Watch the video review here

Meet SandenVendo

Website: vendoco.com

SandenVendo, based in Dallas, Texas, is a world-leading manufacturer of vending machines, refrigerated displays, food service equipment, draft beer systems, coffee bars, and similar products. SandenVendo supplies household-name clients, including 7Eleven, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Monster.

In this week’s B2B web design review, we took an in-depth look at SandenVendo’s website.

First Impressions

When a user lands on a website, they should be able to understand what the company does in three seconds or less. SandenVendo’s tagline, “Delivering Excellence Since 1937”, does not make this apparent, and we have to go further down the page to find out what the company does. The video header is also rather abstract and unclear. 

Though SandenVendo spells out what it does in the small paragraph of text towards the bottom of the “hero area”, bringing this front and center would be a great improvement. 

Further Down

Scrolling down, SandenVendo immediately launches into displaying the key categories of products it sells. Again, moving this further up the page would improve the user experience and allow prospective clients to begin their customer journey more easily. 

Below is a section where we can view individual products in 3D. Though this offers a “wow” factor, locating these 3D models on product detail pages may be more effective than on the homepage. 

This kind of content can slow down the site’s speed, which can significantly impact the user experience and user retention. It can also cause additional friction with usability, as it is easy to accidentally click on it while scrolling up or down the page. 

This criticism also applies to the video that appears further down the page. The video itself is excellent, but the homepage may not be the best location. 

On SandenVendo’s homepage, we also find a support section, where prospective clients can find more information, search product manuals and warranties, and find retired products. This section is too small and minimalistic. Increasing its size and prominence and adding some images would improve it greatly. Each of the three clickable buttons should also have unique text. 

SandenVendo lists an impressive array of clients, but this section is too far down the page. We might also suggest paring this list to include only the most well-known brands. 

The website footer works well, containing all the relevant contact information, social links, and an email sign-up form. 

Navigation

SandenVendo uses rollover rather than on-click buttons in its navigation bar, which we do not recommend as it can cause difficulty for touchscreen devices. 

The “About” button uses a drop-down menu for what is actually a single page, with each option taking the user to a different section of the page. We suggest removing this and simply having one button leading to the “About Us” page instead. The “Support” and “Resources” pages have the same issue. 

This structure causes the site to make a scrolling action when a user clicks a button to take them to a new part of the page (instead of the more usual “disappearing and reappearing”), which makes the site difficult to navigate and confusing for users.  It also has major downsides from an SEO perspective. 

On the “Videos” page, again, the quality of the content is high, but each video should load into its own individual page and include a passage of descriptive text. With more and more people using ad blocking tools, this can also prevent videos of this type from loading. 

We would also recommend that SandenVendo upload all its videos to its company Youtube channel. Since the videos have already been made, putting them on Youtube requires minimal effort and offers another way for potential customers to find the company’s content and products. 

Product Page

SandenVendo’s Products page begins with a large header image. This could be made much smaller without losing its impact. Each product section links to a PDF file rather than a separate page. We would advise switching all this information into an HTML format on individual product information pages for SEO purposes. 

The product photographs are strong. However, seeing the products pictured in a real-world environment would be even better. 

Conclusion 

Ian’s Overall Grade: D

Jeff’s Overall Grade: D+

Overall, SandenVendo’s site has strong bones but needs significant work to reach its full potential.

The site has a simple and clean aesthetic that works. Though the target audience is never specifically stated or shown via imagery, it is still fairly clear from context and content, such as the client logos. The design is utilitarian and though it is effective, it could be more creative in order to better differentiate the brand and its values from its competitors. 

There are major content hierarchy and on-site SEO issues that are not benefiting the company at all. The site is also coded in such a way that a lot of additional weight is added, slowing the site down and negatively impacting the user experience. 

You can see this full website design review and all our reviews on our YouTube channel. 

The right website can be the key to growing your business and reaching your goals. Our experienced B2B design team would love to hear from you about any aspect of your B2B website project and discuss how we can support you. Learn more about our services or contact us today via our website.