Sitecritic.net Website Reviews – How can your website be improved?

Form

The main page of the website is unique but is organised well. It consists of a main banner and paragraph and underneath are two columns, the left column with a list of location names to click on and the right column containing a clickable map. At the bottom of the page are text links to “London Life”, “Privacy Policy” etc. The maps on the website are triumphant feats of illustration (even if they are from Google) and are very helpful to the viewer and as an added bonus, they resize when the browser window does too. A minimap also helps to pinpoint the region. There is a key to go with the map showing offices, railways and so on, but since the key contains ticked circles instead of representative symbols I found it confusing.

Colours for the website are orange, grey, blue, black and green and are consistent with the logo. London Office Space’s logo is modern, simple and stylish, the only issue being the words “Office Space” which do not sit aesthetically under the word “London”. Possibly flattening a font like Arial Black as a tagline would work better. I thought the colours represented the type of business well and looked professional. The layout of the pages is neatly organised and pages are consistent with the two column design with contact details up the top. I liked the large phone number in orange at the top as it’s so obvious no customers can fail to use it if needed.

The colours in the top and bottom of the main page wrappers are an interesting idea too – thin multicoloured bars adding to the colour scheme. Images within the individual locations are sharp, bright and don’t look too doctored (which is normally the case with real estate). These pictures look realistic but well-taken. Each serviced office has a description, rating and buttons to schedule viewing, request price or add to shortlist.

Function

It is easy to navigate London Office Space, especially as there are two ways to navigate on many pages (text links and clickable map). Since the contact details are at the top and an arrowed destination list is shown, viewers can not get lost and should not have trouble finding what they are looking for. This is an example of a straight forward website.

If you live in central london, have a look at Central London Offices and if you live in outer london, have a look at Offices in Outer London. You can see that searching for offices is very easy by clicking on the balloons in the map. Coding is php using javascript and CSS as well. Loading times are a bit slow (even on an ADSL connection) – I believe this may be due to the map loading times. That are pros and cons of using Google Maps and loading time is one of the cons.

Conclusion

This website needs faster loading times, otherwise traffic might go elsewhere and regular customers might get frustrated. Maybe with caching or the advance of internet connection, loading time can be improved? Other than that, the site adequately meets customer needs and provides a huge range of offices to choose from in UK. With the same technology, it is likely that the company can extend their services to include other countries as well.

Londonofficespace.com is an example of a site that incorporates the latest open source technology into their services and is a role model for many other directory sites. The design in particular is efficient, simple and easy to navigate. Well done!

fig 1. Logo & Thin Colour Bar

fig 2. Each office has ratings etc

fig 3. Key with ticked items