Design Critique: ClickCaster
Pete Davis, the Chief Marketing Officer of ClickCaster, Inc., wrote to me last week asking if I could evaluate their site which is a competitor of Odeo (my take on Odeo). While my schedule doesn’t allow me to go as indepth as I would like with an evaluation (money talks ;-), I thought it would be a great exercise to point out some issues I have with the site and then open it up to everyone so hopefully they could walk away with some new ideas and improve the site.
Navigation
Without a doubt if they only fix one thing on the site it has to be the navigation. There are a ton of places where you can get cute with things and the navigation isn’t one of them. Lose the waves and figure out how many levels of navigation you really need.
The waves are too confusing to understand where you are on the site and if they are even clickable or not. Navigation should blend with the site in my opinion and not dominate or confuse.
Copy
The copy on the site needs to be improved as well. Looking at the homepage I see two paragraphs and both of them start off with “Imagine…”. I don’t want to imagine, I want to “do”. Figure out what the purpose of the site is and what you want your users to do and help them do it quickly and easily. Avoid the marketing fluff.
Login Form
The ability to login takes up 80% of the top part of the site. What happened to a simple user/pass form?
ClickCasts vs. Podcasts
On the homepage I have Featured ClickCasts and Featured Podcasts. What this leads to is total confusion because the difference between the two is not readily apparent. Basically there are just too many elements on this page fighting for attention. Nothing dominates the page and lets the user know what your intentions are.
Overall
The site just lacks that crispness displayed from professional sites. I’m sure someone else can elaborate a bit better on this, but from a professional web user’s perspective it’s hard to trust a site that isn’t professionally designed (of course that could just be me).
Your thoughts?
I agree with everything you said.
I also think the color scheme is lacking. It just isn’t interesting. It feels more like a corporate info site than something I want to dive into and start actually using.
By Josh Pigford on January 27, 2006 1:39 pm
1.) The idea is interesting once you think about it, but you do have to think about it given the copy you have. I mean, the copy is bad, really really bad.
2.) These guys NEED to buy clickcast.com and clickcasts.com - It says ClickCast all over the site, so that’s the phrase that sticks in your head. You need to have those domains if you want this to be successful.
3.) The log-in needs to be smaller. I’m ok with the horizontal layout, but it all needs to fit on one line.
4.) http://clickcaster.com/products DO NOT USE CLIP-ART!
5.) The site seems to be trying to do a hundred different style at once, but doesn’t end up looking crisp.
I don’t to come off as a dick or anything, because the idea seems solid. I just hope these guys think through their branding a little better.
By Alex Cabrera on January 27, 2006 1:50 pm
One of the most noticeable areas of the site is in the bottom right. The bubbles direct eyes away from the description of what a clickcast is and down towards using your mobile device.
It took me a minute or so to even find the copy describing a clickcast.
The navigation has some type of wave theme that isn’t reinforeced anywhere else on the homepage. If they’re going for sonic waves they should incorporate that into a logo and leave it out of the navigation.
General impression is a page that doesn’t know what it wants to get people to do. At least with Odeo’s redesign it was pretty clear - sign up.
By Ben Otero on January 27, 2006 2:14 pm
I would add
Add copyright date on all pages. It’s buried at the end of “Legal”
Fix thumbnail image sizes on index page.
Fix footer links.
Fix inconsistent link use between pages.
Fix inconsistent link names between pages, e.g., “Subscriptions” versus “My Subscriptions”.
Lose “Welcome” link or “ClickCaster” link. They’re identical.
Add direct links to pages with links buried in “About”, i.e., “Team”, “FAQ”, “Contact” and “Legal”.
Standardize page layout.
Add “search/browse” form on all pages instead of a link to the form.
Separate “Services” from “Products” page.
That was fun.
By Sean Fraser on January 27, 2006 2:36 pm
The gray gutters are really boring. I would have gone for a liquid design or at least gutters with a little more flair.
By Christian Montoya on January 27, 2006 2:41 pm
Paul, Alex, Ben and Josh,
Thank you all for taking the time to review our site and provide your feedback. We really appreciate it! Our development and interface teams have reviewed your feedback and are incorpating your comments and suggestions into our new design. We’ll let you know when our changes have been implemented, so you can provide additional input.
Regards,
Pete Davis
Chief Marketing Officer
ClickCaster Inc.
By Pete Davis on January 27, 2006 3:24 pm
Excellent input! We really appreciate it!
