An Effective Site in Need of an Update

BethMoon.com

Last week we looked at a recently updated website.  This week I'm going to talk about a site that needs a refresh.

I was drawn to investigate this site after seeing a review of Beth Moon's book, Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time, which features stunning photographs of tree, some of them thousands of years old.

The site has simple, consistent navigation.  The black background is very effective for showcasing the artist's work, which consists of (mostly) black and white photographs.  The front page shows a nice sampling of her work, with links to several of her books.

So what's wrong with this site?  Both the images and the text are small.  It doesn't take advantage of the large display sizes most people are using today.  Moreover, when the site is scaled down to display on a smaller device, like a smart phone, the images and text are really, really small.

Finally, the portfolio pages require the user to click a Continue button to see successive images.  There no way to see an overview of all the photos.  It's not a terrible interface, but it could be nicer.  In comparison, see the portfolio pages on LeeMiddleman.com, which we discussed last week.

Having said all this, I will add that BethMoon.com is a classic, clean website that does a good job of showing off the artist's amazing photographs.  It's a little dated as a website, but well worth a visit.