Clutter clutter clutter, how to make your website user friendly

[BaneStar]

I'm a web designer by training, but ESL teacher in Moscow now,

I honestly do not want to send my students to your website, because, quite frankly, I'm embarrassed about your layout.

I have linked to your tests and my students have thought themselves stupid for their initial inability to find how to click the answers, gets results, I took a look and I have to agree.. is this a test or an advertisement or a review or something abstract.

I clicked the first answer, and could not see another question, I saw a 'left' and 'right' button and figured.. hmm, ok.. this must be the next question, FAIL! it went to the next test. Where WAS the next question.. oh wait.. I needed to scroll down to find it.. no automatic tabbing to the next question no obvious follow-on.. the advertisement (which is normally placed at the END of the body) showed me that I was done on this page.

So.. in an effort to send this to the owners of the page, as a ' hey by the way, 90% of people wont tell you this, they'll just navigate away from your site, here's a simpler technique' I wanted to find the link to 'contact webmaster' or something..

but on the main page. I find myself looking and looking through links and junk and all sorts of stuff.. none of it relevant, most of it junk or links that should not be anywhere NEAR the home page. Alot of links, more and more and more.. my brain started to shut down..

my GAWD, who is running this site? I kept saying to myself.

I hate to be 'that guy' who complains about things, without giving some constructive advice.. so..

how to follow some basic rules of human web interaction:

1. No page should contain anything more than 7-10 links.. the human brain copes best with 8 (fingers) to 10 (including thumbs)

2. Make some space.. nice font sizes, clear visual aids to understand what section your in. colour coding or icons, n separate pages.. not the main home page.

3. Don't let adverts look like part of your page.. google links uses Blue Links & Black text.. so if you include them, don't use their fonts or colours. people will accidentally go there when they think its part of your site, Or they'll become annoyed at you for 'tricking them' to going to other sites, Or they'll ignore your links because they might be adverts to something they don't want.

If you want to ignore everything I advice, thats cool, I just spent 10 minutes writing this to give someone in charge a little knowledge on how most successful sites do this. If you don't agree fine.. but check your stats.. how many new IP visits stay and return later, 10%? 5%? if your lucky.. for a information site that should be closer to 50% you either have what google said you would have, or someone else has it better than you.

Hope this helps..

[Torsten]

You are absolutely right with everything you say here and we are going to reconstruct the site completely. This is a process that will take a considerable amount of time and needs a lot of planning. We have already started by rebuilding our shop which is now much easier to navigate use. Thank you very much for taking the time and making the effort to share you feedback and suggestions with us. Your input is very valuable and I hope you continue using our forum.

Best regards,
Torsten

TOEIC listening, photographs: Winter wonderland