Wednesday, July 21, 2010

New website for Tan Kin Lian.com [2]

Here are two comments about the new website, www.tankinlian.com
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The website is excellent.
It's not only user friendly but doesnt have unnecessary graphics and flashing ads. You can give a try to use http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ to see the sample report on some optimization. This is only to make the website much better and may not be necessary.
Thanks for providing valuable insights on financial matters and yes, I strongly recommend to purchase and read your book on Practical Guide on Financial Planning.

Website is not intuitive.
Design is amateurish looking. Design is not consistent across pages.
Links found on different pages bring you to the same page. (e.g. Information > Ask Mr Tan, Ask Mr Tan). Dead link - Guide > Ask Mr Tan
So much text on the first page and what are those on the left? Intuitively, I thought they are links but they are not. In addition, the text on the left should have prominent heading for each section.
Contact, Enquiry, Ask Mr Tan - They all seem to suggest the same thing. Poor choice of words.
Overall, a rather poor effort and does not seem to be created by a person well-versed with user interface design. Use one of the established CMS to better managed your website. What is a traditional website anyway? Any example? I remember in one of your articles you mentioned some particular gov website? I don't know why you seem to think that gov websites are considered traditional websites. I do find gov websites rather confusing with many links but they are more professionally done and comes with user site search.


Note: some changes have been made to improve the home page and create some links.

5 comments:

  1. 1. There is no validation to the inputs on Enquiry Page. I can submit the form without filling in anything.

    2. What is the difference between "Ask Mr. Tan", "Enquiry" , "Contact"? This is confusing.

    3. Remove the "Sitemeter" link from the footer. This is for yourself to monitor and not for others. Showing it is amateur.

    4. It is recommended to include <META> tags in your html.

    5. Guide has explanation to the navigation tabs but then why not for all the tabs? I suggest group them as "Navigation".

    6. I suggest adding a Sitemap. This is a must for a professional site.

    7. This is not site search. Do include one.

    8. I suggest adding a short description on top of every sub page to explain the function of the page. I do not understand what the individual pages do.

    9. Tell your web developer to include a custom error page. There isn't one and I am brought to an ugly ASP.NET error page when I tried to be "hostile".

    10. The table listing (2nd column) on "Ask Mr. Tan" page is missing column label.

    11. I hope there is pagination for all your table listing to carter for the future as the number of article grows.

    That's all for now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 12. Do include a "pagenotfound" page. Your web developer should understand what I am trying to say.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Loh Hon Chun

    Thank you for your suggestions. Several of them belong to the "old generation" websites, which I do not wish to implement.

    A little bit of confusion is okay. It should be obvious what the three tabs do.

    ReplyDelete
  4. hi hon chun

    I prefer the site meter to be exposed to the public. They can see how many people visit my website. It is okay to be open with this information. Anyway, the visitors give me feedback that help me to improve the website.

    If the website is not interesting, the number of visitors will drop. However, if the numbers keep increasing, it may encourage more people to come.

    It is not a matter of being amateurish. It is a deliberate decision to be different from other peoples' approach.

    Do be careful and avoid using such a label - as different people approach the matter quite differently.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My first thoughts: the website looks like something I could have created when I was a young and enthusiastic student who just discovered the fun of website design.

    Design wise, I would say it's adequate for a personal website. If it's meant to be a business website, it has to look more professional. The choice of colours and pixelated images (e.g. facebook) certainly did not help.

    ReplyDelete