Born with Potential
April 9, 2008
Casa Loma
entrance and first impressions
- no real need for the splash page anymore; just keeping visitors out of your site
- entrance link on splash page too small
- javascript ticker too busy and too difficult to read all of the text it contains
- not sure why "important legal information" is here only. many visitors will come into site from subpages and won't see the link. should be consistent navigation
- ability to purchase tickets online is great
- the "did you know" facts are entertaining, but should realize they occupy prime real estate
navigation
- main nav sections are logical, and well ordered
- sub nav too distant from main nav
- media room link and other "one off" links make overall navigation confusing
- no way back to the home page once into the site
- some lack of consistency: sometimes babel fish links, sometimes not; sometimes footer nav, sometimes not; film / photo shoots link comes and goes
content
- overall, content is quite good:
history is interesting to read
catering info thorough, ability to send info request from site
- many "hidden gems": 3 minute video of the site (but 20MB - large), quicktime VRs (in somewhat obscure format - could be Apple Quicktime), printable "bloom" calendar
- constantly wanted larger images, or ability to click for larger images
- reference to years good - makes info seem updated
- look to have "plugged into" various 3rd party services: safesubscribe for eNews, virtualtour.tv for video, altavista for translation. not bad (and can let you do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to), just should be careful and keep track. eg mapQuest link for directions is broken; canadiancreations.com link broken
- might be nice to have printable guided tours to bring with me
- is it too much to keep on top of? (eg latest press release = 2005)
overall graphic
- "look" of the site is dated
- partly caused by the limited width of display area (600px - small enough for a 640X480 display). as of Jan, 2007, most users (80%) at 1024X768 or higher (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp)
- partly caused by busy background image
- consistency lacking: varying fonts and font sizes, different graphic effects
- quality of graphics varies with many GIFs (low colour graphics) for photos
Recommendations
- overall graphical refresh, esp update images with better / larger versions
- redesign of nav to combine main, sub, and sub-sub; perhaps move some cats into footer nav
- reorg of content to "flatten" navigation
- dig some of the "hidden gems" out and make them more prominent