http://www.tivolilighting.com/
The purpose of the Tivoli Lighting website is very much about being an online catalogue first. The visual layout of this site is pleasant to the eye, with a simple, but attractive design. As most of the site is dedicated to being an online catalogue where you can search for products, search for Reps (US, Canada and Mexico), the ability to check a status of an order, to contact Tivoli and a new products section.The product search section is easy to use with another of drop downs to help filter the products. Once a search has taken place the search results allows the user to obtain additional information on the product, with an instruction sheet and a spec sheet to download.
Tivoli is a brand of a larger company called Targetti, and there are links at the bottom of the page to other sights. All the other sites are designed and work in exactly the same way as the Tivoli Lighting site. There corporate site provides more information on the company and its brands, along with software, projects the company is being involved with. The corporate site is definitely worth having a look at.
The site is best viewed at 1024 x 768 rather than the smaller 800 x 600 resolution, particularly as the rollover images on the search results don’t work so well if you are trying to get the other columns on screen. While most of the website works in Firefox the rollover images on the search results do not work.
Download Times:
| Connection Rate | Download Time |
|---|---|
| 14.4K | 44.48 Seconds |
| 28.8K | 22.34 Seconds |
| 33.6K | 19.18 Seconds |
| 56K | 11.59 Seconds |
| ISDN 128K | 3.69 Seconds |
| T1 1.44Mbps | 0.50 Seconds |
Navigation: ****
Good Design: *****
Updates: **
Overall: ****
Overall: This site is well designed and its purpose is very much about being an online catalogue. The download times for the site are good and it is easy to navigate. It’s biggest drawback is that it is very difficult to see when the material is updated. This is the sort of site you are likely to visit only if you have a specific reason, rather than necessarily just to look around.
Testing Information: This site is tested using a laptop at 1024 x 768 resolution running Windows XP, Firefox Version 1.0.7 and Internet Explorer 6 over a 512K Broadband connection. For the text only test Lynx on a Linux Server is used. A website entitled WebSiteOptimization.com is used to test the web site to calculate the download speeds.