Classmate Testing

The Target Market

The goal of this website is to increase awareness of the Saturday Afternoon Club, its history, and its charitable endeavors. To fund its activities the club rents its clubhouse. As new people and businesses come into the county, the Club finds that the yellow pages and word-of-mouth are not sufficient, and this website is intended to increase its income via better exposure to the public.

Our Respondents

All nine classmates who were asked to test our site responded, giving us a very good range of feedback. The teams for Legal Aid (including Jerilynn Johnson and Al Shanto), Sonoma Philharmonic (including Jerry Adamson, Stephen Rodier, Gloria Batemon and Mark Foote), and UASA (Rose Carlson, Anna Wernicke and Dusty Dwyer) participated in this test. Thanks, classmates!

Testing Conditions

Our site was tested under a variety of conditions:

Desktop PC with 12", 256-color monitor, Vista OS, Firefox browser with a DSL connection
PC with 14", 1024x769px color monitor, Windows XP OS, Firefox browser and DSL connection
Mac with 20", 1680x1050px color monitor, OSX 10.4 OS, Firefox on DSL
PC with color monitor, Windows OS, Internet Explorer 7 on a DSL hookup
PC with 17" color monitor, Vista OS, Firefox browser on a 512k satellite connection
Sony laptop with 15" color monitor, Vista OS, using IE7 on a cable connection
PC with 17", 1024x769px color monitor, XP OS, using IE7 with a cable modem hookup
and two classmates used a PC with a 1680x1050px color monitor, Vista OS, Firefox browser over a cable connection

Survey Questions

In your opinion, what is the overall tone and feel of the site?

Very warm- I like the ever changing graphic on the Home page.
Two different styles of design, both good, but somewhat conflicting.
Little old lady land
I thought it is elegant and welcoming
Simple, conservative, straightforward.
Very pleasant, very laid-back.
Calm, cool, fonts are fun
The colors and type had a soothing feel that was totally agreeable with the tone of the Saturday Afternoon Club.
The tone is set by the colors. I get a serene feelings when I see the pastel colors.

What is the site about?

To provide women in Sonoma County area with cultural, educational, social fellowship and philanthropic opportunities.
Increasing awareness of the Club and its activities. Promoting the facilites in order to rent them out. This is not immediately obvious.
A community service and social club that provides activities for women.
Program/club for women in Sonoma County
The Saturday Afternoon Club, its history, its charitable endeavors, and the promotion of the rental of the organization's facilities to raise money.
The Saturday Afternoon Club and their fine facility for events, which is for rent
The history of the club, the facilities you can rent from them, and general info about the club
I think it was describing events and activities that go on in the Saturday Afternoon Club along with ways to share their building for other events.
The site is about people getting together for activities in a quiet environment.

What was your first impression of the opening screen?

Warm, welcoming
I liked the opening screen, but the styles of design are conflicting. One side is formal with heavier warmer colors and a formal decorative font. The other is light and contemporary with green and white and informal handwritten font. Both stles are good, but compete. The first sentence is incomplete. There should be a very nice image of the building. The images do not make me want to rent the facilities.
Very nice inviting and peaceful, like a greeting card.
I like the background images, very nice job
That the organization is honest, and caring. The page design and the slideshow portrays this.
I like the colors, layout, and script; less fond of the constantly changing slide show
Nice colors and fonts, on the simple side, but that's good since it looks like older people are the ones who will be viewing the site.
I don't think I would have used a photo gallery on the front page as it takes away from what you are trying to show on that page. For me it gets too confusing. Am I to watch the slide show or read the information? But I do see a lot of sites starting out with this type of splash screen. It probably is a personal preference.
That this was a layed back environment that would appeal to people looking for a place to get together. It definitely displayed a more mature generation.

Where did you first click?

About
About
Facilities, I go by the building often and wonder what is in it.
About and then History
About page.
I read the home page, then worked down the links
Facilities - interested to see facilities for a possible future event
I went in order, so I went to the About Us page.
On the home page

Did you find the site easy to navigate?

yes
yes
Yes
yes, very
On the Facilities page, there is no way to know what is on the page without scrolling down. Jump links near the top would be helpful and informative. And navigation from the bottom of the page is cumbersome. A bottom navigation bar or jump link back to the top would be helpful.
yes
Very simple
Yes
The navigation was easy.

