I really like the look, the art is amazing. I like everything about the site except the navigation. I’m not a fan of the hidden kind of ‘find it yourself’ navigation, maybe I’m just lazy, but I think it will turn some people off.
It looks very cheerful. One update to consider would be to allow the mousewheel to work in the scroll boxes. Disabling the home button in the top-right corner unless there’s a submenu on the stage might be another update. It’s also crying out for a squish-the-fig-bar game as, while the content is aimed at adult purchasers, the artistic style of the site seems to be aimed at kids.
Glosrfc, yeah mouse wheel scrolling IS coming, it was just something that got a low priority in getting the site up there. Thanks for pointing it out though. As for demographic versus theme, I wouldn’t necessarily agree the design is aimed at kids, but more of a cartoony natural weird atmosphere
travis, all navigation items are shown in the start. After that, if you don’t want to check the items out, that’s something I can’t force you to do Needless to say this isn’t a left menu aligned standard site so I wanted to do something different. Sorry to hear that though, and thanks for the words.
But kids are automatically attracted to cartoony natural weird atmospheres. There are also some sound reasons for attracting that particular demographic to this site:
The product is supposed to be a healthy alternative to candy - who better to encourage its use than with kids?
Kids are highly influential when it comes to adult purchasing. That’s why sweet displays are positioned at lower heights in supermarkets and near tills.
I think you, or at least the site owners, could be missing a trick by not engaging a younger audience.
I hear you glosrfc, and it’s good to hear your opinions, but I’m curious;
The product is supposed to be a healthy alternative to candy - who better to encourage its use than with kids?
Absolutely right. That being said, what makes you feel the content is aimed towards a older audience only? The choice of wording? Just curious on why you made that assumption. Not saying you’re wrong, just interested
No, I’m not saying that it’s only aimed at adults. What I’m saying is that (apart from visually) there’s nothing to attract kids and keep them on the site. A kid, of 6-10 say, isn’t remotely interested in the nutritional facts, why the product was created, or a plethora of media reports. But if there’s a good fig game, they’ll visit the site to play it. And when the parents wonder why their kids are either laughing, or silent, on the PC they’ll come to see why…and they WILL be interested in the nutritional info.
The art is cool. The flash feels a little unpolished at the moment, but it’s not bad. These things bothered me a bit:
[LIST]
[]The “Welcome To Figamajigs” font is a little weak. The bevel just seems a little too default, with the stock dropshadow, I think it detracts.
[]The performance is pretty bad, it doesn’t feel properly optimized. This is very noticeable when you click on ‘talk of the town’ and the elastic tweened box comes down - it’s pretty choppy. What tweening engine are you using? This is probably the biggest thing, it just doesn’t seem to perform well.
[]The nutritional info nav item is pretty hard to find - and in my opinion there should always be a ‘quick nav’ for anyone who doesn’t want to explore - just a plain text way to get where you’re going.
[]The rollovers on the subsection items “Why Figamajigs” or “Mel’s Story” for example feel a little rushed. The whole site has a lot of tweening and fading, and those just turn on and off.
[]There’s some nasty compression in the “About Us” / “Talk of the Town” / “Nutritional Info” title boxes.
[]This sort of site should really be deeplinked. It’s not hard to implement, and it adds a lot.
[/LIST]
See, now I understand your point, which is respectfully taken : ). A game would be something that would add spice to the site, just about talking certain people into pouring more money into the project i guess
Thanks.
It’s tweener. Although it might not be the most optimized engine on the block, it shouldn’t give you choppy performance ;/ Granted, haven’t really tried the site much on older machines. I’ll look into it. Thanks.
Yup. Completely agree. The site is “prepared” actionscript wise for it, but ran out of time to do a full implementation…
[quote=sekasi;2328251]See, now I understand your point, which is respectfully taken : ). A game would be something that would add spice to the site, just about talking certain people into pouring more money into the project i guess
Thanks.
[/quote]
No problem. If you put together a business case that can persuade them of the potential sales benefits then, as the site designer, most of that money would be poured into your pocket…just a hint
Tweener is really not a well optimized engine. I’d really recommend going with TweenLite instead. It’s very easy to swap over, the syntax is almost identical.
Also, I’m on a slightly older 3.0GHz machine, but it’s still better than the vast majority of your target demographic. For this sort of ‘info’ site, you really need to make sure it works on crappy computers.
