I’d bet my girlfriend’s dog on the fact that there is a point in every man’s life where they think they should try to brew their beer. I know I’ve thought it (and tried it), my friends have thought it, and just about every other beer drinker I know has fantasized about making a home brew. Now where would one get such a kit? Well online of course!

KEYWORD: “Beer brewing kits”, Page 1 in Google’s Results Page (#3 )

WEBSITE:  http://morebeer.com

For this review I decided to enlist the help of tool that I’ve been toying around with for a few months. It is certainly not the greatest heatmapping  or eye tracking software out there but it does help demonstrate where people would be looking on your site within the first few seconds. The tool is called Attention Wizard and was created by the folks at SiteTuners here in San Diego. What I found after uploading a screenshot of the home page was not at all shocking.

More Beer Please!

I'm Looking Where?

Above are two images, the first being the home page of www.morebeer.com and the second being the “heatmapped” version. What you’ll notice from the mapped version is how a significant portion of the eyeballs are settling on the “Free MoreSaver Shipping” section of the page. Free shipping is fine and dandy and a lot of people are interested in saving money, but is it the first thing you want people to see when you land on your page? I suppose the image of the boxes is more compelling than the hop pellets which resemble the aforementioned dog’s poop, but there has to be something more appropriate to display on the home page. Maybe some of the best sellers right smack on top of the page. I do like the Deal of the Day concept but its just not presented well. Remember, when users are browsing for particular products or are in an active buying mode, it doesn’t take much for them to leave your page if they don’t find what they want within the first few seconds. Now, that is not to say there isn’t a portion of the population that takes the time to conduct research thoroughly, but we’re playing the numbers game here. There are a lot more lazy people in the world and we must present the most relevant information in an easily to understand manner so an action can be made.

Following the gaze path, we see a jump to the upper left hand corner of the page towards the logo. At this time visitors are probably asking themselves, “where the hell am I again and what did I click on?” When you first land on this page, it is not easily distinguishable what the site is about. I mean sure I’d love to get to know Darren Schleth, the squirrly looking dude in the middle of the page, just as much as the next guy, but perhaps some nice clean images of actual brewed beer would wet our appetites a bit more. Notice how the Products navigation is completely passed over. The lack of any real organization or structure would makes me glance right over this as well. The site would be better served by grouping similar products instead of a mass list. The New and Featured Products section gets a little attention which is nice to see though I’d rather see this section swapped with the one above it which clearly gets viewed more but lacks anything of real importance. Oh and speaking of importance, keeping the number of font styles on a page to less than 4. Any more than this and things just looked to disconnected, confusing and amateurish.

My final critique about MoreBeer.com is on the actual presentation of the products. Take the Mr. Beer website (currently ranked #2 for the same search term) for example; all of the products have been shot professionally and actually give you confidence you are buying a quality product. Their stuff could be crap for all I know but they’ve spent the time and money to make them look good. I realize it can be expensive to take professional photos but I guarantee it would be worth the investment.

Despite several design shortcomings, the site is optimized pretty well for search engines and does feature a lot of beer making supplies for the most avid brewers. With some of the changes and suggestions I mentioned above, it might just become my go to place for all my beer making needs. Cheers to that!

The requests just keep pouring in! I can’t seem to keep up with them but I aim to please so I’m straying off my path of randomness once again. This request couldn’t possibly live up to the epic APCO Credit Union analysis but I’ll give it my best shot.

WEBSITE: http://www.springofknowledge.com/

Holy text Batman! Within 5 seconds of viewing this page I had to look away because my eyes hurt. Actually, I had something in my eye at the time but still, I would have looked away anyway. It was hard for me to make it through the first paragraph without being distracted by the extremely unpleasant look of the yellow highlighted copy, “visual learning method”. Is that the most relevant text to highlight and is it truly the thing you want your readers to draw their attention to? Probably not. From there I just jumped around in no real order, chuckling along the way, as I thought of many ways to be overly cynical in my analysis. (The image of the 3 dudes in blue jeans, each with a lower cut shirt than the next, was too easy to make fun of so I won’t go there). But you know what? I’m a changed man – well at least for today. Instead of just overly criticizing everything, I’ll try to be as constructive as possible and offer just a few easy solutions to turn this site around.

These Guys Wail!

The main problem with the site is it’s near impossible to scan the text and digest why this software (it’s software right?) is so great. I have no desire learn about the software, let alone purchase it, because there is simply too much information. The intro paragraph is decent actually, but center aligned text is a design no-no (and I’m no designer). It is too difficult to read. On top of that, I had to take a deep breath to get through that entire first sentence (try it, you’ll see…can’t be done!). That first paragraph or top portion of the page needs to sell the product. Right now, it just looks like a Word document. Without having to do a major overhaul, you can drastically improve the top part of the home page by just picking 3 to 4 key features of the product and list them as bullets under a revised and shortened intro. This would immediately reduce the amount of time visitors have to take to understand what they are looking at and provide some sense of flow for the rest of the website.