Were the pages interesting? Why or why not?

yes, they were interesting. I liked the use of photos.
Generally yes, but the pictures are somewhat amateuish. I don't think they promote the facilities.
some pages were interesting, the activities page was not.
yes, for someone interested in finding info for the club
Most of the pages are interesting because they are informative and engaging. The "Event Ideas" and "Activities" pages lack enough content to hold my interest.
Yes, although more thumbnails might have helped the pages with a lot of text. They are an amazing group of people, any way you cut it, so I read a few of the pages.
Like the flash slide shows, the pages give good info (except the activities page)
Yes. I found the history of the building to be quite interesting. The activities the Saturday Afternoon Club are involved with and the availability of renting the building interesting.
The pages were appealing to the target area.

What did you like best about the site?

The beautiful color scheme, and interesting header fonts.
Navigation was nicely designed
Facilities page, color, feel and design of the site.
colors
The images of the members making things.
The logo script and the graphic of the hall are very pleasing to my eye, and the colors are nice. Photos of activities and quilts are attractive.
Overall colors and fonts, flash slide shows, logo
Seeing the people involved at the Saturday Afternoon Club.
The home page shows instantly what the site is about.

Was there anything in particular that you did not like?

no
Already mentioned above
Activities page
no
There aren't any driving directions.
The changing pictures gets old when I'm trying to read.
Not too fond of the activities page...
There wasn't a listing of prices for the rental of the building. Maybe links to caterers they have used. This could also be another revenue generator (advertising) using white space.
I would prefer the opening pictures to be placed in a gallery showing the participants and activities.

What suggestions for improvement do you have?

None
The overall goal or goals of the site should be clarified.
Use an address for the map link to show exactly where the building is
Slow down the revolving pictures
Provide a map image and give driving directions.
I'd like to see the photos in the page, maybe in smaller sizes.
Add some more content on the activities page about the types of activities that this club does.
I think I've already addressed my feelings.
Perhaps more emphasis on the home pages as to the activities; education classes for example.

Were there any links that did not work, images that did not load, typos?

Not that I noticed
First sentence need to be rewritten.
Not that I saw
Not that I saw
Everything appeared to work.
Didn't see any, didn't read all pages.
None that I saw
I did not find any links in the site and with what I was reviewing, did not see any typos.
The links worked fine and the images loaded quickly.

Could you find information about joining or contributing to the organization? Describe how you found this information.

Yes, on the contact page.
Contact, send for membership information
It's on the about page and the contact page.
No I could not find it, but with such a small site maybe I just missed it.
I found info about joining the organization at the bottom of the Contact and About pages. I did not find info about contributing to the organization.
Yes, bottom of the home page, and repeated on contacts I think. I read down to it, basically.
About and Contact page has info about joining the organization - not sure about contributing to the organization
By going through the pages, one at a time I found some information and I did find an address to mail inquiries. I did not see any e-mail addresses to connect to.
Membership information is in the contact page and was easy to find.

Is any information lacking?

Not that I noticed
There could be membership information right on the page, why have to write for it?
Descriptions of club activities.
See above
Not other than already stated.
Nothing on activities page but a photo, but you knew that!
See previous comments about activities page
Maybe the costs of the building for rental. Is there any costs for joining the Saturday Afternoon Club?
For a small club there was sufficient information for a browser to find what he/she is looking for.

Any other comments or observations about the site?

One of the best color schemes I have ever seen.
No
Looks nice and represents the client very well
Well done, hope this was helpful
On the Contact page, it would be helpful to make the email address a link.
The navigation bar retains the highlight on the prior button as I slide the mouse to the next, kind of odd. I personally would like larger text, but I like no. 3 readers too! Maybe put the quotes on the testimonial page in regular type, and the name of the author in italic? I would prefer stills to the slideshows, but that's just me, and the slideshow on the facilities page does convey the facility pretty nicely.
Overall nice job! I think their clients will like it :)
I really liked using the photos of the people in the Saturday Afternoon Club. They were happy and having a great time. Very good web design!
I think the client will be happy with your team's effort.

Summary of Responses

Overall the response to our site has been very positive. Most respondents loved the color scheme, and felt the site had a welcoming look and feel appropriate to our client. The photos had mixed reviews - some like the slideshows, others do not. Our testers seemed to feel that more information should appear on the Activities and Event Ideas pages, and that driving directions should be included on the Contact page.

We will be taking a summary of our testers' responses to our client, especially pertaining to the pages with little content, to see how they feel about modifying the site. I would like to implement one tester's suggestion for an improved link to mapquest.com for more accessible driving directions in particular.

Thanks to all of our respondents for their excellent feedback!