Website Critique

The Crit Pit
#1

Hi everyone!

Please review my works website! I’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions on how to improve it.
[https://www.axiseurope.com/]

Thank you in advance!

Sarah

#2

The orange font color isn’t very readable against different backgrounds, and it’s not the best color to show professionalism.

I personally feel the home page is way too long. It goes and goes and goes, with most of the tabs just going to different parts of the home page. Also there’s a lot of irrelevant content. It’s a lot of work to read.

I’d clarify links and titles to explain the content. For example, I clicked on “Vacancies” and landed on a page with open jobs, but I had to scroll a few to figure that out. I thought that “vacancies” meant housing, so that was unclear. Although in Britain, this may refer to jobs, not housing.

Overall, I’d say it’s a good start. But it needs trimming, proofing, some color and word changes, and organizing.

You should read the book, “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It’s a GREAT book.
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758

#3

In addition to DocPixels comments above, I’ll add the following:

Page Structure:

  • You’ve gone for a single page design, and then set up some links within your navigation to jump to specific anchor links on the page. This is not a good idea for several reasons.
  • Firstly it makes your page a lot longer than it needs to be.
  • Secondly, it makes it difficult to track how many visitors visit each section, or how many pages users visit. This is much easier to do when all your content lives on different pages.
  • Some links jump to anchors on the homepage, and some links to specific pages (like Projects and Vacancies). This inconsistency is confusing.

Navigation:

  • The sector navigation at the very top is very large, but also a bit over designed.
  • Your primary navigation (underneath the sector navigation) is completely drowned out and doesn’t stand out enough, either in terms of design emphasis or visual hierarchy.
  • The sector navigation also repeats the items within the ‘Projects’ dropdown in the primary navigation immediately below it, as well as content on the page itself. This duplication is unnecessary and could confuse people.
  • When I click through to a project details page, many elements of the navigation disappear. The navigation should always work consistently, regardless of where I am in the site. Not all your visitors will arrive via your homepage.

Search:

  • When I click the search icon, it overlays the search field on top of the navigation, but I have no way of reversing this. I have to reload the page to see the navigation again.
  • You could try showing the search field rather than hiding it behind an icon. You have enough space in the navigation and it saves desktop users an extra click.

Latest projects carousel

  • When I click on one of the tabs, I am automatically scrolled down. This is annoying and makes it difficult to browse, as I have to scroll back up again to select a different category.
  • Once I’ve selected a tab, and then want to scroll to the next page of projects, it loads in with an extremely slow animation. This should be sped up considerably.

Corporate Social Responsibility

  • This is almost an entire page’s worth of content in itself. I wouldn’t show it on the homepage in its entirety.
  • Instead you could just link to it and show the detail on a separate page.

About Axis Europe

  • Same as the point above - you don’t need this much detail on the homepage.
  • Move this content to a deeper page instead.
  • The illustrations for each of the Axis values have text that explains what each one is, but they only appear on hover. You’d probably be better off pulling this out and placing them next to each illustration, otherwise people might miss it.
  • None of the illustrations have alt text defined in the HTML. This is poor for accessibility, as screen readers won’t be able to tell what these images are.

Statistics

  • This content is nice, but it’s lost at the bottom.
  • I’d place it closer to the top as it explains a lot about who you are without using too much space.
2 Likes
#4

Agreed on the above points especially Nav functionalities. Aesthetically speaking it is very harsh on the eyes.

And as for Accessibility … there are links without text, Images without alts, in total about 70 errors and about 80 alerts.

#5

Thank you very much for your comments!

#6

Thank you very much, very helpful!

#7

Thank you, the accessibility definitely needs work!

#8