The website http://www.mbldesigns.com/chicken_aprons.html sells saddles or aprons for chickens, designed by Marion LoPrinzi.
The woman who runs the site posted a message stating her inability to continue sewing chicken saddles at the time, she repeats this message from the top of the page, at the section for payments; at the end of the page however she still has a link to her email to place orders. For the most part the pictures the site uses relate to the product being sold, however the picture could be better in quality, but some pictures see out of place, like the dogs on the doggie treat page.
The structure of the site is not helpful to the user. Information is not easily accessible. On the tabs called “chickens”, “ducks”, “guineas” they say that they sell these animals, but do not give any prices. Some pages are presented in a table form, like the home decor tab, while ones like doggie treats are constant text and pictures down the entire page. It is difficult to tell when the site goes from a business site to a page about her own personal dogs, like on the doggie treat page.
The website is presented in 1st person, which is odd for a business site.
The design of the website is extremely lacking. The main menu bar includes tabs on chicken saddles, doggie treats, quits, egg art, and several other things, but each category does not have its own submenu bar. On the chicken saddle page you have to scroll down the entire page to navigate under the saddle tab. The general visual design of the site is almost non-existent. Text and pictures are not aligned in any specific way, fonts sizes are differing, which should be helpful to determine new sections of the page, but spacing does not allow that to happen. The pictures on the site are not good quality and do not do much to sell the product.
The functionality could be better, since so many graphics need to upload on one page; it takes some time for all the pictures to load. Some times not all the graphic would load on the page as I explored the site. All the links seem to work.
The site asks for audience engagement, but does not make it easily to do. She asks for pictures to be sent in to her by email, but you have to go searching the page for her email address. The site does not support user profiles, so there is nowhere for costumers to say their thoughts, unless they go through the site designer. There are no links to any related social media sites.
On the home page there is a link to the chicken saddle page even though there is a link in the menu bar right above it. The link http://www.ex-battery-hens.com about abused chickens opens up another badly designed site. Once people have sent her pictures she posts who sent them, it seems like she was trying to link to their sites, but links were not created.
tyler karin. 