Site critique, please?

[madHatter1]

Hello

I am writing to ask if any Tek-Tip enthusiasts would mind having a look at a site I am working on. All criticisms welcome!

http://www.grafik1.net

Thanks in anticipation!

Hatter

 

[dwarfthrower]

[tt]<TD WIDTH=&quot;383&quot; BGCOLOR=&quot;black&quot;><font style=&quot;Courier New&quot; color=&quot;E0FFFF&quot; size=&quot;16&quot;><center><b><tt>grafik1.net</tt></b></center></font></TD>[tt]

This is not the sort of code I would expect from a company delivering &quot;cutting edge websites&quot; &quot;of the highest quality for forward-thinking customers&quot;.

Your portfolio has half a dozen pictures in it - no websites.

Your &quot;about us&quot; page is three paragraphs of marketing buzzwords and other assorted crud. It gives no real indication of your capabilities.

Even someone who has been in a box for the past four years should know that white text on a black background, frames, big images with no explanatory text are bad ideas.

For a web development company, your site should be your business card. Clean and professional. Leave the funky stuff in your box of tricks, clean up your code and put some real information (here's a hint: Phone Number) on your site.

_{Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world.
There's nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.}

 

[deecee]

she is attractive but why is she there?
your site looks more like a hobby site rather than a business site.

I would #1 drop her (she doesnt add anything to what you are offering)

I would drop the guestbook (business versus personal)

Your porfolio should show something that you have done that would illustrate to people that you can do what you are saying you can.

your use of the iframe for your email.asp page is not necessary.

Basically you are offering web services .(.period.).
Maybe your layout could work for what you are trying to do but then again who are you targeting this for. You need to establish you you want to market yourself to and then from there come up with an appealing design for that demographic. Second A business site should be to a great extent formal but should hold a personal touch that differentiates you from others. Third only use items (images, techniques, text, iframes, etc) that have purpose to your site. Personally I am not a fan of a dark background with light text -- i find the opposite much cleaner and appealing.
But your colors do go well together, your site is easy to read but black is a depressing color -- do you want your visitors depressed. Im not knocking your color choice but it appears that you would be offering your service for a fee (do you want ppl visiting your site happy or sad?)

I hate to go back to what most sites have for their main navigation but it works and until the following head navigatiors fail i would stick with them -- for your site

<home>
<about us>
<contact us>
<services>
<portfolio>
<log in> if you have back end client support

but the first 5 head navigators are all you really need -- WHO, WHAT, WHEN , WHERE AND WHY?

If your site was a personal site (hobby site) i would say it looks great and fine on WinXP, IE6 at 1024 rez. but i think you approached the site from the wrong POV.

I know this sounds harsh but it all comes down to who are you targeting? Because i think the Art crowd would go for this site (how much money does the art crowd have?)

<signature>
sometime you just gotta say &quot;WHAT THE @#*% !!&quot;
</signature>

 

[deecee]

eh simultaneous post -- DOH!

<signature>
sometime you just gotta say &quot;WHAT THE @#*% !!&quot;
</signature>

 

[dwarfthrower]

Heheh, great minds and all that....

>> I would #1 drop her

Then the site would have no redeeming features at all. ;-)

_{Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world.
There's nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.}

 

[GUJUm0deL]

madHatter1, I looked at your site in IE6 in 1024*768 resolution.

1) I think the site would look better if it were centered.
2) The site is about a web design company, yet the image of the girl has a some-what of a flase pretense to it.
3) The &quot;contact us&quot; page should load the contact form on its own, no need to inform the user that the contact us link is used to contact the company, know what I mean?? In other words, its redundant.
4) The scroll-bar colors look off-beat here. Try some less bright/vivid colors. The scrollbar colors hurts the eyes after a while.
5) In the 'Guesbook' section, check you're form validation, in the e-mail field it accepts entry like &quot;adada&quot; without the '@' and '.' values.

Hope this helps.


_{I have this little thing, Advanced Delusionary Schizophrenia with Involuntary Narcissistic Rage. It's no big deal really...}

 

[madHatter1]

Hello and many thanks to you all for your constructive comments. At least I know you have thought about the site and suggested ways of how I may improve it.

I agree with dwarfthrower that the home page &quot;gives no real indication of your capabilities&quot;. It does just seem like marketing talk, so I will improve it. I have, however, deliberately left the phone number off (at least for now): junk email is one thing, crank calls are quite another!

I know what deecee means about the guestbook being personal, but I wanted something where people could leave a 'presence' without having to contact the webmaster. I suppose I could make the guestbook less personal. i also agree with this: &quot;your use of the iframe for your email.asp page is not necessary&quot;. I'll start work on it this weekend!


I am especially grateful to GUJUm0deL for looking at the site through another resolution and for suggesting the site be centered. Task number 1!

In short, I have saved this page and will consider all of your ideas (and act on a number of them - form field validation in the guestbook and scrollbar colours, for instance).

I will not act on them all, because some - like removing the girl - run contrary to my picture of the site, but I am grateful, again, for your suggestions.

Thank you!

Hatter

 

[dwarfthrower]

No worries. Although I would seriously consider tidying up your code. Using tables for layout and deprecated tags like <center> and <b> just leave a very unproffessional impression.

_{Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world.
There's nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.}

 

[deecee]

however contrary to that as long as it appears in the browser how the end user wants it -- it is only us yahoos who would care for deprecated tags :/

<signature>
sometime you just gotta say &quot;WHAT THE @#*% !!&quot;
</signature>

 

[theboyhope]

Maybe you're right, deecee, but I sometimes need a firm to do a site for me and one look at that page as it stands and I'm going elsewhere. Viewing source only confirms it.