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.

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		It's there but not linked.
		2.	Tagline		Yes, "Hippest place..." but would "Customer Loyalty. Simplified" be more to the point?
		3.	Welcome blurb		No, and I think this is an important one. This is a novel system and it's not explained in one sentence high on the home page. This is what I might be looking for: "quickly create, manage and reward customer loyalty with points for visiting and <???>" On my 1024 display this starts to show up in the 3 orange boxes below the fold.
		4.	Plain wording
		5.	No 'happy talk'		The features page is somewhat fluffy.
		6.	Concise wording
		7.	Visited pages are distinguished by link color-coding		Not really; interaction-wise, the whole site is like one big graphic.
		8.	"Utilities" are easy to find
		9.	Search on all pages, with box and button
		10.	"You Are Here" indicator		No. For example, when you're on the Testimonials page, the Testimonials block is not highlighted in any way. This is slightly worsened because the page names are creative...Sticky Street Fanatics. One might say this is immaterial with such a small site, but consider a busy exec who is on a mission to compare 10 loyalty vendors in one morning.
		11.	Breadcrumbs' as links

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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		I think there might be some room for improvement. The whole design is strong, professional, bright. But maybe everything is competing too much. I think that "getting started for nothing" is key, but it competes on an equal footing with everything else. Maybe the top banner and nav should be 20% smaller and the body needs to have only horizontal or vertical sales points, not both.
5.	Conservative quantity of colors
6.	Text sizes are "relative"
7.	Anti-aliased graphics
8.	Graphics' file size doesn't slow navigation
9.	"Alt tags" used well
10.	Links don't just say "Click Here"
11.	A style sheet (CSS) is used

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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'
4.	Conceptual flow from upper left to lower right		Again, there's too much competition for your attention.
5.	Simple, outline-like site map
6.	Primary navigation is obvious
7.	Secondary navigation is obvious
8.	Contact information easily accessible
9.	Links are clear
10.	Intro panel or animation not excessive		It's as professional as can be but I question if the content is as sharply targeted as needed... I personally need to see it summarize functionality in the first 10 seconds. Are the key visitors the same as me?
11.	Graphics used only for core message

Summation & Next Steps

Overall Rating: Strives / Survives / Thrives

The usability faults are very trivial checklist-style things; no one will fail to use the site because of them. The main thing is use of space to communicate the key message.

Recommendations:

1. Decide on the key points (free trial, points program?) and make them prominent. Make the banner and top nav smaller.
2. Write a concise welcome blurb (sentence stating exactly what the business provides, and to whom) and put it high on the home page.
3. Should you have fewer price points?

I continually look at freshbooks.com as a reference and model for many of these judgment calls.

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