Scott Converse
Founder & CEO, ClickCaster
By Scott Converse on January 27, 2006 4:52 pm
Most of the comments were touched on, but I can’t stress enough that there’s no real marketing identity here — and I mean unified. You’re in the business of finding people, it’s imperative to reach your audience with a branding scheme not only graphically, but in a defined vision. What IS the look and feel of your product? Looking at your site, I can’t sum it up in a few keywords, and that’s a marketing disaster.
The design work needs to be polished overall — from the poor photoshop work, to the imbalanced typography — there’s little focus. It’s half foot into fun art, and half into blog — neither of which looks appealing and grabs my attention. I’ll second the clipart. Maybe it’s me, I’m picky — but subtle elements make a designer — your logo looks tight left to the container margin (no logo rules?), some of the featured podcast are poor resolution and mis-proportioned. I’ll also second the bubble callout — that’s an old trick used for print design, but you’re not asking the using to turn the bottom right of the page, you’re directing them to signup - focus where your money goes.
Last, since I haven’t heard it — the code is not pleasant. I want to say dreamweaver — very little else do I see something use an XML declaration and spit out a table + divitis hybrid. While there’s an attempt at going tableless, there’s no consideration for handicap accessibility, very little semantic code, and Area Maps were unpopular years ago… again, halfway there — and there’s no reason not too. All this information is freely available — if you knew to post in Whitespace, I’m sure you know where to find more information online about proper CSS development. Aside from that, you have few errors:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fclickcaster.com%2F
That can be easily fixed. I’ll note the next time you do a redesign, because of these coding habits, your work will take that much longer now. Your lack of accessibility is no excuse, and should be mended.
If this is a young developer, I would say excellent job on a good first start, but there’s much to learn; corporations need more to compete. While I think Odeo’s redesign is poor compared to it’s original design (visually and with feeling), you could have learned much from it’s original, done by the Simplebits.com designer.
By Brady J. Frey on January 27, 2006 6:21 pm
I just want to say I’m glad how Mr. Davis and Mr. Converse took the review here at Whitespace. It’s amazing when people, instead of getting angry and defend a bad design, start changing things for good.
Those guys took it really well. Just that. Keep that attitude!!!
Mr. Bombastic
By Javier Cabrera (CSSelite) on January 27, 2006 7:08 pm
Two biggest problems I have with this design:
The colors
The navigation
The website in general looks like it’s 6 years old.
The colors are very bland and they don’t work well together at all. Gray is a bad choice for a background, it’s just a dull color and it doesn’t work in this case.
Purple, Green, and Orange? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a website pull those colors off.
As easy as it sounds, choosing a color palette when designing a website was probably one of the hardest things at the beginning of my career (which wasn’t that long ago I might add). This is a very important part of the design process, because it can make or break the site all together.
I don’t agree with scrivs that the nav should “blend with the site” but maybe I’m taking what he’s saying out of context. I think the Nav should be very obvious and it shouldn’t never blend in with the website. Maybe a better phrase would of been “flow with the website?” Though, they look like waves so I guess it already flows.
Ah you know what I mean, the nav should be clear and recognizable, not blend in.
@ Javier
I would hope since they asked for the review of their website that they would be good sports about it. It would be awfully rude if they asked for it and then got defensive about it.
I could see them get defensive if Scrivs decided to review their website all on his own without their knowledge prior to the review.
By Chris Griffin on January 28, 2006 3:50 am
Well, at least you guys at ClickCaster are open to strong opinions. :) You’ll go far with that.
I will try not to comment on anything that’s already been beaten to death.
For starters, consider reading Powazek’s article on footers:
http://www.powazek.com/2005/09/000540.html
I believe Scrivs linked to that recently, and it says it all. Don’t let the bottom exist just because, or contain secondary navigation only to “complete” the page. Use that space, use it well.
The main content area almost looks like a puzzle. There are four pieces, almost grid like, and it seems like you have tried to break things up with bubbles and whatnot. It’s like you tried to think outside of the grid, but ended up making a grid anyway. This entire strategy needs to be rethought.
Determine what needs to be said first and foremost, and make that the first item on the page. Don’t let anything else compete with it. This will require a navigation adjustment, as it is very overpowering.
37signals(.com) has a habit of using large text to grab the attention of newcomers. Since many of your audience are newcomers to your service (you are competing with Odeo, no?), you might want to consider a similar strategy.
