Review: CraftPOP.com

[jca]

CraftPOP.com

CraftPOP.com is a links directory and web guide to arts and crafts related websites. The site hasn't been officially launched yet (there are more links, tweaks, descriptions, etc. to be added to the directory), but is finished for the most part.

Would appreciate any reviews, comments, criticisms, feedback, etc. I'm especially interested in ANY browser/platform issues on the Windows/PC side since I'm on a Mac.

Thanks,

[maxor]

OSX 10.3 Safari 1.2

Looks awesome!

I really like the colors and visual effects of the graphics. On my iBook the green and orange look nice together, on my PC (Win2k, cheapo monitor) the colors look a little off.

I think the only think you'll need to worry about are the colors, make sure to check the design on a PC especially if you're doing this dev work on an Apple laptop or LCD.

You also may want to make the 'updated' graphic stand out a little more. If I were just glancing at the site to see if there were any updates I may miss something.

Another thing to think about is making sure you've got all of your most popular categories above the 'fold' (the area above the bottom of the browser window upon page load for those who don't know.)

That's all for now.

[Egor]

Great design! I have no more to say

[Emankcin]

Win XP Pro sp1, 56k modem, I.E6.0, Opera 7.23, 1152x864.

I'll start with what is more important for you: Everything looks clear with both browsers. The loading time was acceptable.

Now, speaking about the design. It left me a good impression, I like the colors and the arrangement of things on the site.

Usability: the links have a pretty pale color and a not very bright roll over effect, imho. But they are "enough in front". An acurate wrote code of site.

A nice web-site in the end.

[DCS]

Nice work, love the colors. Really like the header and how the color bands are repeated at the bottom.

I am looking at it side by side on high end monitor and low end monitor and see very minor difference in the colors. I do however get horizontal scroll at 800x600 which I am going to bet is the resolution the majority of your target audience will be using.

[mikey23]

Great site. I really like the logo and navigation. The color combination is also very good. I like the way the blending of the colors of the top give it a funky yet classy kinda style. Don't know if that makes sense. Anyways for an information heavy site it is pretty easy to navigate. Very nice work.

[langedav]

Mozilla1.5 broadband Winxp

It's a nice, clean website. It has every nice feature in it i could think of and the navigation is clear. Only one comment: when i am in a subcategorie for example Arts and Crafts Links Directory > Candles i guess you should make it more clear that you use links in stead of plain text.

[DanielOliver]

It's nice, I like what you have done with it.
Nice colours, visually appealing and it's user friendly.

Great work,
Daniel.

[adam2003w]

Like everyone else, I love the design. Clean, simple, classy, the colors are unique and understated. Here's my tip for you. Choose a couple of well placed pictures to really cement that your site is about crafts. Right now the site says with it's colors "home maker" and "martha stewart" which is great and on-target with your audience. A couple of "crafty" pictures or pictures of crafts projects would help you to connect with your audience further. Maybe use some of that wide open real esate in the top green color bands to place a picture.

Also, what cms are you using? Self developed? I'd really like to know.

[atotalstranger]

Design is very nice - crisp, clean. Colors compliment the subject matter and each other well.

Only a couple of very minor points (which I had to work to find - gotta offer some constructive criticism, right?):

1) Regarding your text on the left hand side: "From sites teaching how to knit to creating your own gifts, this is the web directory to get started." - something about the wording didn't feel quite right. I would probably modify it to read "...is the web directory to help get you started" or "..., this is the place to start".

2) The following paragraph: "Have a good craft link that should be listed in our directory?". Same feeling - I would probably change "good" to "informative or useful" or something like that.

3) I like the clean open quality of the site, but the directory menu could probably be tightened up a little bit. A little less space between the categories vertically or a little less padding in the boxes. This is mainly to decrease the amount of scrolling required of users.

Great job with the site.

[Max_Glink]

Extremely simple and straight forward to use. I really like it.

The suggestion to add a picture of some sort that let's you know what the page is would be good. I would probably put something like that in the top right.

I'm also using Opera 7.23 and it seems to work great.

Cheers

[mhdoc]

I agree it is a nice looking site. What age range do you expect your traffic to come from? With my older eyes I find the font size small.


Good luck with it.

[Dimboy]

That's a great design, nice contrasting colours, and the way at the top of the nav the shades of greens and at the bottom above the copyright notice. I also like the orange ads and stuff they're really neat.

[Nick]

Mozilla Firefox .8, Windows XP, 1024x768, DSL:

Excellent site! Fast load times, no glitches that I see, great choices of colors.

[Ricky]

The layout is excellent, and the colors gives a simple, yet not boring, clean look. It's just fine, I say.

[lgomez]

Great site!

The site is visually appealing and the colors look great. I would only sugest trying a larger font size. It looks tiny at higher resolutions.

In general a very good looking site!

Keep it up!

[jca]

First of all, I want to thank everyone for all the kind words and useful responses/criticisms about CraftPOP.com. I'll be making changes thanks to the input offered by all of you.

To answer a few specific questions:

adam2003w: The site is using WSN Links to manage the links directory.

atotalstranger: Thanks for the copy proofing. I'll be writing and correcting all those copy mistakes.

The site is still being finished, but should be moving out of "soft launch" mode soon.

Thanks,

[SniperX]

Reviewed Using Opera 7.50.

First Impressions

Acceptable loading speed, which led to one of the most gorgeous colour combinations I have seen in some time. However, this was immediately followed by noticing that the site forced a horizontal scrollbar after only a 1072 width setting.

What struck me as unusual and creative was the carefuly crafted header. It didn't force your logo down my throat, and the carefully crafted green bars served a purpose of leading to the links. An excellent use of space.

Layout & Presentation

Another site which has chosen to omit the TITLE tag on the text links. Unforgivable in this day and age in my opinion.

The link colouring could be improved I feel. The "Go" buttons are green and link to the search term entered. However, the green shapes within the area bozes did not link. That could easily be altered I feel, in order to reduce confusion.

The text down the left of the home page could be a wee bit bigger. I understand it's need to be smaller than the main text, but I think you may have overdone it a little.

When searching, if a null find is returned, the user is presented with a "Continue" link. This should be made a little clearer. What am I continuing onto? I took a guess at being returned to the homepage before clicking it, only to find that it led to a more advanced search page.

I didn't see a privacy policy of any kind mentioned on the site. Relatively important in this day and age methinks, especially as you are asking for email addresses on the link submission page.

Page titles were all the same. Page titles should show the content of the page and not be generic.

Colours

Exceptional and consistent use of colour throughout. There are some very creative and yet understated techniques employed within the site to give it a modern, sleek, and easy to use look and feel.

Rating

If I had to rate this site: 9/10. Attention to the horizontal scrollbar issue and the link colours and tags were what prevented me from giving my first 10! Really nice site.