The copy on the right side of the page that covers the entire length of the page is overkill. There may be some great information in there but it’s too much to spell out on a home page that is already chock full with text. A good idea would be to move this content to another area of the site, perhaps under a navigation labeled “Music University”. This would allow more room on the home page to feature the product and even include a call to action so people can actually purchase the software.

Come on Spring of Knowledge, make better use of the navigation (what the hell does Spring of Knowledge mean anyway?). People instinctively look to navigation to, well, navigate. There is no sense in cramming tons of information onto the home page if your content is laid out in an understandable and intuitive manner. Perhaps try adding a few navigation items like “Software Features” or “FAQ” so people can easily locate information or find answers to any questions.

I made mention of a call to action earlier but wanted to stress how important it is for users to not have to think about what to do next. Without a nice, strategically placed button that is easily found and shows visitors how to make a purchase, you’re reducing your chances of actually getting someone to open up their wallet, purse, or murse.  You can lead a horse to water (your product)  but you can’t make it drink (purchase), so you should do everything possible to make it easy for a consumer, or horse, to convert. Clicking on the “order” link in the navigation brings me here:

Uh oh!

This is preventing your horse to drink. Now, not everyone would be frightened by this warning sign, but I’m sure a great deal would be and would most likely leave your site. Potential customers – GONE! Update that security certificate and let your horsey drink!

This could seriously benefit from a major overhaul on the design and SEO front but unfortunately not all people have the money or resources to take on such a task.  If you can only handle a few things, start with cutting your home page copy in half and at the very least, move some of it to another page on the site and link to it. Add a button for software purchasing, get rid of the highlighted text and you are on your way….FREEBIRD!

Living in Southern California I am exposed to more surf and skate clothing than you could imagine.  As I took a short walk today to the beach I found my inspiration for my next analysis.  Some fellow walked by as I was “checking in” to La Jolla shores beach and he was wearing Hurley board shorts,  a Hurley t-shirt and and a Hurley hat.  Overkill? Quite possibly but it prompted me to take out my phone and Google “Hurley” to check out their mobile  (unfriendly) website.

Not Surfable!

Before I start let me say that I am a bit biased because I believe websites should balance the functional and the fancy, not just be billboards for your brand. I hate splash pages that serve no purpose but to have you click to enter the site.  Hurley’s site makes you do that very thing. You have to click or touch the image to enter the website. Absent is any intuitiveness. You are greeted with Hurley’s big “H Jeans” logo and a surfer…..uh, jeans and surfing? That doesn’t make much sense. Anyway, what am I supposed to do now? Where do I go? What do I click? Does something happen here? The mobile version (at least on my iPhone) doesn’t offer any indication of what to do. The full site is just as confusing. My suggestion would be to make it clear and easy for people to perform an action, something I preach over and over again. If you must separate your site into “store” and “site”, then make it distinguisable – keep the text visible that reads “store” and ‘site”. Don’t make people think too much…we are lazy and want our surfing (pun intended) to be simple.

After making to the ”site” section, the first thing I see are a bunch of videos that don’t play.  This is a major problem regardless if its just an iPhone issue.  The focal point of your site is to demonstrate, through video and flash, how your clothing fits into this action sport lifestyle and mobile visitors can’t even view them. A simple fix would be to convert all videos to a format that is compatible on iPhones, Droids and all other popular smartphones. You might not think many people are accessing your mobile site to learn about your brand but read this – according to a Pew Research Study, 40% of adults use the mobile phones to access web. This number is up from 32% last year and is probably much higher for the younger, more “Hurley” ish crowd. You might not think it is a big deal now but you watch – in 3 years time the mobile web usage will be bigger than desktop usage.

Despite the awkward entrance, the site isn’t a horrible user experience on a smartphone. It isn’t all in flash so I am able to navigate relatively easily but it could be much easier. A company like Hurley (owned by Nike), should invest in developing a mobile experience. Many brands do it well – Zappos and Amazon to name a couple. A simple sniffer script placed on the home page can dictate what type of browser or device the visitor is using and can serve the appropriate version of the site – “mobile”  for mobile users and “full” for desktop users.  Perhaps just start with making the videos compatible on the “site” version and then move on to a simple shopping experience on the “store” version.  Whatever route you choose, step back and ask yourself, what is the most important information we want to share with our users and what do they want to get out of this experience? It might not be as complicated as you think.