Site review wanted- OnOffer.ie

TheGooseLicker

Hey Guys,

I've started working for a site www.onoffer.ie . Just doing some research at the moment and would be great to have the site evaluated. If you could post under the following headings it would be really appreciated.

1) Appearance
2) Ease of Navigation
3) Content
4) Any other advise

Thanks a million

LauraOrlagh

Hi,
I had a quick look at your website there and I think it has a very appealing appearance, it's very easy to get around it and get to where you want to go on it, it has good content - maybe one thing would be that in each section you could specify a particular geographic area for offers (I see you have seperated specific areas in Dublin and the rest of the country but the rest of the country is a lot to have in one category!) i.e. I'm in Limerick so when I clicked into meal deals and it offers me deals for Lucan up in Dublin it's not of much benefit to me unless I plan on going to Dublin any time soon.. So an ability to choose a specific county may be worth looking into but apart from that I think the site looks great - good job

TheGooseLicker

Hey Laura,

Yes, the search function is being worked on to incorporate a better way of dealing with locations!

Sadly, it's not MY site, just working for them. Thanks for the feedback!

Waternews

Hi,
That's a really nice site. Good work.

The "Oops! You must be logged in to do this" screen - the content isn't centred, and it looks like it's missing a border or something.

Other than that - well done!

Can I sign up now?

Axwell

You would probably get a better response over on the web forum

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=23

TheGooseLicker

Hey Axwell,

You have to be registered to access some parts of the site such as competitions.

Actually, if you could register and let me know your thoughts on the sign up ( too much, too little etc ) that'd be brilliant!

Thanks for the Tip Axwell

TheGooseLicker

Thanks to Axwell for pointing me in the direction of this thread..

I've started working for a site www.onoffer.ie . Just doing some research at the moment and would be great to have the site evaluated. If you could post under the following headings it would be really appreciated.

1) Appearance
2) Ease of Navigation
3) Content
4) Any other advise

Thanks a million

Eoin

Only had a chance to have a quick look, but I like it. RSS feeds might be an idea?

Can you turn off the viewstate? It seems to be quadrupling the page file sizes.

TheGooseLicker

What Internet Browser you using Eoin?

Thanks

Working on RSS also!

Eoin

I was using chrome I think

TheGooseLicker

Thanks Eoin, Ill report this to the web developers..

aidan_walsh

Merged the two threads since Axwell moved the original thread here already for you OP.

tricky D

Title tag has 'Welcome to OnOffer' which would be better as 'OnOffer, find offers and promotions in Ireland'.

The first offer comes in around 65% of the way down the page. This could be higher up the page. You could move the search function up into the space right of the logo.

The Sign Up call to action isn't treated with the prominence it should have. The side sign up image actually fades on mouseover which is a bit anti-intuitive. The sign up would be better using an orange colour in the treatment.

Why is there an 'add' admin link to the right of highlights?

Disclaimer seems to be just the about us. No business reg details. No postal contact address - this is a showstopper, I'm not doing business with a site with no physical address displayed. It's a trust thing.

The Advertise with us section has some testimonials. Ideally you want metrics there. A serious advertiser will be looking for metrics on eyeballs, clickthrus and other hard numbers which allow for estimating RoI's. I also prefer when sites put their prices and packages on the pages instead of having to send off a form and wait. There's no call to action in the content body and no info on what ad packages are on offer.

Personally I find the handwriting style font in images a bit awkward. That might be my subjectivity but I certainly wouldn't use for the facebook text as it doesn't leverage that brand so well.

The left hand nav menus are inconsistent. In the top one, Offer Categories, when a link is clicked a submenu appears. On the bottom menu, clicking opens a new page. Users in this case normally expect a click to open a page. If the menu needs to expand, use a flyout submenu or the like with a visual prompt, usually an arrow.

Many of the offers aren't linking for me even when I disable my AdBlockPlus.

Let users decide for themselves if they want a page to open in a new tab/window when going to an offer.

BLOODY HELL!!!!
The viewstate variable for pages is coming in at around 410kB - at almost half a Meg, this is a totally and utterly ridiculous and inexcusable size. This is where I stop.

hth

TheGooseLicker

HI Tricky,

This is what the guys are looing for. Thanks! Very constructive help there! I will see can I get replies on your thoughts!

mewso

As has been said the viewstate is too big and probably unnecessary. They should turn it off at a page level and see if it breaks anything. It's only necessary for the horrible inline javascript stuff asp.net does, something I stopped doing a long time ago myself. Actually having looked at the page it's obvious now that it's down to the large lists of stuff in the middle of the page and elsewhere. As it is all data reads and nothing else turning off viewstate should have no ill effects.

I'm a source man so thats what I'm looking at. Your developers can take it or leave it.

1. Javascript in the head. There is a bunch of script that could easily be placed in a separate .js file. Much better that way imo.

2. The H1 title of the page is :-

<h1 onclick="location.href='/default.aspx';" style='cursor: pointer;'>OnOffer</h1>

Again in my opinion this should be more like:-

<h1><a href="/" title="Return to the  main page">OnOffer</a></h1>

The current one relies on javascript for no good reason. Without javascript my mouse idicator will change to suggest a link but it won't work. I'm a "make page work without javascript" man but I'm not really pushing that here just that it should make sense to use it and it doesn't here.

3. The Search Box:-

<div id="ctl00_ctl00_Panel1" onkeypress="javascript:return WebForm_FireDefaultButton(event, 'ctl00_ctl00_btnSearch')">
    <input name="ctl00$ctl00$txtSearch" type="text" id="ctl00_ctl00_txtSearch" class="MainSearchBox" />
    <a id="ctl00_ctl00_btnSearch" class="SearchBtn" href="javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$btnSearch','')">Find for me</a>           
</div>

Some more javascript dependent code here. Again it's a matter of taste so I won't push it but I would say this stuff is as a result of drag and drop in Visual Studio a trap I recommended asp.net developers avoid.

4. Inconsistent attribute quoting - that old adage use one method and stick with it. Some element attributes use single quotes, others double. My fussiness again but really it's not nice. In this case my guess would be asp.net controls in a repeater with values embedded in the aspx page instead of doing it in code (itemdatabound event)