TomBettle Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Hello All One of the main reasons I joined this club is to try and learn more about angling and boating. In addition to meet a bunch of like minded individuals who enjoy being on the water and sharing their collective knowledge (Jack, you are excused from this bit). The club has done all this and more for which I am very appreciative. It also has possibly the best privately run and designed, non profit making websites that is available on the Internet. For a bunch of hairy, salty old sea dogs who smell of old squid and cod poo this is an incredible feat. Based on knowing the type of guys you are I was hoping for some proper input and advice from you. Most of you know (I tart myself around enough) that I sell Jeanneau boats for Southern Motorboats. We are trying to improve the way we do things and one of the key areas that help us market the company and product is our website. As with anything, when I look at the site I am a bit blinkered and being indoctrinated into believing (sorry, knowing) that we are the very best thing to ever happen in the marine industry it is hard for us to be impartial when looking to improve. With that in mind I was hoping that you may spend a few minutes of your time browsing our site (you should be able to reach it by clicking the scrolling banner at the top of the page or by visiting http://www.southernmotorboats.co.uk ) and then providing input about how it is now and what could be done to make it more informative, user friendly and helpful. By all means click on requests for information etc, but to help us not detroy too many rainforests and boost the Post Offices profits too much, please make it clear you are running a test. For once this isn't a pitch from me so regardless if you are remotely interested in Jeanneau boats or not it would be great if you could take a look. Try and think more as a boater than a fisherman and imagine that you were in the market for a new boat or just researching etc. Any input would be really helpful as constructive criticism will help us improve. A huge thanks to all who take the effort to have a look and report back. Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul J Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Tom, A couple of things after my 1 minutes viewing Make the headings bigger and bolder- make it more obvious they are links Add a pop up map in "where are we" A couple of fishing photo's would not hurt at all, looks like your not looking to sell to fisherman at all ( probably cause were all skint) a click to enlarge photo option would be good Thats my two-pence worth Cheers Paul J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob F Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Hi Tom You've set yourself up here matey... But seriously, here's some constructive critism. First impressions. I don't know how it displays on other peoples computers but the area of the page is only about a half of the available display space. Would prefer to see it fully expanded. Its all a bit small. Photos are ok but small. Photos don't show you the complete boat inside and out. Would also like to be able to see a plan diagram of the boats so you can study the layout. People new to Jeanneau will not know one model from another, so just having the model name and numbers in the pull down menu means you have to open up each one to see if its what you are intersted in. Would be nicer to show a photo of each model as you pass your mouse over it. Not sure I'd have second hand boats on the opening page. It doesn't invite you into the new boats. Should be using your arty photos on the front page. On the plus side, the site loads quickly. I'll have a more thorough look later. BF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul D Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Only personal opinions here but I would have the home page as the one to start ( as opposed to the obscure one with lots of boat pictures ) I would make the page wider ( as Bob F mentioned ) and rather than having the scrolling details, I would make it the whole height of the page ( using browser to scroll - othersie the scrolling part feels "cramped". Where you have newsletter coming soon - make sure it really is. People will think site is hardly updated if you go back in 6 months and it is still "coming soon" ( made same mistake on our site by setting up a newsletter and then never sending any ! ) When the boats-for-sale.com pages are shown when clicking on the brokerage boats you could consider having the new window maximised ( the user would then have to close it anyway as it has no nav bars ) - but there again I was in two minds about this myself. Your 3 Merry Fisher 530's have differing prices and I can't detect the differences between the one for Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomBettle Posted February 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Thanks to those who have taken the time to have a look and comment either by posting or PMing. This is exactly the feedback I was hoping for. We always know we can do better, but you kinda get in a rut and get blinkered so I am genuinely appreciative of the input. Any more? please keep them coming if you have the time. Thanks v Much Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duncan Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 some of these are already directly or indirectly covered already............ 1. For the content you are carring is is daft to have people scrolling the page, or even text frames. It is really daft to have pages set so that they just don't view in a 1024x768 window horizontally, and then reset the scroll if they click on an image or other button! Working to 1024x768 is pretty much a standard. 2. Make you r mind up about what you will have on the site (even if you are not delivering it all to start, so that it doesn't (now or later) look like it is evolving with bits and links tagged on here and there. 3. Brokerage is awfull - you cannot find out the basic information unless it happens to be in the title - What engine has ref somo01-3836 got (yes I know it's a Yanmar but I am less likely to contact you without this basic knowledge). 4. On the other hand the same boats brokerage page has better images / layout diagrams than some of the new boats............ 5. I really don't want to click 5 times on unnamed buttons to get the specification for a 21ft fisher....I know they are well speced but.......... You really do need to understand where your website fits with your business to make any sense out of it. For example I thought SMB prided themselves on a personal touch - where are the staff photos and mobile numbers? Including Service staff! If I was thinking of buying a new boat it would give me huge confidence to see the face and have the mobile of the guy 'who sorts things'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 Tom, There are a lot of comments that are way over my head and clearly some detailed feed back from people who do this stuff professionally. So from someone who Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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