A half a year later (almost to the day), Holistic Serums is my first Where Are They Now? follow-up. There are two reasons for this: 1) Esther came to me and asked for a re-review after making changes a while back, and 2) this is a feature I had planned on implementing. I think it will be interesting to see what has changed, not changed, or gotten worse at some of the sites and blogs I’ve previously reviewed.

So, Holistic Serums, here are some things I hate about your site now:

1. The color scheme, still.
2. The use of too many colors, still.
3. Inconsistent links, still.
4. Inconsistent navigation, still.
5. Your look-and-feel is very dated.
6. Something is wrong with your blog when viewed in Firefox.
7. Your font is a little small.
8. What is going on with the Aromatherapy Website link?
9. Why is there a huge chuck of blank space at the top of the “Safety” page?

Details

The good news: this site does look better than it did last August.¹ The bad news: many of the items on this list were in my original review.

1. The color scheme, still. It’s very plain and drab. From August:
   

   While your overall background color scheme isn’t terrible, it’s just really blah.

   What does this mean? You still need a color scheme that highlights your products, not one that blends into the background. Here are a couple of palettes I think would work nicely.²

   Bi-Color Coleus
   

   Tropical Paradise
   

   Blossom Song
   

2. The use of too many colors, still. Just like in August, there are too many font colors being used, and still no consistency with their formatting.

   What does this mean? From August:

   Color use should be consistent…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.

3. Inconsistent links, still. Why are some links bold? Why are some links default blue? Why are some links light blue? Why do some links change to red when rolled over, but others don’t? Why, why, why?

   What does this mean? It means the same thing now that it meant in August. Your links need to have a consistent format.

   I would recommend choosing two colors from your color palette: one for the link and one for the hover.

4. Inconsistent navigation, still. The navigation on your home page is still different than the navigation on the product pages. And the navigation changes again on the “Disclaimer” page. While it is true that people are more and more internet savvy, that doesn’t mean they want to guess where to go or that they want the navigation to be different on every page. Experienced internet users find frequent navigation changes annoying, and inexperienced internet users just get lost.

   What does this mean? First, you should have the same main navigation, in the same place, on every page. I am still considering the main navigation the horizontal links, starting on the left with “Home” and ending on the right with “Legal Notice”.

   Second, you need to have this main navigation on the pages you are linking to in your footer. On these pages you are repeating the footer links in the header and you have removed the main links. There is no reason for this, except to “strand” visitors within these pages.

5. Your look-and-feel is very dated. I don’t know exactly how old your site is, however, it looks like it was built in the mid-90s and never updated for the 21^st century. Your bordered tables and grid layout are keeping your site in a time warp.

   What does this mean? Your site needs a serious overhaul to make it more current. Starting with the recommendations above, you need to consider changing your layout to a CSS-based layout with some embellishments and some modern formatting.

6. Something is wrong with your blog when viewed in Firefox. This is what I see:

   

   What does this mean? There is something wrong with the theme you are using, rendering it incorrectly in Firefox. I haven’t look into the code, but it is obvious from the screenshot that CSS is not being linked in properly, or there is something within the CSS causing this problem.

7. Your font is a little small. It’s difficult to read, especially with all of the color changes.

   What does this mean? You need to bump your font size up at least one size. This will make your text easier to read, and will improve your line length.

8. What is going on with the Aromatherapy Website link? The link indicates this is a different website, but it is merely a different page on Holistic Serums. While the layout is different, it does not come across as a completely different web site. I’m not going to start listing what’s wrong with this “site,” however. That would entail an entirely new article.

   What does this mean? If “Aromatherapy Website” is intended to be separate, you need to give it its own URL and it needs its own identity.

9. Why is there a huge chunk of blank space at the top of the “Safety” page? It doesn’t appear to be a broken image so I’m guessing there is a problem and for some reason this chunk of content is not appearing.

While I’ve mentioned that this revised version of Holistic Serums was improved over the site I reviewed last August, many of the things that I originally pointed out were not addressed. This site still needs some major overhauling to bring it current and make it aesthetically pleasing.

1. Unfortunately, I learned to take screenshots after this first review, so you’ll just have to trust me.
2. The links will take you to the actual palette on Colourlovers.com