Site review please 2

[maharg]

Hi

I'd welcome any constructive criticism on this technical electronics site for panel meters and large displays. Anything you don't like, please say.

http://www.london-electronics.com

Thanks in advance,

Graham

 

[Foamcow]

Don't like the circuit background. The lines are OK, but I think the bit on the left cheapens the look a bit.

Home page
Line 546 (ish)

<p style="background-color: transparent; margin-left: 10px; color: #000088"><b></b><br>

Lose that empty <b></b> and the page will validate - so you can legitmately show the W3C validation badge at the bottom ;-) I know it's probably an oversight.

Do you navigation and links as styled lists - that's what they are after all. Drop all the <p> and <br> tags in the link lists. You could even stick that arrow graphic in to the list element using CSS to make your code lighter and more semantic.

No need for multiple <br> tags, use CSS to apply padding and/or margins to elements instead.

<niggle>Header isn't quite the width of the page in Firefox.

The page is very long... I'm not against scrolling but could it be broken up into other pages? That would make much more sense to me.


I'll resist looking at the other pages for now.

On the whole, it's a nice look and should be simple to navigate. Nice job with a few niggles.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[maharg]

Hi,

Well spotted on the <b></b>

I used this validator...

http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/index.html.en

and I use

http://validator.w3.org/

Validated OK on both!

Which validator are you using? Seems more critical, which is good.

I like the list idea for the menu - will do.

The central graphic width is throwing firefox, so I'll trim it down a tad.

Thanks a ton for your helpful suggestions!

I won't change anything yet, until I get all comments back.

 

[Foamcow]

I picked up those errors using a Firefox plugin which is, I beleive based on Tidy - W3C validator.

Generally I use W3C's online service though, again through the Web developer plugin for Firefox.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[ChrisHunt]

Hmmm...

I quite liked the circuit board thing you had in the background, though it needed to be more symmetrical to work well. That said, it looks good as it is now too.

First impressions when loking at the home page is that there's a lot of text there, but none of it really grabs your attention. Part of the problem is the tiny font size you've used throughout, move that up a notch (in FF, press CTRL and + when viewing the page) and it gets better. Actually, while clicking around your site, I've just come across this quote in one of the sidebars:

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand. Instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

You seem to have a hundred or a thousand details on each of your pages - and it's a lot to take in. It's also a lot to scroll through if what you're interested in is actually at the bottom of the page - maybe I'll give up and go somewhere else first.

Your home page above all needs to be short, snappy and to the point. Get across who you are and what you do, then have links leading to major sections of your site. In terms of your existing home page, it should stop at the bottom of the product pictures (which all look good, btw). Each of the sections that follow should be moved to become a self-contained page. So if I'm interested in Bargraphs, I go from your home page to the bargraph page to the page for the product I'm interested in. There's a good chance that Google would send me straight to one of the latter two pages.

You also need to have a dedicated page for each of your products. Start each off with a couple of paragraphs describing what it is, what it does and how it fits in to the product range. Make it easy for laypeople to understand before moving on to the (equally important) technical details. Remember that the people making the buying decisions aren't always techie people.

On the subject of buying, how do I buy one of these items, and for how much? What do those mastercard and visa icons up in the top right mean if I can't pay with them online? Having to send you an email to find out how much something costs or who my local dealer is is a sure fire way to lose sales. I'm just going to take my money to somebody with more respect for the value of my time.

OK, rant over. Back to a techie webdesign detail. Having a contact form on every page is a good idea, but the field where you type the message in needs to be a <textarea> not an <input> - that way it will be a multi-line rather than scrolling horizontally. You should also make the buttons look different to the entry fields - it's not obvious on the "send page to a colleague" form which one to type in and which one to click.

Finally, you're proud of this "UL Registered Firm" thing - icon on each page, extra page for the certificate - but what does it mean? Might impress more customers if they knew.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[maharg]

Hi Chris

Wonderful, many thanks for your detailed comments.
Much appreciated!

We plan to add a shopping cart once the main framework of the design has been completed.

Best regards, Graham