Goodman & Company
URL: www.goodmanco.com
| Substance | 7 |
| Team competence & commitment | 6 |
| Differentiation | 4 |
| Reasons to return | 8 |
| TOTAL CONTENT SCORE (40 points possible) | 25 |
| Navigation & usability | 9 |
| Attractiveness | 8 |
| Personalization & personality | 8 |
| TOTAL APPEAL SCORE (30 points possible) | 25 |
| TOTAL INTERACTION SCORE (10 points possible) | 9 |
| OVERALL SCORE (80 possible) | 59 |
Comments:
The Goodman Co. homepage is traditional. It's actually been changed since we took our "snapshot" above. Now the page requires scrolling to see its entirety. Not optimal for a homepage. The previous design, above, was more artistic, too. It appears the change was made to allow for a full listing of the firm's services and industries which is nice to have at the ready, but a redesign of the page would be best to more artfully accomodate the links.
It's nice to see client and employee log-in areas. A sitemap would be very helpful, though, as the site is fairly large and seems complex.
The photos depicting each office location are appealing but they flash by too quickly causing mild vertigo! The prominent “How may we serve you?” stands out and suggests a client-focused firm. A further look doesn't show this message is conveyed heavily throughout the site, though.
It's a plus that prominent news, events, and client resources are on the homepage. Makes it easy for visitors to see why they would want to come back again, draws attention to current activities to help promote them, and search engines definitely favor sites that change often.
Although the overall design is somewhat attractive, the black background with blue and white text is very tiring on the eyes. Experience shows us that elderly readers (and those of us who stare at screens, papers and books all day) really have trouble with that contrast – a large part of the reason that the trend in web has reverted to white backgrounds. We'd recommend reworking the color scheme to make it more pleasant for the site's readers. The HR Division pages have a different look and feel–they're own brand–which is much easier on the reader's eyes.
Inside the site, the photos on each page are beautiful, but don’t always relate to the page content. It's best when images are relevant to the content. Some of the images are rather cliché such as the handshake and the hands typing at the keyboard.
Those interested can download firm brochures. We're sure they're proud of them, but these graphic intensive files are not exactly web-friendly. Again, the white writing with black background is hard on the eyes, especially online. Most importantly, be sure to warn that the link is to a graphic intensive PDF file. Never a pleasant surprise to learn you'll be waiting for a download whether you wanted to or not.
Most content on the service and industry pages is well done. Municipal and government entities pages are extremely short. All pages could benefit from being modeled after the qualified assets page which specifically spells out “what does this mean for your company.”
Newsletters pertinent to a service or industry are linked directly from those pages and readers can immediately join the mailing lists. Construction, healthcare and real estate all point to more pretty brochures (again, black on white), but they take too long to load–again, without adequate warning. As we mention above, do be sure to warn that the link is a large PDF.
Contacts for each industry and service are on each page, but the links shown directly initiate an e-mail (without warning!) instead of linking to a bio which is more common. Readers can only get to the bios from the Our Professionals link. We find readers appreciate the ability to access bios directly from the industry and service pages to which they relate.
The Our Professionals page offers search by name functionality. But what if we want to find people by location? Or by specialty? They've thought of it too because we found a statement under the search function that says "Search feature on Service and Practice/Industry Specialty under construction."
Bios are average and are offered in a print-friendly format though, oddly, they are offered as Word downloads rather than PDF which is the preferred format. Bios only appear for partners, not the rest of the team, and photos are inconsistent in style.
Info Center is cool. It's apparent that an outside service is used to populate this, but it is done pretty seamlessly until one visits the tax tips link (Taxes QuickGuide) that opens off-site. It's a bummer that the event calendar appears to be empty for 2006 so we went backward to 2005 and found a lot of due dates. Pretty neat idea but the navigation leaves something to be desired.
The career area could be used more effectively as a recruiting tool. Current job openings is extremely well done with access to send your resume to them directly or even e-mail a friend with the information. We suggest more information on benefits to working at Goodman Co. Potential employees, like clients, want to know the benefits of working for and with you.
GoodCo U is a nice touch and the on-going training provided is a great benefit. It does seem that retaining good employees is important to Goodman. We also like that there's an employee log-in area. Wonder what's in there...?
Not a bad site at all, but honestly, we didn't spend as much time reading content as we would have if it didn't hurt our eyes to do so. The one thing we'd definitely change is the white or blue on black text.
