Website Review Please

[adventurelife]

Hi Folks

Not been here for a few years but just dropped back in. We have been updating some of our websites so would love a review of www.rafting.co.uk Please ignore the booking engine on the site we know it is not mobile responsive but that is changing.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to review.

 

[deniser]

Looks good to me - very informative.

The only thing I would say which is a minor thing is that the thick solid blue bars across the top look quite heavy across the width of my screen. Coupled with the three information boxes near the top, it's not so easy on the eye when you first open the page. But that might just be me as my sites are quite minimalist.

 

[adventurelife]

Hi Deniser
Yes see what you mean. I should have also said it was designed with a focus on mobile.

 

[The Byre]

Except that on a mobile, the menu vanishes and some of the content (e.g. stag and hen parties) go off-screen.

 

[fisicx]

The menu need to be visible at all times on a mobile. Don't use the dropdowns - link to a stag and hen page and there list the types.

Get rid of the SM icons in the header. Make the main navigation sticky

Change the homepage images. They look like a cheap homemade flyer.

Add more internal links and a lot more images. I'm looking a wet wet wet on my phone and you mention River Bugging but don't show what this is.

I clicked on your instagram thing and expected to see lots of (ahem) wet t-shirt pictures but got a picture of a camel instead.

What you do is great but the website has a DIY feel to it. A different and more modern thme would make a big difference. You need one without a sidebar if you want to focus on mobile.

And you need to capitalise on the whole event thing. Accommodation seems to be added on as an afterthought.

Sell the whole stag weekend thing: airport pickup, scoff, rafting on Saturday, clubbing and back to the airport on Sunday with a DVD of the whole weekend. I'd pay for that.

 

[adventurelife]

"Except that on a mobile, the menu vanishes and some of the content (e.g. stag and hen parties) go off-screen."

Menu is a drop down in mobile and stag and hen etc is there just need to keep scrolling down. It is designed with critical mobile products/service at the top. Example we get mobile bookings for 2-6 people. We will never get a stag party mobile booking as to much involved in the booking accommodation. transport,activities,food etc.

 

[fisicx]

Scrolling is fine. People scroll all the time on mobiles.

Don't use dropdowns. All you need to do is link to a stag/hem page and have a two column grid showing the different types of party.

The current dropdown just diesn't work unless you already know what the activities are. I have to guess what a wet'n'dry party is. And the drop down is longer than my screen height so I can't even see what the bottom options are.

It's the same with the activities - link to a page that shows me what 'duckies' are. Doing this will really help your SEO.

It's not a mobile optimised site, it's a desktop site that has been adapted for mobile. What you need is a mobile first theme.

Sorry to be all negative but the site has huge potential that a rework would realise.

 

[The Byre]

Menu is a drop down in mobile and stag and hen etc is there just need to keep scrolling down. It is designed with critical mobile products/service at the top. Example we get mobile bookings for 2-6 people. We will never get a stag party mobile booking as to much involved in the booking accommodation. transport,activities,food etc.

The menu needs to be visible - not everyone will twig that it is a drop-down.

stag and hen etc is there just need to keep scrolling down.

On the stag and hen page there is a section headed Name Activities Accommodation Location and that is all over the place when on a (simulated) mobile screen. Similar glitches are on other pages. e.g. on the Photography page, the images become microscopic.

Overall, as a full screen website, it's good, but you said that you are targeting mobile.

 

[Oliver King]

Hi there.

Menu looks fine to me. On my laptop I get a full menu and mobile it changes to a truncated menu (as most sites generally do..

One area is that on a mobile OR slimmed down web page on desktop to replicate a device the boxed are generally centre justified. However when you get to stags and hen parties the content left justifies.. It's not a major issue. If you want me to review it from a SEO perspective then please let me know...

 

[fisicx]

...and mobile it changes to a truncated menu (as most sites generally do...

Which doesn't mean it's a good UX. Extensive tests show the hamburger to be worst menu option.

 

[Oliver King]

Out of interest how would you recommend a menu structure to be for mobile?

 

[Alan]

You can't recommend a generic design for a specific website, as it really depends on the website and navigations needs of the UI.

The hamburger by definition is poor as it hides content and requires an interaction to reveal that information.

If you display all the items on your website as straight text, then that also would give an unsatisfactory information overload on a mobile device.

This is why the hamburger is used in templates and therefore 'common' as it is an easy way out and avoids actually having to design the UX to a specific set of requirements ( thats the nature of templates ).

