Website Review and Suggestions

**tjficklepeople** · 06-20-2010, 02:17 AM

Hi All,

I have just recently launched this reviews website,

www.ficklepeople.com

I am now in the marketing stage and advertising the website on various channels.

Appreciate if you can let me know your feedback on:

website loading speed
design - is it freaking ugly?
usability
concept - do you like the idea?

Thanks in advance!

**fresh-d** · 06-20-2010, 03:36 AM

the design is... ok. it looks pretty messy and also doesn't look too professional. also the logo needs to be changed. sorry for harsh review but i don't like to lie

but over i give the design: 6/10

**tjficklepeople** · 06-20-2010, 03:42 AM

Hi fresh-d,

No worries and thanks for the review. What I need is an honest feedback so that I know how I can improve it. Do you like the concept of it?

**tjficklepeople** · 06-23-2010, 10:39 AM

No other comments guys?

**tjficklepeople** · 01:26 PM

I have started a new thread to show my redesigned website and apparently it was merged into original. Anyway please take a look at www.ficklepeople.com

There is only one comment earlier saying it doesn't look too professional. I have removed all those rounded corners and used lighter colors. Is it better now? Would you write a review there or tell your friends about it? Haha

Thanks!

**tinylino** · 04:58 PM

Lots of colors, lots of moving things, my eye is too busy looking arround rather then focusing on a subject.

Mike
removed

**Martin977** · 07-06-2010, 07:13 PM

Loading time okay, header not too bad, but main body looks far too basic, and has too many colours. The concept is fine.

**Kavin Paulson** · 07-07-2010, 06:34 AM

Hi, The header part looks good, as tinylino said, you have used a lot of color which might be a distraction for visitors, I don't the pale yellow color at the left side under 'what is fickle people'. Too many boxes. Back ground color is fine. Overall above average.

**tjficklepeople** · 07-07-2010, 06:55 AM

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies, really appreciate them.

I will work to minimize the colors used in the body section. The current design was proposed because I wanted to project the image of "fickleness", but I agree that maybe it is more of a distraction than anything else.

**NickH** · 07-07-2010, 08:35 AM

took ages to load for me (using firefox on a macbook)

i liked the explanation of what it was on the left because i was confused when i first visited the site

overall the colours arnt bad and the design is good overall

**tjficklepeople** · 07-07-2010, 08:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NickH

took ages to load for me (using firefox on a macbook)

i liked the explanation of what it was on the left because i was confused when i first visited the site

overall the colours arnt bad and the design is good overall

Where are you from NickH?

Thanks for the kind words, now I am confused. I have just finished converting the colors based on my girlfriend's suggestion, and here you are telling me the current design is good.

**tjficklepeople** · 07-07-2010, 09:35 AM

New design up on:

test.ficklepeople.com

Single color tone, is it better?

**zomex** · 07-07-2010, 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tjficklepeople

New design up on:

test.ficklepeople.com

Single color tone, is it better?

Hello,

I think that looks much nicer as a single coulor. Perhaps the coulor itself could be changed but that depends on your visitors.

I like the design of your site. I'm a bit fan of using a header and footer that stretches to the size of the screen but a fixed content area.

Regards,
Jack

**NickH** · 07-07-2010, 10:30 AM

I'm from Australia

and the new design looks so much better

before what i meant was that there was nothing wrong with the colours, i didnt say that they could not be approved

the new design is much easier on the eyes and looks far more professional

its still taking a while to load for me, although the time is not unbearable it is still a bit long (its shorter on the test page than on the other page)

**Shadrach** · 07-07-2010, 11:46 AM

I think it's a cool idea. But I can see some problems down the road with coming up with an intuitively navigable system for organizing reviews for an infinite number of products. You will have to have categories and subcategories. Otherwise it will just be a jumbled mess. But, I think eventually you are going to have problems as people post duplicate reviews for the same product in different categories. It would be really confusing for someone searching for reviews.

**tjficklepeople** · 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zomex

Hello,

I think that looks much nicer as a single coulor. Perhaps the coulor itself could be changed but that depends on your visitors.

I like the design of your site. I'm a bit fan of using a header and footer that stretches to the size of the screen but a fixed content area.

Regards,
Jack

Hey Jack, thanks for the feedback, the stretched header and footer was an idea from my girlfriend, guess I do suck in design. Glad that you liked it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NickH

I'm from Australia

and the new design looks so much better

before what i meant was that there was nothing wrong with the colours, i didnt say that they could not be approved

the new design is much easier on the eyes and looks far more professional

its still taking a while to load for me, although the time is not unbearable it is still a bit long (its shorter on the test page than on the other page)

Glad that you prefer the new design. I think the load time issue is because of the website is hosted in the US, anyone from the US to feedback about the load time?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadrach

I think it's a cool idea. But I can see some problems down the road with coming up with an intuitively navigable system for organizing reviews for an infinite number of products. You will have to have categories and subcategories. Otherwise it will just be a jumbled mess. But, I think eventually you are going to have problems as people post duplicate reviews for the same product in different categories. It would be really confusing for someone searching for reviews.

Hi Shadrach, yes I have actually thought about this. There was a time where I had to choose - should I keep a database of all items/services and people write reviews against them, or should I keep it open ended that anyone could write a review for just about anything.

I will have to do lots of work on the former and users will also have to search for the items in my huge database before they can write a review. And since there are so many products being released to the market every day, I can't possibly add everything. It becomes a bottleneck when users try to write a review for something which is not yet in my database and they have to send a request to get it added.

On the latter approach users can write reviews without having to search for anything. The only problem is that when a person comes to the site looking for a review say, Splinter Cell Conviction, there will be many many entries with no score aggregation.

But since I am also trying to allow for more comparison reviews, the former approach will not work and I am left with leaving everything open ended.

I hope this works out eventually...

**tjficklepeople** · 07-07-2010, 02:39 PM

I have now updated www.ficklepeople.com with the single color design.

The old colorful design is left at test.ficklepeople.com for comparison.

**Shadrach** · 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tjficklepeople

I have now updated www.ficklepeople.com with the single color design.

The old colorful design is left at test.ficklepeople.com for comparison.

Nice change. I'm not much on graphical advice so I can't really comment on color choice but I like the consistency in the new site. The old one was sort of all over the place.

Also allowing visitors to create an account would allow you to find out what they are into and send them updates for the latest reviews based on their interests. Someone who checked video games on their profile, might be interested in the latest video game or console reviews. Actually an email signup would probably allow you to do the same thing.

Edit.. Sorry, Looks like you already did that.

**lelooman** · 07-09-2010, 07:34 AM

it looks like you are using a very cheap script! maybe boonex is a better solution! some templates looks very good !

**tjficklepeople** · 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lelooman

it looks like you are using a very cheap script! maybe boonex is a better solution! some templates looks very good !

Dude, I wrote every single line of code on my website and I didn't use any cheap/expensive free/paid scripts. The only external scripts used are TinyMCE and jQuery. But thanks for the suggestion on boonex. I have checked it out.

In fact I have checked out other starter kits like DNN but I find a lot of time spent trying to understand the code written by others. In the end I've decided it's better in the long run to write the entire code myself.