1st Phase Review

[imstillatwork]

please check it out. Free site for my brother.

PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOT FINAL / NOT OURS. PLACEHOLDERS ONLY

What do you think about layout / design?

thanks!

Kevin

 

[ecobb]

Umm...could you give us the link?



Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[imstillatwork]

What the deuce...

here goes:

http://bonsai.slc-soft.com

 

[Foamcow]

Write crap about trees and redwood and bonsai and crap here. Make it look like you care and stuff. use the words bonsai and redwood and starter(s) a LOT for the search engines.

I know it's not your proper copy, but...
Write stuff that's relevant for that page. Not just keyword heavy spam to suck in search engines. You are building a site for people. The search engines will like that if you do it right.

http://www.foamcow.com

 

[Foamcow]

Sorry, I clicked before I'd finished!

Your contact page does not validate, despite having the "Valid XHTML" graphic on it.

This is almost certainly an oversight ;-)

You might want to make some nicer "Valid blah" graphics too. Those standard W3C ones are horrible aren't they.

Other than that, well, it's functional.

http://www.foamcow.com

 

[cLFlaVA]

Hmm...

Something about the site makes me unsure where to look. I think it appears the page is supposed to be centered, but then the body is left-justified. This probably has something to do with

a) the background of the tree logo being the same color as the page background and
b) all the extra whitespace on the side

What I think would fix this is maybe making the table with all the white on the right-hand side smaller. This would then center that table, leaving more green on both the left and right side. Would be easier to look at, I think.

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
A pirate walks into a bar with a huge ship's steering wheel down his pants.
The bartender asks, "Are you aware that you have a steering wheel down your pants?"
The pirate replies, "Arrrrr! It's driving me nuts!

 

[imstillatwork]

Some people have a way of speaking or writing that would completely leave out the name of the subject because they assume that the listener/reader already knows that. I NEVER spam my pages full of keywords, but be conscious of the subject matter. It is always human readable, not keyword spamish. It is a good idea to use the few keywords you are focusing on more than once in you copy. And people do want to get the feeling that the writer cares. otherwise they would be turned off from reading it.

I know it's not your proper copy, but...
Write stuff that's relevant for that page. Not just keyword heavy spam to suck in search engines. You are building a site for people. The search engines will like that if you do it right.

-----------

Im still messing around with that. I know what you mean. I whent fixed width on the body and centered it. I think that helps. but with the tree outline makes it funny to get a good alignment all around.

Something about the site makes me unsure where to look. I think it appears the page is supposed to be centered, but then the body is left-justified. This probably has something to do with

FWIW: I'm no designer. no training, no experience. I do cold fusion and databases. work on (web) servers and anything running windows. There is something about layout that I can never make as cool as some of you peoples sites. i could always pick one I like and copy it with minor changes, but that just aint right. so now and then I give it a shot on my own. whats the best way to improve? I know what looks good when I see it, but can't always come up with it. I guess I am more calculated than artistic.

thanks for replies, I'll keep chuggin away at it. I guess one good thing is that it only takes a few minutes to do what I did, and not days of trying =)

 

[cLFlaVA]

note: i definitely like it much better now that it's centered with a fixed width.

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
A pirate walks into a bar with a huge ship's steering wheel down his pants.
The bartender asks, "Are you aware that you have a steering wheel down your pants?"
The pirate replies, "Arrrrr! It's driving me nuts!

 

[imstillatwork]

thanks, I was worried about too much green, but I think it'll do.

 

[Foamcow]

Hey, I was just going on what you had in your site. Namely...

Write crap about trees and redwood and bonsai and crap here. Make it look like you care and stuff. use the words bonsai and redwood and starter(s) a LOT for the search engines.

If you know that it's not wise to spam keywords into copy simply to get search ranking then good for you. We can only comment on the info given at the time


If you are concerned about there being too much green, why not change the background green so it's a slightly different shade to the green used on the page?

Also, I wonder if the drop shadows are too deep. Maybe try them a bit shallower?

If you say you are not a designer, you sell yourself short. What you have produced is way above what a majority of people do... even so called designers (myself included).

http://www.foamcow.com

 

[imstillatwork]

thanks you guys. I'll update it and see how it goes. I do aggree about the shadows on the title. never noticed that before. oh, I fixed my copy also =)

 

[ChrisHunt]

Looks pretty good, as far as it goes. Coupla points:

The outline tree you've used for your logo looks pretty sick - like the top's been snapped off and the branches at the top are dying. Maybe it's realistic like that, but it doesn't really inspire much confidence. I suggest trying to produce a prettier, more symetrical logo.

Is there a reason you're using GIFs instead of text in your menu? You're using the correct [tt]alt[/tt] text for accessibility, but why not save yourself some bandwidth and use ordinary text anyway?

When I see a page telling me "Today is: Monday, September 6", I think "so what?". There doesn't seem any particular reason to play at being a calendar, it just distracts the eye from the important stuff on the page. Beware of doing stuff like this just because you can.

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[imstillatwork]

thanks for the tips. gif are still there because I was playing around with other styles of buttons.

tree looks broken because thats what it is supposed to be. thats the idea. thats what people are looking for. it is hard to come by a 10 to 50 year coastal redwood tree in new york, and a 20ft tree is not condusive to good bonsai. take the roots and trunk, of a very young redwood (10-530years, 2-10 inches diameter) cut it about 18-24" off the ground, and new branches begin to sprout. the broken top look is virtualy the only way to get rid of the saw cut look.
I'll keep an eye out and see if I have a tree that might look better,but knowing what it is, it doesnt look that bad. (if it where for new trees for the front yard, i would worry)

thanks.

 

[ChrisHunt]

It's your call, but remember you're making an advert, not a documentary. The logo could/should be an idealised view of a bonsai redwood, rather than an actual specimen - with all the practicalities that you point out.

Maybe all your customers are knowlegable about bonsai redwoods. Maybe some of them are as ignorant as me - beginners, people buying gifts. They're going to be sightly put off doing business with the "half-dead tree company".

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[imstillatwork]

hehe. i gotcha. thanks. I'll talk to my brother about this one.

thanks!