Home Page Impact:
First
impressions are a little mixed. Although this is clearly a tennis
website, the design aesthetics are more akin to a video gaming
website. The gun metal effect navigation panel and masthead
combined with a black background does not automatically suggest
international tennis.
Clarity / Navigation:
Navigation is positioned comfortably on
the left of the page. However, the navigation options are hard to
read because the condensed capitalised magenta text on the black
background does not provide sufficient contrast to make it clear
and visible to all users.
Moving the mouse over the navigation causes pop-out secondary
sub navigation to appear suddenly. Some precise mousing is
required here in order to keep the sub menu open and hit the right
link. When using this type of animated navigation a visual clue
should be used to communicate that the menu item has further
underlying sub navigation.
By contrast, elsewhere hypertext links use the standard
underline and can be easily identified despite the use of a very
small font size (what does this mean?).
News:
The News Archive page displays a very long scrolling list
of approximately one hundred news headlines covering the last two
months. Users often abandon pages like this because they don't
allow them to refine their search. A more usable approach would be
if the News Headlines were grouped and navigated by date
parameters i.e. July 12-18 | July 19-25.
No 'Print Friendly' or 'Email a Friend' features were
available. Using the browser 'Print Preview' option printed off a
news article satisfactorily without the black background but with
web page remnants i.e. navigation and other graphical elements.
Search feature:
The site features a limited player search
function titled 'Find Player'. The input field is far too small
and only allows nine characters to be typed in before scrolling
begins. This field should be much wider given the character length
of some eastern European players' names.
The search action button 'Go' is so small it is no longer
legible. The following search result page can be long if searching
by Christian name instead of family name. Although a useful A-Z
Player listing page can be accessed this option only appears if no
result is found.
Shopping:
The shopping feature 'Player Gear' appears in the sub
menu of 'Players'. This is not an immediately obvious place to
find a link to the shop and should appear in the primary
navigation if it is to be found easily by many users. The 'Player
Gear' page features a list of players with associated products.
Each product has a hyperlink (Order Now) placed opposite, it would
be more helpful to make the product name the hyperlink. Selecting
an 'Order Now' link launches a second browser window. This new
browser window features the selected product within a new
e-commerce partner's web site 'tennis-warehouse.com'. The current
functionality tends to happen unexpectedly and without warning,
this can be disconcerting for users. More could be done to
introduce the commerce partner earlier and to communicate where
the product links will take the user so helping to maintain a more
seamless user experience.
Video/Audio:
The site features a multimedia section but this is
disappointingly limited to just two items of video titled WTA Tour
Theatre. It is not clear how often new video is produced and made
available. The video players available are Real Media and Windows
Media. Both functioned seamlessly within the web page with a clear
picture and audio, and without any problems on a broadband
connection. However, when reviewed only the Real Media download
video option worked. The Windows Media Player option referenced a
web page that was unavailable.
Overall:
In conclusion, the website has a rather unusual design
that sometimes impacts the clarity of both content and navigation.
To an extent the choice of colours and the resulting reduced
contrast creates a further lack of visual clarity. Page titles are
not clear due to the drop shadow treatment.
The WTA Tour site is fairly easy to navigate despite the
sometimes tricky pop-out navigation and the lack of clarity due to
the graphical effects used. Some menu options have been repeated
i.e. Press Releases. This suggests that some rationalisation is
required in order to simplify the navigation structure.
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