Comments On New Site 5

[coldfused]

Looking for some feedback on what you guys see.

http://www.firstmarketinggroup.com

Carl

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Always Learning...

 

[GUJUm0deL]

coldfused, Nice work. Love the colors, text, nice rollover effect (simple and smooth), nice crisp graphics.

Good form validation (although I was able to pass 'adadad' as my fax number).

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Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

 

[coldfused]

Nice catch. Thanks.

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Always Learning...

 

[johnwm]

Nice looking site, like the colour scheme but dreadful message. I just can't imagine anyone in business actually using a marketing company that manages three times more 'WE's then 'YOU's on their home page!

My other concern (from a design point of view) is that each page has a different, large, high-res image on it, so dial-up users will have an unacceptable delay. You're looking at around 20 seconds per page at 56K. See:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/...=http://www.firstmarketinggroup.com/index.cfm

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[TamedTech]

I'll agree with everyones points here ... its a pretty nice looking site and i'm a fan of the colour scheme as are the other guys.

I'll have to second Johns concerns ... i do like striking images on websites, and they do seem to set and exelent mood ... however its gets to a point where on a few of the pages you have more image and footer space then you do content.

And at the end of the day its this content which is key to your user.

I am having a little beef with the form though, if doesnt seem to expand and fill the entire width of the table column that conrains it, is this intentional?

But good work with the validation, i bloody love coldfusion lol.

Well done buddy.

Rob

 

[coldfused]

Thanks for the comments so far.

johnwm -
on a personal level I would agree with you but at the end of the day we do pretty good as an agency and stay pretty busy.


tamedtech -
I will work on that form tomorrow sir. It's needs some modifications. It was sort of throw in there at the last minute.

Thanks again,

Carl

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Always Learning...

 

[Wullie]

Carl,

I agree with John about the images, they are much larger than they need to be.

Try running the site through

http://www.netmechanic.com

(Fix HTML Code Errors > Try It, then select "Load Time" after it has analysed your site)

On this page, when you click on the header image it will show you various different formats and also the % savings in size if you use those types. By looking at it, you could have considerable load time savings just by optimising the header image.

I also agree with the You/We. You are in Marketing, you should be telling the people more about what you can do for them, not what you have done for yourself. Past success is great, but what can you do for me? Why should I use a company bragging about their previous achievements when I could use a company telling me what they are going to do with my site?

The following paragraph also is not very easy to read, it gives the impression that you are trying to stuff as many keywords in as possible. You have a navigation menu, don't put people off because you are trying to attract search engines over customers. (Personal opinion after reading it) I know why I am looking at your site, I have just read a paragraph about "odd are why I am looking here", yet I am no further forward after reading all of that.:

If you’re looking at our website, odds are you’re looking for a strategic marketing agency that can provide you with captivating creative services or well-measured media recommendations, in-depth research or outstanding direct mail and Internet marketing, calculated budget development or professional public relations, or maybe all of the above.

Hope this helps

Wullie

Fresh Look - Quality Coldfusion 7/Windows Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[coldfused]

Thanks Will. Haven't spoken with you in a while, hope business is good and your family is well.

As far as the images guys we took all that into consideration and everybody agreed that most of the people visiting our site will be hi level professionals spannimg across various industrys. We all agreed that most if not all of our target market will be on broadband (I would say most offices have cable or better) so we felt good about the images and trying to set a nice mood for the site. With that said we might be alianating some users on dial-up, take the good with the bad I guess.

And the message is just a play on experience guys and longevity in the industry. Nothing more. Sometimes black and whites messages (heres how we do it, heres how we make it work for you, etc) are just a little blah after browsing 10 different sites trying to decide who your going to go with.

Just a different take, thats all.

Somewhere in that copy I know we mention somewhere how we can make it work for them, I think

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[glg1]

Hi all,
First let me say that this is a great site visually. I agree with the issues around "We"...
However, as a relative newbie to this stuff (2 years) - I'm puzzled a bit. I've read lots about how tables used in this fashion are bad and one should be moving to divs, etc. here's a case where the tables seem to work well. Any other comments from the gallery on this tables vs. divs (css) issue?

