Need critique of home page designs

[ag5t]

I maintain the health department section of a city government web site. Recently I received a critique from the administration on the pages I maintain. Several of the suggestions concerned the home page design. I will summarize the suggestions:
• current home page is jumbled up with links and pictures and menu to different pages is on scrolling sidebar (too confusing?)
• make home page simple, put menu on home page to make clear the types of information available
• orient visitor to types of services and information provided on site and general contact information
• welcome message and blurb about the department's services
• advertise 1 or 2 current community programs (AIDS campaigns, etc)
• one-sentence description for each of the links

Note: I do not control the top bar of information across the pages or the one at the bottom - those are citywide items for all web pages. I do have some control over the left side scrollbar as far as internal links are concerned.

Here is the URL to the current home page:

http://www.houstontx.gov/health/index.html

Here is the URL to a page I designed to try and fit the above specs better.

http://www.houstontx.gov/health/index2.html

It is a lot longer and has less pictures, but maybe that is better? Anyway, I'll appreciate any constructive criticism on this. I've also been looking at other government web sites to see how their health departments' home pages look. I would guess that in government web pages people want information quickly, not fancy graphics or photos. Thanks.
Marty

 

[Foamcow]

The page fails really badly in Firefox I'm afraid.

All the content is pushed down below the bottom of the left side bar.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r

 

[Foamcow]

I also meant to say... (damn submit!)...

Can you really do nothing about the scrolling areas in the sidebar. That is pretty bad from a usability perspective.

Although I will grant you that there is alot of information to get in there so it's going to be a long sidebar. I think having a really long bar is much better than the scrolling ones.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r

 

[jazz88]

The same thing (content pushed way down) happens on Mac/Safari. It loads forever (and I'm on DSL) on Safari and FF.
In my opinion the scrolling of the side menu doesn't look good.
The chart next to health info. Why put it there at all ? I can't read it and I can't click on it even if I wanted to read it. 3 images that supposedly illustrate the services are poor quality. They do not add to the content or make the page look more beautiful.

 

[TheConeHead]

yeah - I agree ... better to scroll the whole page than to have those small crolling windows where the content is not easily viewable - especially sinse you seem to have the room on the new page...

 

[ChrisHunt]

I think there's way too much information crammed onto that page. There are so many links to take in, that it just becomes unreadable.

You need to trim down that sidebar so that it no longer scrolls. I suggest you create intermediate pages for

Health Information
Human Services
Health Services
Animal Services
Records and Certifications

and then only link to the detailed pages ("Bioterrorism" etc.) from there. You can temporarily link directly to particular detail pages that are relevant to current conditions - the "beat the heat" pages, for example. Some kind of automatic "today's top ten pages", based on server logs would be cool too.

If you want to keep a "list of everything in one place page", call it a site map and link to it from the Home Page for those that want it. Home Page = Site Map = much too busy!



-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[Foamcow]

I agree.. waaay to meny links on the homepage.

One of your "tasks" was to "orient visitor to types of services and information provided on site and general contact information"

Having so many links doesn't help.
Is there a way you can segment users with a few links and present only the relavent ones on the next page?

Segmenting users into their areas of interest as early as possible can be a good thing.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r