? I guess i should be drawn to the actual products.

Try and make the sidebars look nicer with a different font, less information or change the colours? I would also suggest having boxes around each product, maybe 1px width, it would just draw my eyes to them a little better. Navigation buttons on the top need to be bigger and stand out more. Other than all that, i would possibly rethink the colour scheme.

Sorry if i was harsh, but your looking for constructive criticism right?

Good look

**clark31** · 10-15-2008, 04:07 AM

It looks busy as others mentioned but it is a high niche site so I think anyone looking for packaging supplies probably won't notice / care. The janitorial site looks much worse with all the links on the bottom.

**BoSolaris** · 10-15-2008, 10:20 AM

Alright, so I have a lot of ideas coming from you all which is really helpful!

The right side navigation is for some internal linking. From an SEO standpoint I figured it would help, but it appears to compromise the design too much?

As for the color scheme, it is the colors of the company that must stay this way with the blues and beige.

Bordering the product boxes with padding or an actual border seems like a good idea to me.

The button sizes I might work on as well, I never thought them to be too small either, but it is worth a try.

I think the right nav is a good 'closure' to the products. Before we had no right nav and it was just an open space. Our conversions jumped after teh right bar was added, so What if I removed all of the right side nav text and replaced them with a resized promotion image and contact information?

**VirtuosiMedia** · 10-15-2008, 05:10 PM

In regards to your navigation, I'd like to make a suggestion: watch this video. To warn you, they try to market to you some, but I think you can learn a lot from the content of the video without having to buy anything.

**Mark Henderson** · 10-15-2008, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoSolaris

I think the right nav is a good 'closure' to the products. Before we had no right nav and it was just an open space. Our conversions jumped after teh right bar was added, so What if I removed all of the right side nav text and replaced them with a resized promotion image and contact information?

If the right bar caused conversions to go up, i wouldnt get rid of it. Ater all, the actual goal is to get conversion right?

Hmm, could you poaaibly put those into a marquee? I think that might work. Then you can have a promotional image above the marquee.

**TwistedMethod** · 10-15-2008, 07:36 PM

Ah, that's different. If your conversion rate went up after adding it then it makes sense to keep it.

Maybe making the font colour a dark grey instead of black will help?

Good luck with the changes.

**Brian07002** · 10-15-2008, 09:49 PM

That video had an important details for beginners I thought, but it ran on too much (after about 5 minutes) with that blue dot and tracker going all over the place...I say if you think you can, you can, so go do it! Don't let anyone walk you thru it otherwise, it's their idea, NOT YOURS unless YOU DO IT

**Brian07002** · 10-15-2008, 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

In regards to your navigation, I'd like to make a suggestion: watch this video. To warn you, they try to market to you some, but I think you can learn a lot from the content of the video without having to buy anything.

Btw, the above post that I made was in reply to this ^ message

**kids** · 10-15-2008, 11:06 PM

Ah, I think this site have nothing to say more! It's nearly coming to a professional e-Com website and It's designed by some kool guys.

Good design with bright and clear website!

**BoSolaris** · 10-16-2008, 01:02 PM

Excellent information from everybody here! I really appreciate all the help, ideas and constructs given! Especially on the design side, as I never had any formal training there.

The videos re-enforced the main ideas I have had (save for design) in SEO for a long time now. Amazing how important both are together and how they work, I really do appreciate all your help.

**smarte** · 10-16-2008, 02:46 PM

Every space has been utilised like a perfect shop. Perfect details but I think font of right and left is bit small to read. Allocating space and thing perfectly. Over all this is a typical commercial website.

**vangogh** · 10-16-2008, 07:28 PM

With the design try to keep things simple. The issue with busyness is the same as information overload. You're presenting so much information in one place that it's hard to take it all in and someone arriving at your site doesn't really know where to begin looking. That can lead to being overwhelmed and instead of trying to find what you're looking for, you leave instead. That could be why you're seeing a high bounce rate.

Think about the page and ask yourself what's the goal of that page. What exactly do you want a visitor to do on the page.

On your home page you're probably trying to get people deeper into the site. You want them to be able to find the products they want as quickly as possible. One thing you want people to do on your home page is understand your navigation as quickly as possible. Because there's so much navigation a visitor has to spend time thinking about which navigation to use.

Looking specifically at your top navigation (Home, About Us, etc). It gets lost a bit, because of the special offer just below it. Removing the special from it's current location (you could move it somewhere else) would make the navigation more visible and more easily identifiable.

Another are where you could improve things is in adding more whitespace. For example consider your About Us page. The text touches the edges of the containing space. It makes the text harder to read, since it's so close to surrounding elements. if you provided some empty space around the content it helps the eye focus on different page elements.

Look in your css file for the following code

HTML Code:

div#header
{
float:left;
width:1014px;
background-color:#1474C2;
font-weight:bold;
color:#FFFFFF;
}

and change it to:

HTML Code:

div#header
{
float:left;
width:994px;
background-color:#1474C2;
font-weight:bold;
color:#FFFFFF;
padding:10px
}

All I did was add the padding:10px at the end and reduce the width to 994px.

Notice how much more room that gives to your logo in the upper left and how much easier it is to read. That little bit of extra space makes the entire header area feel more open and less busy.

**JohnColonJr** · 10-16-2008, 09:42 PM

Kudos

...I think the website looks great, I would just try and keep the navigation as simple as possible. I actually like the color scheme very much.

**BoSolaris** · 10:34 AM

OK

I have taken into account eyes, views, psychology, and a crash course in design.

Along with re-tooling our checkout (checkout button was almost hidden!), I have re-done our navigation with headers and and what I think to be an easier overall look for the eyes.

I added our personalized Live Chat service to all pages instead of just product pages and also removed unnecessary portions of code/elements on the site.

As for the header, I removed the two white bars with gloomy black text and replaced them with one, smaller banner that does not take away as much attention from the rest of the page.

Steve:
I tried the padding idea and it just didn't look right. It seemed to have a 'broken' look to it.

What do you all think? Easier to navigate? Easier to see? Simple enough?