Thanks, George

 

[Wullie]

Thanks Will. Haven't spoken with you in a while, hope business is good and your family is well.

Everything is fine my end, kids are more cheeky then ever. Hope all is well your end.

As far as the images guys we took all that into consideration and everybody agreed that most of the people visiting our site will be hi level professionals spannimg across various industrys. We all agreed that most if not all of our target market will be on broadband (I would say most offices have cable or better) so we felt good about the images and trying to set a nice mood for the site. With that said we might be alianating some users on dial-up, take the good with the bad I guess.

I'm on a 10Mbit connection here at home and I notice a delay in the header image loading. I always make a point of viewing the site before I read the other comments in the thread and after reading the comments in this thread, I agreed with most (if not all) of them about the site. You may be targetting broadband users, but I'd venture to guess that most of them are not going to be on 10Mbit+ connections, so if I notice a problem, they will as well.

And the message is just a play on experience guys and longevity in the industry. Nothing more. Sometimes black and whites messages (heres how we do it, heres how we make it work for you, etc) are just a little blah after browsing 10 different sites trying to decide who your going to go with.

You can look at this from your own perspective, but you must have asked for feedback here for some reason. Personally, when I visit a site that is mostly "we, us, our", I look elsewhere. Sure there are times when it isn't possible to write otherwise, but for a marketing business you need to tell them in marketing talk and that means telling them what you can do for them, not what you have done in the past.

Hope this helps

Wullie

Fresh Look - Quality Coldfusion 7/Windows Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[coldfused]

Seeing that these pages will not change that often I think I will cfcache the pages and hopefully that will make download speeds a bit faster.

The feedback request was mainly for structure, functionality and overall intercation wth the site (which was my responsibility). I didnt write the message and even if I wanted to could I change it.

So it is what it is.

Thanks guys,
Carl

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Always Learning...

 

[Rieekan]

One thing I noticed while reviewing the site. The main graphic has no Alt attirbutes and since your company's name is mentioned there, it's not mentioned to screen readers. This may be intentional, but as it's such a big portion of your website and has what I would refer to as the title of the page's information, visually impaired people will miss out on that portion of the site.

- George

 

[GUJUm0deL]

All the concerns for the images are valid ones, but I realized that more and more people are switching over to high-speed nowadays, since highspeed is usually cheaper (or same rate) as the dialup.

You can also try cutting the image size in photoshop by saving the image for web but optimize the image first.

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Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

 

[coldfused]

Thanks for the heads up on the ALT tags Rieekan.

Carl

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Always Learning...

 

[AtomicChip]

I didn't read every body else's comments, so hopefully this wasn't already mentioned (and it's super picky...

It seems that pretty much everything has about a 10 to 15 pixel border except for the left margin of your links box. Maybe either make that box a bit wider so it fits with everything else?

Also, this is purely personal, but I might stick in a ~40% opacity white layer under the logo "First Marketing...", but over the pen to seperate it from the large image (you're already seperating it with that small gray border - that goes for the images on the other pages too)...

I couldn't enter (123)123-1234 as phone text (or anything else but straight numbers)...

Other than that, great work! Nice, clean, real corporate-ish colors.

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"The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire universe."
-Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

 

[feherke]

Hi

Just a minor ugliness. If you change the text size in the browser to 200%, then the top menu will wrap into two lines. And around the logoTop.gif and aboveMain.gif will be visible the white background. So I suggest to add class="greenGB" to their td tags. And for the td containing logoTop.gif, you could add also style="vertical-align: bottom".

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[ca8msm]

One of the first things I'd say to check would be to validate your site at

http://validator.w3.org/

as the first page I tried had quite a few errors (I didn't delve into any further pages though so you should look at those as well).


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