Review requested for academic project

They have: 7 posts

Joined: Apr 2009

I would be grateful for feedback on a site that I have created for college ecommerce course. Specifically, I'd like your impressions of the effectiveness of the main page in attracting purchasers.

Please note that some of the links don't work, it is a trial site and not everything is intended to be fully functional at this point.

The site can be accessed at http://www.scaife.ca/cst8267/

Many thanks in advance.

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

The site being in development means people may possibly suggest things you may already have marked to do or change. also it's difficult to know what the depths of requirements from the college are for your project, so I will just give you feedback as per a real e-commerce situation.

The style and layout so far looks neat and tidy. Simple and clean and easy to view and read things without clutter.

The first paragraph on your home page:

RegisterOnline is here to relieve you of the drudgery and complication of registration processing for your event, be it a conference, convention, training session or golf tournament.

I would suggest within that making it more clear you provide a website for people to register for events.
Such as:

RegisterOnline is here to relieve you of the drudgery and complication of event registrations by providing you with a customized website to publicise your event and accept registrations.
Be it a conference, convention, training session or golf tournament.

My text is just an example, but you see how by mentioning the "website to publicise your event" it immediately tells people what registration burdens you relieve and how.

Reading the first paragraph left me a little confused to what you do, as initially I didn't know if you physically go to events and take registrations (or something). I know you go into that later on, but you should avoid any confusion if possible from the start.
A lot of people spend a few seconds on a website if it doesn't instantly sound like what they are looking for.

You also need more info about what you will do and how you will do it, as currently I have to take your word for it, and only by a brief textual description.
Perhaps have some images showing the registration forms people will use, and images showing what you provide on their website for them, like graphs of people who registered, tables with data like "Registrant - time of registration - etc".
Another good idea is a free demo site. For them to fill out a registration to see how easy it will be for their clients, and then show any graphs or data etc.

Providing people with info on exactly how your services work and what they will get is paramount to obtaining clients and making the main page effective in attract purchasers. Another website somewhere will provide more data, and they get the customers and not you.

You should avoid having your email address in text:
eMail: [email protected]
As it can mean a lot more spam than an online form, and also, people are used to being able to fill in an online form these days, so having to click a link to open their email client or copy and paste the address is a burden.
Also, some people don;t actually have an email client, so it will cause problems. Like opening a default client on their PC and asking "first setup" questions.

So the foundation of the site is good. Easy to use and a clean design. It just needs some tweaking with more content and description of your services.

They have: 5 posts

Joined: Apr 2009

^Insightful comments. I don't have too much to add. Basically, I think that the main page needs more to show that I as a prospective customer have a better idea of what exactly you are offering. Maybe make the types of services in bold, to better orient me to why I would need to turn to you for my conference, etc.

"With RegisterOnline!, you leave the complications to us."

^In this sentence you don't need the comma.

It looks like a good start. I think rewriting some of the content, based on the suggestions, and making the design stand out more will really help.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

At first glance I assumed this was a domain registration comapny. That's partly because of my background as a web designer but also because there was nothing evident on the home page to give me an instant impression of what the site is about.

There are also certain design elements this has in common with domain registrars, such as :

  • uninteresting colour scheme (blue & red)
  • stock photo of attractive woman using computer
  • credit card images

If you want to promote this as an event registration site you should design it to evoke the kind of imagery you would associate with events. In particular, the types of events you would expect to use this site. Is this for kids birthday parties or large conferences? It's impossible to tell. Show photos of the types of events you are targetting and use an appropriate colour scheme.

(I think something like this could be really successful if you targetted smaller, personal events - birthday parties, anniversaries, anything people would want to collect RSVP's for. You could offer an email invitation with RSVP through your site. Then the hosts could collect the RSVP's on the site, and maybe even download an excel file. After the event, they could post photos on the site and send thank-you notes by email).

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