Stoofoo.co.uk The Student Food Guide

[ro88o]

Hi everyone,

I would be very grateful if you could give your opinions on my website www.stoofoo.co.uk

I'm interested in everything you have to say, from speed to design to ease-of-use.

Fire-away

[jimbo_dk]

First off, you have a PR of 5 on your homepage. Great work. I like your concept, and also noticed that you're giving food reviews, as opposed to restaurant reviews. This is pretty cool, and will go well with your audience. As for critiques:

1. The main focus of the homepage is the introductory text. Most people don't read large chunks of text, especially not university students. The actual content of the site, which are the food reviews, are hidden on the lower left, and it took me some searching to locate it.

2. Design wise I think the site needs a bit more color, and pictures of food.I did notice a gallery in the review page. But it's too far at the bottom. Would go unnoticed for most users.

3. Naming your ads column "Adverts" might be a put off to some users. Adverts work well when they appear to be site content.

4. The "recent reviews" on the left cannot be easily distinguished from Google ads.

5. The "Make Poverty History" banner interferes with the logo, which should be used to navigate to the home page for usability's sake.

[zealivity5]

Good job on some decent colors. What I didn't like right off the bat is the greasy pizza box... while I get the point it... it just doesn't look good i mean it is a greasy pizza box.

Second as someone previously mentioned large chunks of text scare people. They won't read them. Just use a brief amount of content to say what you want to say.

[nuLime]

I'd write a review but all I get is "Unable to connect to the database at this time".

[ro88o]

Thanks very much for the comments so far, there's quite a few things I'll be changing thanks to you all. Just a couple notes..

Most people don't read large chunks of text, especially not university students.

That's a good point from both you and Zealivity, I'll try and cut that down as much as possible!

It's a shame you don't like the pizza box, I thought it was quite a nice touch. I'll look into a new photo for that area.

I'd write a review but all I get is "Unable to connect to the database at this time".

That may have been down to my host as I've tested that just now myself and it seemed to work fine. I'll double check my code though too! It should probably fail a bit more cleanly than that as well.#

Anybody else have any thoughts?