A Review of usability/design cohesion --- deadlyvintage.com by Ben Gillbanks

Hi Betsy - I am going to be totally honest with my review. I hope you don't take this the wrong way. I think you've done some things right, but there's a lot that is wrong with your website and improvements would increase your sales considerably.

To be honest I am not sure where to start. Each of the images you posted has a totally different design and each needs a different set of critiques.

The first thing you should do is invest in a template system and make sure everything is consistent everywhere. You should have a header with consistent navigation, a logo and a home button, cart button, and maybe a list of categories. Then people will always know where they are.

I am actually a big fan of making things look different on different pages, rather than going for a boring cookie cutter look, but there needs to be something that ties all the pages together and a consistent header would do this nicely.

Design 1 - orange homepage

The orange is far too strong, and I can't read the green text at all. I had to highlight it to see what it said. I would change this to the white design that is used on all the other pages.

Having testimonials is great, but they seem to float around a bit.

I would like to see more examples of your products on the homepage, afterall that is why people visit the site.

It wasn't until a colleague pointed it out that I realized that the image on the homepage had navigation included in it. A consistent header would solve this problem.

Design 2 - policies page

Apart from the massive red heading this is one of the better pages on the site. I would make the content all fit within the checkered looking background as it just looks broken at the moment. I would also change the red to something more friendly. Finally increasing the line-height will make all that text easier to read (this goes across all areas of the site).

Design 3 - mens clothes

This page is one of the better ones in my opinion. I am not sure why there is a set of links on the left and a set of photos (which are the same links) on the right. That just seems a bit confusing. Also I would make the links on the left underlined so it's clear they are links. They look like plain text at the moment.

The tag cloud at the bottom is quite nice and the colours fit the overall vintage style.

Design 4 - keyword brocade

This one I also think works quite well, although the pink on the dropdown menus is hard to read (contrast is too low). I would consider adding some text explaining what brocade means, as not everyone will know. Being a fashion illiterate man that would include me. You might argue I'm not the target audience... but I may want to buy a nice outfit for my wife in which case I want to know what I'm getting in to.

Design 5

You are right - you can't see the buy button. Took me a good couple of minutes to realise where it was. The buy button currently looks like an image, but it should look like a button. I would make it green and bevelled so that it jumps from the page. The cart button looks more buttony and the red steals attention from the black and white buy icon above. I would also use a cart icon instead of a $ icon as this is a better recognised metaphor and doesn't have the same negative connotations (ie dollar = spending money - cart = getting new stuff)

I would also put the buy button higher up the page, maybe swapping the size image with the purchase information.

Basically you need to make it as clear as possible how you buy your product as that is how you make your money, and currently the buy button is hidden near the bottom of the page and dressed up as an icon.