By CoinWeek News Staff….
It was big news last week for Kolbe & Fanning Numismatic Booksellers as the company officially rolled out its newly redesigned website.
While the old website was compact and fairly easy to navigate, the first thing you notice when visiting the new version of Numislit.com is how expansive it seems. In keeping with contemporary design principles for digital media, the visual emphasis is on the horizontal. The high-resolution graphics and images are relatively large, which means that the website (especially the homepage) looks better on smartphones and tablets. And when the images themselves aren’t longer than they are tall, the layout is sufficiently horizontal as to minimize “unnecessary” scrolling and clicks (though we don’t know too many coin collectors who mind window shopping).
Clicking on the Browse tab allows you to select from a variety of categories (the same categories available to you in the Search tab). Each category has a surprisingly hefty inventory; explore them all and see for yourself. We presumed some of the categories would be inherently more “esoteric” than, say, “United States”, but not once did Kolbe & Fanning’s inventory fail to impress with its volume.
As a bookseller–not to mention an auction house for numismatic books–the actual content of their inventory is constantly shifting. Fortunately, the new design facilitates repeat visits.
Clicking on Live Auctions opens another tab or browser window (depending on your browser and its settings). This portion of the website preserves the old design and color scheme, which is understandable–there’s probably a lot more going on under the hood of the live auction portion of the site, and a total redesign may have to be rolled out in stages. As it stands, the auction data is presented well and is most informative.
We also noticed that the various articles and essays written by George Kolbe and David Fanning over the years have been given a slightly more prominent place, near the middle of the screen in the About tab’s pull-down menu. On a professional and scholarly level, we certainly welcome this change in emphasis. And as a matter of fact, the About tab pull-down menu is the only item on the website that employs any kind of animation effect–a breath of fresh air if you spend way too much time on the Numismatic Internet.
