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Good afternoon readers! 
Today, I’m reviewing Aliah’s Closet – a belly-dancing website where one can arrange classes to learn to dance – and buy Middle Eastern costumes, accessories and Middle Eastern music.
I’ve had this website bookmarked for years now because I saw their troupe dance here in Portland, Oregon. I plan one day to learn myself – mostly for my husband’s pleasure but also to perform and as a way to keep wonderfully fit!
A quote from their website:
Aliah’s Closet is dedicated to the beauty of every woman. Our goal is enhance the exotic beauty of women everywhere.Aliah’s Closet celebrates women in all their beauty. We are dancers, mothers, single, married, young, aging, large and small. We are learning, creating, working, inspiring, hoping, performing, conquering, remembering and dreaming. We are community.
They also support various charities both here and in Haiti (!) One has to wonder just how they came to supporting the latter.
Navigation:
A plethora of links ensure that the viewer can easily make their way around this website – with a static menu just under the heading banner and a different one to the left.
Contact Details:
Again these are well supplied, with a street address in Massachusetts, email address and toll free number. They seem to be well organized and have another office here in Portland.
An interactive map shows the United States, broken down by states. The viewer needs only to click on the state and a teacher’s contact details (in that state,) is provided. Nice feature.
Ordering:
Payment is accepted in all forms, including C.O.D. All information required for making a purchase are explained in detail and leave no questions unanswered. They definitely seem to be up front and thorough.
Same goes for shipping; international shipping; delivery; special orders and return policy. It’s all there on their Customer Service page, and appreciated, instead of having to click around the website to find information.
Design: Resolution
Here the web designer falls down. They have designed for a monitor with a resolution of 640×480, giving the website a lopsided look to the left with enormous amounts of white space on the right.
At the very least, they should have designed for 800×600 and preferably for 960×600 which would comfortably accommodate users with both small and large screens.
While some users may still use the (latter) resolution, it’s doubtful that they are still using a monitor the size of a small box. Since computers and their peripherals have come down in price over the past years, users are buying larger monitors and even dual monitors! In fact when I’ve roamed our local computer store, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a desktop monitor with a screen resolution of 640×480.
The web designer, needs to remember that there are pixels used by the window’s border and there’s a vertical scroll bar to take into account, along with other real estate taken up by the browser such as a sidebar for bookmarks etc. A higher screen resolution will enable the user to have more screen space.
Design: Thumbnails
Their thumbnails are all different sizes, from large to tiny – giving their website an unattractive ‘messy’ look. They should be of uniform size (or close,) to give their products an organized feel. I’d even go one step further and apply a border to the images (as I’ve done here,) using PSP or another preferred graphics program, but that’s just me
A great example of what I mean, is Newport News, a website where I’ll often shop, that has a great example of well done thumbnails.
Design: Menu
The menu is very simplistic, providing plain links, with no sub-menus. I feel that their menu could have been reduced drastically, (example) as follows:
Main Links: Clothing – Clearance – Footwear – Jewelry – Peripherals
2 Main Links examples with sub-menus:
Clothing: Bra tops; Costume sets; Cover-ups; Harem pants; Skirts; Tops and Cholis.
Jewelry: Earrings; Necklaces; Rings; Coin and Bell belts; Bracelets etc.
Hierarchical menus conserve website real estate, especially to bring the overall look of the website into the 21st century.
Design: Colors
Pale purples and mauves are always feminine colors, as long as they’re not overdone – and thankfully these colors are used sparingly on this website. There is no background, just lots of white space, which can give it an empty look, especially with the resolution used. A pale background (not purple!) would look much nicer and give the site a more designed look and feel.
Recommendations:
Entire web design definitely needs work!
* Design at minimum for 800×600 resolution;* Redo all thumbnails – make them uniform;
* Consider using a hierarchical menu;
* Google “free web backgrounds”, or even design your own (pale!) background;
* Test website on Firefox, IE and Opera for good web design display.
Summary:
I can see why Aliah’s Closet is a leader in the belly-dancing field. They sell everything from various clothing to CDs and jewelry – a virtual one-stop-shop for the belly dancer.
I recommend Aliah’s Closet for all your belly dancing needs and let’s hope that this website is redesigned some time in the future.
Website notified of this review and invited to make comment.
Update: Oh oh – they never commented, but I’ll bet they came to have a look!
This was an enjoyable website to research and review – and I hope you pass their link onto anyone who might be interested. I’ll be back again tomorrow! And who knows, perhaps I’ll have reviewed YOUR website.
~ Swan
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Posted by ~ Swan 