Remember to use color to your advantage. Warm colors jump out, while cool colors fall into the background.
Find a way to merge clickcasts and podcasts, perhaps by just writing “clickcast” and “podcast” under the associated thumbnails. Another strategy would be to have four or five clickcasts just like they are now, with six or eight podcasts showing smaller thumbnails directly below.
Finally, once I click on a podcast, I do not like what I see. I end up with three additional scrollbars: two vertical, one (gasp!) horizontal. I see exactly why this is done, but there has to be a better solution to this overload. While you’re at it, you might want to improve the look and usability of the media player. It’s a little tedious; there are too many options with small buttons.
If you run out of ideas, just hire Rundle and he will fix you up nice. :) Good luck.
By Bradley on January 28, 2006 5:59 am
I agree with all that has been said and would also add that when I click “About” I am seriously put off by those caricatures. They seem to me very unfriendly and unprofessional and contribute to my lack of confidance in the site.
Also … did a guy try to talk to me when I went to one of the pages? I had my volume turned up and it was quite jarring. I immediately hit the back button to avoid the “noise.” I’m not a big fan of unsolicited music or speech on the web - is that just me? (BTW, it didn’t happen again when I went back so either it only plays the first time, which is an improvement, or I am hallucinating about it ever being there in the first place, which is possible.) ;o)
By Mani Sheriar on January 28, 2006 12:31 pm
My inital thought: What is the difference between a clickcast and a podcast? There appears to me to be no difference at all, even after I’ve browsed the site for a while. Is there a difference?
From the front page, the wavey cloud at the top entitled “ClickCaster” links right back to the page you’re on - just with a slightly different URL. Confusing!
Also on a similar point, I would expect the “Get” link to go to a signup page, as in “get the service” not “get some podcasts”.
One final point, why are some ClickCasts listed when they contain no content? For example, go the Most Popular (sidepoint: try finding that link on the homepage) and then select the ClickCast entitled “mow” (around 15th item down). There are lots like this.
HTH!
By Bon on January 29, 2006 11:12 am
Great initial effort but I notice the following issues with the site:
1. Navigation
I agree with everyone else, the navigation is too sporadic and confusing. Odeo does a great job at presenting a short concise navigation that gets to the point.
2. Homepage copy
When you first get to the site it isn’t extremely clear exactly what it does. Only when you eventually move your eyes to the bottom right of the homepage is when you see a somewhat clear message of the purpose behind the site.
3. Space
Too much space is being used for little to no reason. If excessive “whitespace” is going to be used make sure the content and imagery is clear and organized.
4. Branding
I agree with others in the comments, it says clickcast and clickcasts everywhere in the content but the domain is clickcaster, after reading the content I forgot the name was clickcaster and immediately had clickcast stuck in my head. I would refer to recordings as podcasts (like odeo does) that way you don’t confuse the visitor with new terms for already named and established technology.
Kudos for having the guts to take constructive criticism, most companies would be too afraid. You make the suggested changes from these comments and your golden because I guarantee you there won’t be a pickier crowd anywhere else.
By Shaun Shull on January 30, 2006 10:54 pm
Upon looking at it again, I noticed that the thumbnail images for the featured podcasts are very ugly… I guess most of them aren’t square and are not the resolution at which they are displayed. Something should be done to standardize the thumbnail size or better handle the thumbnails.
Also the RSS feeds that are displayed on the site have a lot of character codes in them, they start with # and are usually followed with something like 8210;. A techie like me knows what those mean but most users will just be really annoyed.
By Christian Montoya on January 31, 2006 12:16 am
I found one serious problem I thought I would mention:
iTunes, and I possibly Odeo too, require audio to be at 48,000Hz sampling rate (same as DVD). So many podcasters export their MP3s with that setting. Your audio player is playing back these audio files at a slower rate: 44,100Hz (same as CD).
What this does is alter peoples’ voices to sound really low. I first noticed this by clicking on the Inside The Net podcast and hearing Leo Laporte sound more like Isaac Hayes.
I know that the Diggnation guys had the same problem when they tried to add their podcast to Odeo. I believe they just started making 48KHz audio, but you probably can’t require people to do that.
There is no real “standard” that forces anyone to use 44.1KHz versus 48KHz MP3s. The best case scenario would be for your Flash app to differentiate between the two, and playback either format properly.
I’m not sure what the technical solution is behind the scenes, but the audio is your business, and I would try to get this one right. :)
Again, best of luck to you.
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