The BHL (Behavioral Health Link) website may not look like a horrendous website from the home page, but it doesn't look fantastic. The blue in the logo clashes with the blue line and link banner, but it's not the end of the world. The links at the bottom are a typical blue underline that turns purple when clicked. Again, that's not the end of the world, but it's not the best. The feature picture on the home page is one of a telephone operator looking at a computer screen. You can guess from context clues that she is helping someone. However, if you look at the overall home page: the picture, the headline, the links, you've almost got to think, "Okay, if I have a crisis, I should go to them, but how will they help me?"
The only link you see that might help you is the one that says "Products & Services" at the top. You click. It gives a plain, not minimalistic, but downright plain page with some bolded headlines and brief descriptions, almost like a restaurant menu. The only link on the main page is one for a Pamela Schuble. It's a contact link and it automatically opens an email. On the right panel of this page, there are links to other "innovative programs." You might see "FEMA Crisis Counseling Program" and recognize it, so you click. This takes you to a page with a short two sentence blurb about FEMA and two unidentified, poorly overlapped photos. So you decide you're not learning anything really useful here and you look around for a link back to the home page to try another direction. However, there doesn't seem to be one.
That's right, you must rely on you your history or back arrow to return back through all the links you've clicked on to get to the home page and the original links. Also, if you haven't noticed, the only thing that is consistent about the pages is that thin blue line at the top with a tiny bit of awkward white space above it. In addition, the gray box at the right side with more "useful" links has appeared on most pages. One thing I find curious is that there is only copyright information and the title of the website on the home page and nowhere else.
After going back to the home page, you decide that perhaps the Contact link will be more helpful. The page features an unattractive, spreadsheet-like table with contact information. In fact, the classiest thing on this page is the little envelope icon next to the email links. Even the picture on the right which seems to be a delievery person handing a clipboard to another person, barely makes your radar. There is, however, no tidy bar of links to show you where else to explore. What to do? If you scan through the paragraphs below, you will see that you recognize some of the words as being main links on the home page. beahvioralhealthlink.com should take you back to the home page, right? Wrong. It takes you to a home page look-alike, without any links. Out of desperation, you click on the picture. That takes you to the "News & Resources" page, which for the first time lists the main links on the right hand side. However, that is still the only redeeming quality of the page, although the YouTube video counts for something. For presumably the most exciting page of the site, the layout is extremely bland and uninteresting. Just looking at the page hardly makes the viewer want to scroll through it. Bold type serves as the section headings and the blurbs are the same size and font only not bold.
All in all, the BHL website is in need of a major re-design that will showcase that it is the perfect place to go in a time of need. To do this, it needs a friendly layout that will comfort its viewers as well as easily navigable pages and links to help the viewers find what they need quickly and efficiently without worry or unneeded time and stress.
***Follow-up: After I wrote this, as I was putting the links in, I went back and discovered the website had the same links on each page at the top. I accessed the site from Google. I clicked on the first result and got this: the version with links (keep in mind I've been using the site with the problems for about an hour and a half now). I went back to Google, and clicked the link underneath the link for the main website. This happened to be listed as a home page, and I got this, which is worse than the result I got when I researched this site for this article. In conclusion, I'm not really sure what caused me to find multiple versions of this site under the same web address, but it has more problems than just that and is still in need of a re-design.
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