Neo Senshi's Crystal Tokyo

NSCT is a fan site that houses the author's fanfics. The site author has enlarged it to include a lot of the normal things that you might find at the site, but for the most part, the site tries to stay true to its intent.

The site uses simple graphics and page designs to present a site that is not going to dazzle you with special effects, but the site is functional and does what it is supposed to do, nonetheless.

Site navigation is simple and easy to follow. There is a sidebar on the right side of the page, but also, navigation is embedded in a series of pics that are placed on the pages of the site itself. The pics are taken from one of the Sailor Moon video games, and running your mouse over the picture shows what item in the picture takes you to other pages.

The site author makes sparing, but good use of script-based pop-up windows that contain various parts of the page. This is a nice touch as it is done just to the right amount.

There are some rough areas around the edges of the site. First off, some of the pop-up pages load quite slowly. Some of the video game graphics failed to load at all and I had to refresh the page to see the entire pic.

Things being noted as being under construction are a sort of pet peeve for me. I realize that the author is trying to be nice and warn people that certain areas of the site are under construction. However, this is not necessary, and only serves to point out that some areas within your site are not completed. Users tend to get annoyed when a page advertises a certain facet of their page, but that particular part of the page is not available. They get irritated and leave...never to return.

Another variant of the under construction problem is where the user comes to a page that looks nice, but there is not much to do. The Kitchen is one example of this on Neo Senshi's Crystal Tokyo. It is a page that is well done, but there is nothing there for the user to do, and then the page states that this part of the site is under construction...

One thing I noticed is that there are places where the picture navigation is non-existant. The user then has to use the sidebar navigation to continue further into the site. Users tend to like continuity in a site. If you use picture navigation, you should make sure that each picture used contributes something to the navigation. For example, the first picture you meet on the site is one with Queen Serenity standing in the middle of the room with a set of stairs set in the top and bottom walls of the room. Neither of the stairs contributes to the site navigation, even though both could. The upper stairs could lead to the main page or splash page, and the bottom stairs could lead to somewhere further in the site.

Overall, I found the site to be quite unique. This is the first time that I have ever seen a page use places out of a video game within the site, and I liked how it was done. The only advice I would give other than what I have already said is continue to add stuff to the site.

Artemis' Score: 7.4

Overall Score: 7.4