Website Redesign: What’s Wrong With Best Swim Wear?
We have a new site for the series “What’s Wrong With This Website” as I came across this website this weekend while I was looking for some new swim trunks: BestSwimWear.com. The first thing that stuck out to me was the out-of-date look the site had to it with the “default” link colors around the images due to borders being set up on the images. Then, when you scroll to the bottom you see that the website was designed and copyrighted in 1996. I’m willing to believe that this is how the website looked back then in 1996. Let’s begin the analysis!
The first thing that I noticed is that the main header image is predominately gray, but yet the name brand images have a shadow behind them while also having a white background around them as well. This would look more professional if it was all just white minus the shadows since the rest of the website is white.
Next, you can see that they are using a text-based navigation menu that is actually an image. There’s no rollover to these images so I’m not quite sure why they used an image. Especially since the font is just an ordinary font each user would already have on their computer. There are so many images that can capture your attention above the fold that you can actually miss their navigation and scroll right on past it. You should always make sure your users can find what they need on the website as well as be able to find the menu to click on.
We already pointed out that the images use a default blue border around them which means that they are not using any up-to-date CSS or anything. They could just update their look real simple by using CSS.
Which leads me to my last item critique. I came across this website by doing a search on Google for “mens swimsuit” and yet they only have 3 name brands to offer its male customers. However, they have 35 name brands to offer its female customers. By offering more lingerie and women’s swimsuits it’s pretty obvious that your website is not really catering towards men.
This brings a close to the series “What’s Wrong With This Website” for the time being. With SMX Advanced being today and tomorrow we’ll be posting some topics that come up from that conference. I’m sure it will be a good one!
If you’re interested in a website critique, feel free to contact Regency Interactive today at 252-428-0200!
