I only do websites part-time and have been mostly out of it because I’ve been in grad school for the last year (done!).
I’m back in it and decided to take a look at the Learnable.com website this morning because I got a promotional email from sitepoint.
Two things immediately said “bad website” to me. First, the only way to see all the course is to scroll through bunches of pages. I got so aggravated I quit looking. I couldn’t tell how many pages I had to scroll through either. What’s wrong with a plain Jane list by topic? Second, two of the things you can hover over on the home page look like links but aren’t links. I’m guessing you have to be logged in but so what? If it isn’t a link don’t make it look like a link. Isn’t that remedial web design?
I expect bad web design but not from a company that intends to teach web technology. It doesn’t give me confidence in the quality of the courses.
The site has been going through a lot of changes over the past year as they try to find their niche. So I’m sure it will continue to evolve until it suits what they are trying to do. (It even looks different today from a week or so ago.)
Perhaps they’d do well to have a search facility of some kind. But there are way too many courses all to go on one page, so there has to be a better solution than that. As you say, maybe listed by topic, although a year ago the kinds of topics available were quite different from what’s on offer now.
Second, two of the things you can hover over on the home page look like links but aren’t links. I’m guessing you have to be logged in but so what? If it isn’t a link don’t make it look like a link. Isn’t that remedial web design?
They don’t work even if you are logged in, so I’m guessing that’s an error. As I said, though, the home page was different last week, so this might be an oversight—which I’m sure will be fixed soon. (Perhaps it’s a pitfall of using HTML5 and having anchors wrapping around block elements.)
I’d say give tem some more time to get everything right, and feel free to send them your feedback, as they are very keen to hear from people.
I’ll check back and for the price may try a class. Hopefully they’ll learn a few things about organizing the site from their well-established competitors like Lynda.com and VTC.
Amy - You’re right that there’s no search or topic-view. We knew they were needed before the latest iteration of the site launched on Dec 5. Since then we’ve been inundated with requests for those two features (and some others). If you check back by the end of Jan you’ll find both search and topic view are there.
