Our first victim!

I’d like to thank Holistic Healing for being my first victim. Below is the down-and-dirty list. Click on “Continue Reading” for explanations and recommendations.

10 things I hate about your site:

1. Too many font colors.
2. Inconsistent navigation.
3. Lack of a clear header hierarchy.
4. Odd color scheme/palette.
5. Random “floating” flowers.
6. Link treatment—link, hover and visited.
7. Yahoo! Babel Fish translator.
8. Inconsistent layout.
9. Lack of proofreading.
10. Broken links.

Details

Here are the full results. At the end of this post I’ve listed some resources to assist you, should you choose to take any of my recommendations.

10 things I hate about your site:

1. Too many font colors—on my first count I see 8 different colors. A good rule of thumb is to choose 3-5 colors for your scheme (then mix and match). I bounce all over the home page, as I don’t know what it is that you want to stand out. Some content is bold; some content is bold and rust; some content is bold and purple; etc.

   What does this mean? Color use should be consistent throughout the page, as well as throughout the site. (Also refer to list items 3 and 6). ALL of your body font should be ONE size and ONE color. Then use the chosen 3-5 color palette to create headers, subheaders, links, etc.

2. Inconsistent navigation. Where is the navigation on your home page? I see what appear to be links all over the home page but there is no main navigation. The main navigation doesn’t appear until I click on a link and go to a different page. Then there’s the footer link problem—I get trapped if I click on the footer links. The pages linked from the footer have the same links at the top. Where did the main navigation go? how do I get back home or go to another product? HELP!

   What does this mean? The main navigation needs to be on every page, especially the home page. (For clarification, I’m considering your main navigation the horizontal links, starting on the left with “Home” and ending on the right with “Ingredients”.)

3. Lack of a clear header hierarchy. People want to know where they are and the easiest way to do this is through a clear header hierarchy. Throughout the site there are purple, blue, and rust subheaders, in addition to a green, underlined header. With so much information on the page, I can’t discern what’s a product subheader from what I’m supposed to know is especially important. (This also ties back into list item #1—too many colors.)

   What does this mean? Go through your site and create a clear header hierarchy consisting of a main header, a subheader, a third header, etc. Format these headers so that they use a color from your new 3-5 color palette, and size them appropriately (page header the largest, subheader a little smaller than the page header, third header just a little bigger than the body text).

4. Odd color scheme/palette. While your overall background color scheme isn’t terrible, it’s just really blah. The green you are using as the entire body background is nice, but the colors chosen for the remaining elements don’t match it’s vivacity. Add to this fact that the font colors (all 8 of them) don’t tie in to the background colors, and you have a very un-holistic color scheme.

   What does this mean? You need to pick a 3-5 color palette that matches/highlights your product offerings. Use this palette to color your backgrounds and fonts.

5. Random “floating” flowers. While I understand that the products you are selling are made from botanicals and such, the floating flowers don’t add any redeemable design element. In fact, they actually detract from your content (and to me they look a little odd, these disembodied plants).

   What does this mean? Instead of placing scattered, incomplete botanical images throughout the page, find a beautiful botanical image to use as your header banner. This accomplishes several things—you can choose your 3-5 color palette from your header banner, you can reinforce the holistic/botanical nature of your products (pun intended), and you can replace the current uninspired header banner.

6. Link treatment—link, hover and visited. There are times when letting visitors know what links they’ve selected is a good idea, like when all of your links are in a list or grouped together, or if you’re listing a table of contents or sections to read. With links spread throughout your pages, it’s disorienting to have links that are different colors (your links are navy, underlined, and change color when rolled over, your visited links are light blue, underlined, and nothing happens when rolled over). This process is also backwards—why do the visited links change color?

   What does this mean? For the purposes of your site, I would recommend choosing two colors from your color palette: one for the link and one for the hover.

7. Yahoo! Babel Fish translator. Do you have buyers from other countries? Is it really necessary to have a translator on your site? Based on your live traffic feed, I saw only visitors with American flags.

   What does this mean? Unless you are truly getting visitors from non-English speaking countries, I would remove this element. Having a widget for widget’s sake is never a good idea. If you do have foreign visitors, I would recommend moving this widget to the left sidebar—there’s no reason for it to be placed in your header banner. (Additionally, the Babel Fish widget is making your header banner too big.)

8. Inconsistent layout. Visitors like to know what to expect, especially when visiting a site with a lot of content and/or products. I see a lot of inconsistencies throughout the site. This encompasses many issues, some of which I’ve outlined below:
   • there are odd paragraph breaks in the vertical sidebar navigation;
   • some of your “Add to Cart” links have a table border around them, while others do not;
   • content that would be better served in a list format is presented in a paragraph format;
   • inconsistent paragraph breaking.

   What does this mean? Grab a piece of paper and a pencil, go through your site, and sketch a layout you can use for ALL of your pages (this will also help you with items 2 and 3). As you create your layout, make a list of rules each page must follow (main horizontal navigation is always present, no table border around the “Add to Cart” links, consistent paragraph/line breaks, etc.) Use this sketch as a blueprint for how ALL of your site pages should look.

9. Lack of proofreading. When selecting a book, would you choose one that was difficult to read, with spelling errors and poor grammar? The most attractive, well laid out site loses credibility when it is rife with these types of errors. Unfortunately, your site suffers from a variety of these types of problems: inconsistent capitalization, sentences with no spaces between them, back-to-back “Back to Top” links, etc.

   What does this mean? Proofread your pages and remove grammar, spacing, spelling, and capitalization errors. Your product’s credibility will be greatly increased.

10. Broken links. Admittedly, I only found one (but I did not click on every link in your site). Even one broken link, however, puts visitors off. What does this mean? Go through your site and fix any broken links.

Things to keep:

When the navigation is present, it’s organized well. You have good site links on the left, product links on the right (be consistent, however, and go with either : or :: between the links), vertical sidebar navigation, and other, misc. links in the footer.

The overall structure, or skeleton, of the site is good. I would keep this structure, and rework the formatting within it.

Resources to help:

Color meaning/symbolism: Color Meanings

Color palettes: Colour Lovers, Eye Pleasing Colors

Image resources: stock.xchng, dreamstime, 123RF