Please Review: Japanese Auto Exporter

Hi,

We are looking to completely design Enhance Auto but we need to know what you don't like about the current design.

What is your first impression of the company? Professional? Small, one-man show? Credible? Not credible?

Where does your focus go when you land on the page?

Please name 1, 2, or 3 things you dislike or hate about the website. The more the better. Your feedback will be valued and help us to create a better user experience.

Thank you!

 

Holy crap... there is a bit more than 2-3 items that irks me on that page... Let's see if we can pinpoint some of them:
* The color palette is horrible - red, yellow and blue in a glorious non-working mix
* It's WAY too busy - especially the smaller images of cars for sale - the text on these images are also next to illegible - white and light blue on random picture backgrounds DOES NOT WORK
(strike that - it only happened on first load - second / reload the text show up under the images, which I assume is how it's supposed to look - however, weird quirky behavior on first load)
* The big red triangle "website privacy and security notice" up top is disconcerting, and looks like an error-message (both because of the icon and the color) - this should maybe be set up top on the page, like a click-to-dismiss container, like the cookie-information so often seen today
* The icons on the page are incredibly dated, and sometimes doesn't entirely work with the text - a light bulb for FAQ... well, okay. Also, two different icons (instead of the same icon, just with different color) for the "contact us" up top, and another envelope for the email-address on the yellow strip below.

Sorry, but the page is a mess, design-wise, and it looks incredibly dated - like... year 2000 dated.

 

That is exactly the kind of review I am looking for. Thank you!

A few issues that could be kept in mind when reviewing: Credibility (personally I think the website conveys none) and user experience as far as focusing the user's attention on a specific action, as opposed to presenting them with a puzzle to solve.

 

Agonizingly slow to watch load -- saw your other thread about server latency, that's really not the issue. This site is built from a RIDICULOUS amount of "JS for nothing", "CSS bloat" and worst of all, endless pointless separate images. You basically have 153 separate files doing the job of maybe 48.

Every file past the first 8 should average 200ms "real world" and worst case could be a full on second EACH. with 153 files that's as much as (for crappy connections or even just geographical issues with a good connection) 145 SECONDS of overhead on first-load. "Real world guesstimate" a realistic overhead number is 29 seconds, which I'm doing SLIGHTLY better than here at 22.4 seconds according to FF's waterfall. Even at that "low" 22.4 seconds that's enough for people to do "what is this, dialup" even when on the fastest fiber sitting atop a major backbone.

Take that impact on one user, multiply it over many simultaneous users and things get very ugly VERY fast.

Again though, that's first load -- so you have to also figure how much "bounce" you get. More bouncing users == more load for zero conversions; a reason the landing page on a site should be as utilitarian and to the point as possible; front and center should be what it is most likely people landed on the page actually looking for.

Which despite the gee whiz ain't it neat marketing and graphics asshats oohing and aahing over things like scripttard slideshows, isn't it.

From an accessibility standpoint the use of fixed metric (pixel) fonts and fixed width layouts are a major faux-pas. The colour choices are for the most part fine, but some equalization of margins and pading would help a lot. The lack of any sort of responsiveness is the biggest issue, since small screen devices are now a significant portion of the potential audience.

Popping the bonnet to have a look at the whirly bits, there's a lot of nonsensical markup and bad practices. Mis-use of semantic tags, DIV for nothing, invalid nesting of elements, static images in the markup, spam-baiting the e-mail (that escaping trick hasn't worked in decades), outright gibberish use of definition lists, lists for nothing, code bloat thanks to HTML 5's new allegedly semantic yet ultimately redundant tags, multiple H1 resulting in an equally gibberish document structure (though it does at least TRY and follow 5's idiotic convention of the <section> tag), broken incomplete forms, lack of media targets on the stylesheet <link>, endless pointless scripttardery and framework nonsense...

It's got problems; half surprised it's got a 5 doctype on it as it reeks of being made by a 4 tranny developer -- though really that is the target audience for HTML 5. Sure as hell wasn't made for people who embraced logical document structure, separation of presentation from content, or any of the improvements and recommendations set forth by 4 Strict.

 

I sincerely appreciate the in-depth review and the time and attention it took you to write it. If you ever need a favor, ask away. I owe you one.

The current code is so messed up, I want to start from scratch. We've done a redesign before (a couple years back) but that ended up with the dev vendor simply adding more code to the existing mess instead of replacing the old with the new. We've got code in there that dates back to the beginning. And if you think this page takes a long time to load, look at one of the vehicle details page. And while you wait for it to load, ponder this: The target audience is in Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia for the most part.

And since personal computers are things you use at Internet cafes in those areas, most users are on mobile devices.

Your insights, along with those of others, and user data, provide us with a starting place to make improvement.

Many thanks.