Intial Web Page Analysis

My initial reaction to the Fox River Wines web site is almost irritating. Apart from a nicely chosen graphic of a fox by the river, the home or index page is rather bland, uninteresting and doesn't really tell me what the company offer or rather, what they are providing. Secondly, the layout is very patchy so navigation to 'find' information is difficult.

Moving off the home / index page to the first link on offer, the 'About Fox River Wines' page is uninspiring and almost feels like I'm viewing a MS Word document. Next, there seem to be no links or navigation channels back to the index page or to other pages on offer - I need to use my web browsers 'Back' button to navigate back to the home page.

The third and fourth links for 'Company Profile' and 'Mt Barker Region' offer a similar layout to the 'About' page. There are no navigational links or offers to move off the page, and a simple layout is lacking in interesting features / layout / graphics. Additionally, the only way to view all information on the page is to continually scroll - one of my pet web-hates. I would consider amalgamating these pages together and even moving this information under the 'About' page.

The 'What's New' and 'Wine List' display a different layout to the previous three pages and home page. There are now visible navigation links to other pages and there is no scrolling required here. The information contained within the frame fails to load with a warning message : Warning: main(/home/httpd/reynolds/wines/wine_display/wine_display_fox3.phtml): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/httpd/foxriverwines/winelist.phtml on line 12, which leads me to think the wine list is not maintained by the site owner and has become redundant or been removed after a period time out.

A logo and a link to Goundery Wines is display on the bottom left hand pane and provides a gateway to an alternate web site (this may be undesirable if your wanting people to stay within the confines of your page to maximise traffic and potential online sales if that is what you offer). Additionally, an e-mail link opens the users preferred e-mail system and a link to the web site developers home page.

The last page offers online ordering ... a very simplified version of online tools. Again, the document links are broken so we are unable to view what was supposed to be displayed. There is no area to input what you would like to order i.e. types or number of bottles of wines. Another item to note is the site does not offer any credit card security (i.e. Verified by VISA or Secure Server) for credit card customers. The order form has been built using FormMail V 1.92.

Overall, a very uninteresting web site design that is hard to use and move around. A complete overhaul and review of the web site information and layout is appropriate for the Project Proposal Assessment Task 2.