LCBCChurch.com

the first thing I notice is that there is no introduction. As a new user I will not know what to click, and what this company/website does. I will give five stars for the design since its only about the usability.

Nate

I am surprised, when I clicked on the link, that it came to a picture of the back of a girl's head and I didn't know where to go...

I would of thought knowing your skills that you would at least have a rollover state for the tabs, drawing in people to want to rollover the different tabs...

Also Eric's point about the intro...

Full marks for Originality and design, just make the other fixes and then it will be usable.

Good Luck!

The back button is rendered useless. And along those same lines, I couldn't, if I wanted to, link to any section on the home page. Deep linking is a must. Including the accordion in one of the sections.

The header/logo doesn't link to the home page when you've click on a link.

The teaser(?) image makes me think more of a performing artist than a church.

The download icon in the current series doesn't relate to downloading.

There is a complete disconnect when I click on archives (though I'm guessing this is the old design?). You'll want to put the archives in the new skin to remove that disconnect.

Not a negative review, just posting all the problems I could see. Design looks good though :)

As you explained, you want us to review it for usability and not for design, but I think you can't split those too. Wise design is not just a good visual it also involves information. What I mean is, functionality is well-linked to a wise design too.

Though I was able to surf the site quite well, I felt pretty lost with the pictures and most of the visual. I only get it was a church website after reading the content. I think the first eye-contact of the site must to resume what is all about.

I also I agree with previous regarding over states and the browser's back/forward button.

I really think you underestimate how functional can be a consistent design.

Hi Nate, I like the site. One thing that I thing I'd change would be the size of the logo. Since you do not have any intro text on the site, I didn't know what it was about (I know you were just looking for input on the functionality but giving the viewer an idea of what the site is about helps the functionality) - I think a larger logo and tag line 'Lives Changed ...' would draw me right to the navigation and give an idea of what the site is about. The inside pages work well - I like the font used for the titles of each section ('Gather' and so on) I think the fact that you have all the info within each section is very useful. The visitor doesn't need to navigate away to find other pages. Nice work

I really think you should re-evaluate the decision of adding that gradient blue background. It was really distracting and design-wise is not really attractive.

As far as usability goes, I had no problem navigating the site; but the tabs had no action-call besides the default pointer. A simple underline or a shift from white to black during hover would do a great improvement.

The layout worked fine for me in both IE8 and Firefox.

I liked how the tables were styled in 'Current Series' and the information there was easy to consume; unfortunately the table layout (for that page) broke a little in IE6 and 7 and need fixing; unless you're one of those who have quit those browsers. The 'archive' button also had styling problems in IE6.

I guess that's it. Some minor glitches but overall I think, for a church, the site is adequate.

Looks great ;) But what if i would like to bookmark a section.. I can't. And when I go "< back" with browser, it starts from the beginning. A little boring. I'm from a evangelical church in Italy and the site is very well done.

Works