But the alternative is a custom design based on the detailed needs, something that if done properly should cost thousands or tens of thousands, so not realistic for most micro businesses.

For that reason, no matter how much @fisix hates them, they are likely to be around for a while.

 

[fisicx]

It's not so much that I hate then it's just that the alternatives are not considered. They are the lazy way out for the developer.

For this site there are only 4 primary menu items so could easily bed island as a sticky menu at the top of the page. They would take up less than 40px of space. The reason fo a sticky menu is because there are long scrolling pages on a phone and it provides a simple men's to access other content.

Another alternative is to develop the site content so that there is no need for the menu. This is done by optimising the internal links.

This is why a site needs to be properly planned before the theme is selected.

 

[woodss]

The problem with that Fisicx is that tap targets should be sized appropriately ... thinking in pixel size is "dangerous" for mobile design because each pixel could take up a different amount of screen real estate depending on the device in use.

Googles recommendations of "minimum tap target size of roughly 7mm, or 48 CSS pixels" per tap target are quite clearly stated here:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/SizeTapTargetsAppropriately

That could result in 192px taken up by those 4 links (assuming they're vertically aligned) - on smaller screens (or landscape mode) those 4 links might take up a fair chunk of space. Add just one more link and you're pushing as near as dammit 250px which is about 1/4 of the screen on a 1080p screen - not good.

 

[fisicx]

I agree. Which is why you need to consider each project.

Look at the site in my signature (the bottom one) and you will see how you can make it work on a phone - even with 6 links. And google agrees.

But even if you do use the hamburger on the rafting site, the dropdowns deliver a poor UX. And try using the dropdown on a tablet in landscape and you can't access the last options.

Mobile phone and tablets are used for browsing far more than desktops. You need to create a theme for these devices before considering how it looks on a desktop.

 

[woodss]

Absolutely agree with that.

Personally, I think that the best navigation tends to be anti-menu, and based on page content. Controversial, sure

For example on this rafting page there's really no need for any direct links to the pages in question in a "navigation menu" - they have Call To Actions within the page itself (the images, or buttons saying "Read More" - so a menu is a little redundant anyway. They're the core pages of the site and as long as each of those pages can return you back to the homepage once you're on them, the navigation works.

Secondary links such as to a blog etc can be chucked at the bottom of the page - they don't need the same weight on the page as a product offering.

So instead of:

[Global Nav]
------ > Home
------ > Rafting
------ > Swimming
------ > Flailing
------ > Blog
------ > About Us
------ > Contact Us

You'd essentially have on the homepage

[Logo]

Homepage Text

[Rafting]
[Swimming]
[Flailing]

More guff..

[Events] [Parties] [Photography]

Maybe more gufff

[Footer Links / Blog / About Us / Contact Us etc]

When you're on each of those pages you can come back to the homepage via a click on the Logo so that's taken care of. Ideally the content on other pages would be linking back to your "core" pages from its content so that's taken care of too. The menu is just repetitive content on each page and adds nothing - it's "old school".

It's hard to convey in a forum post but perhaps you get the idea. Content is king - designing around navigation is just shoehorning into a layout such as in the OP - those blue bars add nothing to the page and simply take up loads of space. Links within the content will perform the same purpose and if done properly will be contextually relevant to what the user is trying to do as they "flow" through the website.

 

[fisicx]

Ideally the visitor will land on the top level page for the activity they want and never need to use the main navigation. Properly planned content and internal linking will solve so many issues with the site.

 

[woodss]

Agree 100% - you have to plan for people coming into internal pages directly from Google. They might never see the homepage at all, but still get what they want...

 

[fisicx]

So @adventurelife, what's next? People are struggling with your current site and you must need more customers (or you wouldn't need a site review) so are you going to bite the bullet and get someone to help fix everything?

 

[sipexa]

Hello,

As I see, site is good in mobile, but when I entered to site with desktop browser, logo part seems a bit ugly.

Instead of using like that, may be moving out address details from logo can be good, because at the upper side they are already exist. And may be changing logo area background with an image can be good.

In below parts, everything is static, may be making a rolling screen image slider below logo area can be good.

 

[Deleted member 281732]

I think the site works well enough, though I feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of content.

 

[Ekim Saribardak]

Top part of the site with the logo and banner should be moved to the bottom imo.
Or empty space next to it should be filled with visuals or a slogan

 

[UniHost2u]

hello,
loading slow. speedup your website.

Thanks