Thank you. I really hope not to disappoint.
🙂
Flat Icons
Full Review by Kaynil
Scoring:
First Impressions & Appearance – (12 out of 20)
The very first impression I get from your website is a positive one. It made me think whoever designed it has had experience and know what they are doing. The style is simple, original and easy on the eyes. It grabs my attention in a good way and invites me to browse more.
At first glance however it fails to communicate the special twist it offers and instead can easily be mistaken for a generic icon finder of the many available; while in a way it sort of is, there are many more and better options out there and many of those visitors will be quick to close your website and leave for those. No, what people need is to realise almost immediately the potential your website offers.
I think if your website is failing to convey that idea in a glance, it calls for some tweaking. The main problem is that the top bit of text explaining what the website does gets easily dismissed because it is a bulk of text that looks like a generic notification. I can see that the idea is to save some space and this works nicely in the other pages however as the first thing you see it lacks the impact required for people to feel compelled to read it instead of going directly to browse your collection. Bullet or numbered lists can help absorb the information better. At least for that page consider breaking lines and even lists for the relevant things like the instructions.
Another approach could be to separate the process, so you have the landing page saying something like:
Welcome!
Create your own royalty flat icons for your web projects for free!
Sell them, give them away and use them! No limits.
It takes less than a minute
Just under it you have a big coloured Get Started/Try it out!/etc action button that encourage the user not to ignore his curiosity. If you want there could be display of different shapes, size, color of a button that sample what they can expect.
If you don't want to separate in different pages, consider the dynamic pages that invites people to scroll down instead. Either way the process then could be divided with clear instructions. So the user finds:
1. Choose an icon shape to customize.
This would be basically the actual page, with the search and icon categories.
2. Customize and save.
This would be the editor page.
I am sure you could come with a more vibrant and fun wording than me for the instructions and a grabbing message to get their attention from the very start. I don't expect you to do things exactly the way I described. The current design works once you take the time to read what is the website about, I am merely trying to spark ideas on how to make it easier on your first time visitors to grasp what you are actually offering. I hope you can take the best from my impressions to enhance your website to your liking.
You can also try to see what the competition, for example similars urls, offer and steer yourself to be on top of the game. You can see what works and doesn't work for them or what things frustrates you from their way of doing things.
Site Layout – (15 out of 20)
The Layout is very easy to understand but I feel it needs some polishing in the navigation. It works nicely the way it is and it may be some nitpicking on my side but I feel navigation should be consistent, as a visitor I don't like not knowing what to expect.
You have three top navigation links and four at the bottom. From the ones at the top
Home and
Icon deals make sense.
Free Icon packs will make me land in another website. Why? I'm in this website and the links before and after keeps me in the website. This behaviour is unexpected so it will baffle people away. Is it really necessary for it to be there? Considering that it is also one of the bottom links I'd suggest you simply do away with it.
The icon categories are okay to encompass all the different icons you have but I find them a bit lacking if you compare them against other well established icons finder sites. I noticed for example that there are not Holidays/Festivities. This is important as many people go and search for icons in order to decorate for the season at hand. I think offering some options would be great, if you already do, you need to make sure it is easier for your visitors to find them.
I also thought there were not animals but then I discovered the Wildlife section. I understand Wildlife sounds better but for things like this a plain language would help. Animals and insects are the common words and most likely what they will be searching for.
Your miscellaneous section has the user scrolling down a few times, which perhaps means that some icons from them could be put together to create more categories.
Another problem I find is the lack of redundancy or extra terms which makes the search for items a bit more difficult. I searched "bunny" and found nothing so I thought you had nothing similar, but then I found not one but two Rabbit icons in wildlife. Yes, you had what I was looking for but what was the point of the search button if I had to find it myself? Sure, you can think it falls on me as the visitor to have the common sense to try different names just in case, but a great design is the one that foresees the most common problems and tackles them before hand. You could add tags for the other names in a way the search engine keeps them in account. It will mean a difference in flexibility to cater to my needs.
Say I am making icons for my forum and I need one for the the rules of my forums. If I put "rules" I just get the peace maker, but with the tags, maybe the "agreement" icon could also show up, or the pen signing or a school rule, etc.
Statistics and Activity – (8 out of 20)
I don't think the website looks like lacking effort or in serious needs of news given what its purpose is. The amount of icons is big enough to demonstrate the effort and care poured into Flat Icons, in a way perhaps this website is not meant to have activity.
Going by statistics the website does fall a bit in short scale regarding the amount of icons available. 2,500 sounds impressive, but when compared against the 10, 000 - 50,000 that other icon archives offer it is really a very small fragment of what it could be. Still the amount is enough to cover the site intended purpose which is the main thing.
There is nothing I can find that give me a clue on the activity for this website. Nothing to highlight what were the latest icons or what areas have been improved lately. A little indicator is all it needs and it would make exciting for people that has been more than once to the site to know that from time to time new icons are being created for their pleasure.
Content – (16 out of 20)
Content is there, it is just a little bit too specific at times to find, fortunately the categories are good enough to help you get closer to what you had in mind. You are here for icons and you will find that, a very good amount too, the place is not lacking in options for people to create their own sets. Could it be better? Absolutely.
It seems to me that there is a fear to expand in the categories, but I find that less icons per category helps me find easier what I am looking for so don't be afraid to make new icons just because it doesn't fit the categories you initially created.
Another piece of the content I'd like to talk about is the privacy policy, I read through it and at some point it seemed you referred to the website as "On the Block Blog". It will be good to have a look to that page to weed out other points that may not longer apply.
So really, even though it works for what it is I really recommend you keep the content coming and that you make sure to check in the already uploaded content and make sure it is up to date and is easy to locate.
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (12 out of 20)
There is no much text to retrieve from this website which is a double edged sword, as any little spelling or grammar mistake you do will be hard to conceal.
This is the most glaring error I found:
"FlatIcons.net is a free flat icon maker, Create your own royalty free flat icons for..."
After the comma there is a capital letter starting a new sentence. I think you meant to have a period there instead.
Other than that I could not see anything big or small to report, however given this is basically the first thing all your visitors must read to understand your website it leaves a very big negative impression. It makes me feel it is not a serious effort and it might be another of those websites that will soon fade and expire its domain. All just because of a small oversight. Correcting this mistake is probably your first priority.
Total Score - (63 out of 100)
Final Remarks:
I like your website, I really do. I think it is a great tool and is one I'll most likely will use for my own projects, because it is a great way to unify and make more unique our own projects. Have you considered adding an option for bulk editing, so instead of going one by one people choose the icons they need and then adjust the size and stuff for them all in one go and can download a zip with them all? I think that'd be a cool addition.
I do believe the site was made with ♥ and I'll be happy to see it getting better.
🙂
On an extra note I'd like to apologise as it it took a bit more than the time I said it would, I had a few time constricts but I truly hope I didn't not affected your schedule. Thank you very much for your patience. I hope this review was worth the wait and we can still count with your preference.
Strengths:
- - Unique service
- Easy to operate
Weaknesses:
- - Can be mistaken as a mere icon archive.
- Nothing to show signs of activity or recent updates
