HUGE Useablilty Questions

[adamx8]

Well I hope I have the right section. I am at a serious crossroads that I need some serious counseling on. My website www.militarychallengecoin.net is my baby. I am Air Force so I love to use this site to give back to the community and also make a little money to pay for my server. Anyway These are the current specs of what I am using:

Joomla 1.0.11
CB 1.0.2
phpBB2 2.0.19 (14 mods) with Bridge to CB
Virtuemart 1.0.9
Missus
Mamblog

This is great and I have learned a lot doing this. However I hate that I have so many things integrated in becuase of upgrades, problems with logins, spam registries. I am trying to run a store and huge community all in one. I think I am failing though.

I do this all by myself and I need others inputs on this. I want to get something better, I want something smoother without sacrificing all the items in my store, all articles I have written, and all the users I have registered. I am trying to wait for Joomla 1.5 stable, phpBB3, and the upgraded Virtue mart to make things easier as far as DB upgrades.

My point to this long post is asking you...how can I get more friendly useablilty, better looking, and overall a site that just rocks to give the guys in the field and collecting something to be hooked on? I want to be #1 and I am not talking about SERPS (I am almost there now).

[NadineTurner]

Hi, there's a couple of things about your website usability that I think could be causing problems:

1) Too much text - you should look at halving it at least. Users only skim read so you need to make it easy for them. It needs to be cut right down as it's just off putting.

2) Overall your website has a very "busy" look, you need more white space to make the important features stand out.

3) Navigation headings are unclear - are "coins" and "custom coins" the same thing - if so, why do they have different names?

4) Spelling! It's such an easy thing to fix but looks so unprofessional e.g. "beast" on home page under Q&A should read "best".


Sorry to sound negative, I do like the fact that you have images of items you're selling immediately visible, but I think there's a lot you could do to improve your site,

hope this helps
Nadine

[adamx8]

Thanks Nadine, I don't mind the criticism...that's why I asked. Spelling is my worst enemy. I am going to hire someone to sit down and make my copy better and trim the fat and help me spell better. I fixed the nav. As for everything else, I worked 20 hours this weekend on it and I trimmed a lot off. It was to much before, now I am trying to find away to deal will combining information with a store. Glad you looked and posted some notes!

Adam

[NadineTurner]

Hi Adam, that looks much better! Although I still think you could stand to lose a lot of the text in your "Welcome to " section...or at least use sub-headings to break it up - prob a good idea to change the date from 2004 as well.

[adamx8]

Thanks again Nadine! I took you up on both suggestions and took care of them. Your very helpful and I thank you for that.