Congratulations! This is a free usability review from UsabilityInstitute.com. "Usability" refers to how easy and effective it is to use a Web site. Although it involves how a site looks (graphic artwork), it is primarily concerned with how a site works, what you click on, what happens, and whether the site does its job. Perhaps this review is all you need to improve your site. If that's the case, great. Please mention UsabilityInstitute.com if you talk with others who need help with their site.

The following three sections provide a general analysis of your website from a relatively quick review. Although Web design is still perceived as a highly creative endeavor, there are many aspects of it that call for standardization and compliance with widely established conventions. Implementing even a few of the ideas below can really improve a site.

	Part 1: Content Basics
			This first section is intended for typical public web sites (for products and corporate information), but also applies for the most part to intranets and software applications that run in a browser. We've been advocating many of these ideas—in the context of general software—since our 1997 book, Computers Stink, but they've been beautifully enumerated for WWW purposes in Steve Krug's book, "Don't Make Me Think."
			Click for explanation		Hover for explanation	Comments
		1.	Logo in top left, linked to home		The support pages are a site to themself, so they don't link back, but that's their choice.
		2.	Tagline		"USB temp alert with notif's"... everyone should do it so easily!
		3.	Welcome blurb		"... know about critical temperature changes" and the "reasons to buy" basically do it.
		4.	Plain wording		The Learn More page has a great, straightforward explanation.
		5.	No 'happy talk'		I didn't see 'leveraging our core competencies" anywhere.
		6.	Concise wording
		7.	Visited pages are distinguished by link color-coding		This might be an area for slight improvement. The site has a very strong color scheme and the links are colored to support it. Although there are not a large number of pages, the search results do start to show a number of products (weathergoose?)... and knowing which ones were visited might help, but only a little since the names are very distinctive. I'm not sure if I'd want to go to blue/purple if I were the designer... maybe my idea of using black-underlined for visited links would work. They can still use green for unvisited, to match the color scheme.
		8.	"Utilities" are easy to find		Nice touch, too... status of cart right on every page: "(Your shopping cart contains 1 item priced at $129.99)." Oops... later I noticed "Help" at the bottom... so there's some global navigation just at the bottom. This actually is understandable in that it unclutters the product emphasis at the top, but it is atypical, so worth more study.
		9.	Search on all pages, with box and button		Hmmm. The site starts off appearing extremely simple... seemingly one product. But clicking "Browse for more...." brings up a page formatted as search results. Not sure but looks like the label and presentation should present that page as "Browse All Products" since there is no "Search Criteria" page or box. You could say that the site doesn't need a Search box/facility, but users don't know there are only 12 pages... they still might value searching if only to prove that "thermocouples" are not part of the product line.
		10.	"You Are Here" indicator		The initial impression is that this would be unnecessary, but the bottom links indicate that there is more to the site than initially meets the eye.
		11.	Breadcrumbs' as links		There's actually some breadcrumbs ("Home > Accessories > ") but I'm not sure they're worth it since there's not much depth.

Do your hands ache after a day at the keyboard??? Now in its 4th printing.
This review sponsored by RSIRescue.com ...

Part 2: Visual Design: Fonts, Colors, Layout, Basic Interaction Design, and Accessibility
As we read in a graphic artist's ad, "Technology makes it work but art makes it sell," and you should take heed. We're not graphic artists here at Uinst, but we know good art when we see it and the common denominators that separate good pages from bad are clear. Look at the top sites and you'll see they spell out the following criteria.
	Click for explanation		Hover for explanation	Comments
1.	Sans-serif fonts
2.	Appropriate background color
3.	Appropriate color hues
4.	Visual representation of the information hierarchy		There's no sense of being on a main page or repeating/sibling type pages such as products.
5.	Conservative quantity of colors
6.	Text sizes are "relative"	Obsolete item.	Browsers have changed so much, this is a moot point... I think.
7.	Anti-aliased graphics
8.	Graphics' file size doesn't slow navigation
9.	"Alt tags" used well		I suppose some folks could use them on the product photos.
10.	Links don't just say "Click Here"
11.	A style sheet (CSS) is used	Obsolete item.	Browsers have changed so much, this is a moot point... I think.

If you've made it this far, I have a free gift for the first 100 visitors who reply. If you know anyone who's learning to read, email me and I'll send you a free copy of a kid's book I wrote. Please include "Poopy Phonics" in the subject line so I have a chance of recovering it if it goes to my spam folder. For smart mouths everywhere, the book is PoopyPhonics(.com). No strings attached, but if you like it, consider posting a review to Amazon.com. —Thanks, Jack

On Amazon

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Part 3: Genuine Value: Useful Content & Critical Interaction Design
And now for the hard part. If all of good Web design were as clear-cut as parts 1 & 2, above, you wouldn't need much judgment and there would be a lot more good sites. But the easier the decisions are, the less significant the thinking and effort behind them... and the easier it would be to provide useful content. This section is where you make or break your rapport with the visitor. If you provide real value and give folks enough tools to get to it, they will push past the basic omissions and ignore even the most amateurish art.
	Click for explanation		Hover for explanation	Comments
1.	Questions are answered
2.	Search results get the job done
3.	Effective 'click tree'		The product linking is an area for more experimenting.
4.	Conceptual flow from upper left to lower right
5.	Simple, outline-like site map
6.	Primary navigation is obvious		Conventional wisdom, applied with a blunt instrument would say that the primary nav is at the bottom and shouldn't be, but for a site with one flagship product, the "Purchase" and "Learn More" links are equal candidates.
7.	Secondary navigation is obvious
8.	Contact information easily accessible		Would it help to unclutter the home page by making a Contact page?
9.	Links are clear
10.	Intro panel or animation not excessive
11.	Graphics used only for core message

Summation & Next Steps

Overall Rating: Strives / Survives / Thrives

Summary and Recommendations:

Great site that supports its main product with clean, professional art and does the basics very well. Navigation among product details is the main area for improvement. I did not study the shopping cart.

1. Make a conventional site map.
2. Reconsider global navigation possibly at the top.
3. Look at whether the product navigation and page names could be more consistent.
4. Make the visited links the same color as the body text (rather than standard purple which would fight the color scheme).

Hope this helps and let me know what you think,
Jack Bellis, UsabilityInstitute.com