Site review

[Stoemp]

Hi everyone,

I'm finishing off a brand new site as a final work for school in my graduation year. I'd like to know what you guys think about it. The site is not finished a 100%, but it gives an idea.

The url:

http://www.biognost.be

Thank you all,
Steven

 

[4x4uk]

Checked out site using msie6 on win98 at 800x600 site looks good.
One comment though the text colour on the highlighted links is a little difficult to read clearly.
Making the text bold or a brighter colour would help with legibility.
Other than than I like it
Regards
Ian

Infinity exists! - I just haven't worked out a way to get there yet.

http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/

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http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/Ian/

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http://www.ne4x4.fsnet.co.uk/beck/

 

[glenmac]

Your site looks good! One sugestion I use 1024x780 res and I think the site would look better in the center of the window. I would align="center" your tables or put the page in a div and align it center. Just an opinion though.

 

[Stoemp]

I got that remark a few times now, but the problem is the DHTML menu I use has a fixed position. When I center the site, the menu should be centered too, and this is pretty tricky. I had a lot of trouble putting the menu like it is now, so when I have to center it with fixed coordinates, it will certainly go wrong I guess.

Thanks for the remark though.

 

[Tarwn]

Win2k Server SP3, IE6, Cable connection

Very good loadtime, maybe a second and a half from start to the alert box firing (presumably in the onload).

I like the background, doesn't detract from the site but also doesn't leaving it floating in the middle of an empty white window.

I assume as you work on the third section (diagnostics) you will create an image for that section on the front page to match the other two sections?

A little confused over why different sections are in different languages, are there plans to make each section available in each language? Will I need to know at least three languages to visit each portion of the site?

Research section:
Header: Seems a bit off. You have repeated the company's name right next to itself in the header. I don't know why but this looks a bit like space fille to me, which meakes the header look a little crowded.

Colorscheme: Good colorscheme, the light blue/green doesn't clash with anything and helps things stand out.

Content: The content for the main page seems pretty spaced out. The words in some of the paragraphs seem to have multiple spaces between them, in some cases being as much as 5 or 6 spaces apart. The menus on the right aren't consistently titled, ie they are all in the same font at the same size, but Special Deals is bolded and none of the others are.

The dropdown menu items are a little hard to read when you mouse over them. The blue text on a dark grey background seems to blur a little, making it harder to read.

the © on the footer is marked 2002

I like the icons on the download page, makes it obvious that your going to be downloading a zipped file by clicking on the link (at least it does to me)

I don't generally spell check people's sites, but this one jumped out at me (price downloads page):
"Now, every product on the Chemicon website will have the corect price in"

There is no wanring that your going to be switching languages when you click on the "Company Information" link. Just *poof* no more english.

The contact page says fields in bold are obligitory, but all of them are bold, it might be better to just say all the fields are required to cut down on any possible confusion. I would also style the submit button to match the colors of the scroll bars and such rather than leave it looking generic. Perhaps increasing it's width to 150 or 200px and centering it would be good as well.

Whow is who: Looks unfinished. If all of the names are going to be indented like that I assume you plan on putting pictures of the people next toi them. A better wording for this might be "Who we are" or "our Staff" or something like that. "Who is who" seems a unprofessional to me.

Request Catalogs: Not liking the wording in the intro paragraph, seems like you should only have to mention filling out the form once, maybe reword to something like:
"Please fill out the following form in order to place a request for publications, bold fields are required."
I added the bold because in this case you do have some bold and non-bold field entries. Again I would style this submit button, but just take it as a matter of course that I can't stand seeing generic buttons on sites

All forms: You need to set up some scripts to check the entries in these, for example, an email address should at least have an @ symbol and some dots as a simple check. As a sidenote you will problably want to remove the email address "asdad" from your newsletter list.

Back to the menu:
I just noticed this, you need to make sure your menu items are consistently cased, ie some mutliple word items have all the first letters upper cased, some only have the first letter of the first word uppercased. I would suggest uppercasing all of the words, as they are similar to titles when viewed in a menu and should be treated so.

Hope some of this is helpful, and feel fre to ignore anything I mentioned, I sometimes get carried away

-Tarwn



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[Stoemp]

Tarwn,

thank you so much for this long but very professional reflection on my website. It's getting dark here and I should go to sleep, but tomorrow I'll re-read your comments and give some reactions on it. Your reflections are very helpful, really.

Thank you so much.

 

[Mighty]

Stoemp,

Nice Job - I like it.

Mighty

 

[Stoemp]

Tarwn,

I said I'd reply when I had the time for it, well, here I am. You said some very helpful stuff here. I'm approving the website with some of the tips you gave me. But now I want to explain some things you wondered about:

I assume as you work on the third section (diagnostics) you will create an image for that section on the front page to match the other two sections?
Yes, when I receive the appropriate image from the Diagnostics department, I will include it on the front page.

A little confused over why different sections are in different languages, are there plans to make each section available in each language? Will I need to know at least three languages to visit each portion of the site?
The three sections really are three completely different sections. For each section I worked together with different people and these people decided which languages are spoken in their operating field. I'm sure that the languages will be adapted in the future, but at this time all the customers from the food section understand Dutch ('nederlands' on the front page) or French ('français' on the front page). The customers from the Research department all know English, so there's no problem at this time. They're pretty sure at the firm that Food customers will not visit the research website and Research customers will not visit the Food section because it's two competely different fields.

Research section:
Header: Seems a bit off. You have repeated the company's name right next to itself in the header. I don't know why but this looks a bit like space fille to me, which meakes the header look a little crowded.
You got me here ;-) It's space fill, right. Without the 'Biognost' repeated, it looked a bit empty to me, but I could not figure out a different way to make it look a little less empty. But I'll try to figure out what I can do about this.

Content: The content for the main page seems pretty spaced out. The words in some of the paragraphs seem to have multiple spaces between them, in some cases being as much as 5 or 6 spaces apart. The menus on the right aren't consistently titled, ie they are all in the same font at the same size, but Special Deals is bolded and none of the others are.
I use 'justify' as alignment for my text. I don't like the left alignment because, in my opinion, it looks messy when not justified.
The bold titles on the right are there to get the attention from the visitors. Some things are very important like the 'special deals' stuff because it's important for the company to get as many subscribers to the newsletter as possible. I thought a bold title was a solution for this. You don't agree?

The dropdown menu items are a little hard to read when you mouse over them. The blue text on a dark grey background seems to blur a little, making it harder to read.
Here you have another point. But the problem is I want to be consistent in the color scheme of the website. I want to use the green and gray as base colors for the whole website and I had to match these colors in the menu too.

the © on the footer is marked 2002
Great that you noticed this. I started to work on this website in september 2002, so the copyright notice is still 2002. I'll have this fixed. Thanks for this. Great eye for details.

I don't generally spell check people's sites, but this one jumped out at me (price downloads page):
"Now, every product on the Chemicon website will have the corect price in"
I don't know what's the problem here. Maybe it has been fixed already? I appreciate you spell checking the website. My native language is Dutch, and therefore my English is not perfect. If you find any other language problems, don't hesitate to report them. This would be very helpful.

There is no wanring that your going to be switching languages when you click on the "Company Information" link. Just *poof* no more english.
That's just because our translators didn't yet translate the text to English. This is not an error, just a temporary solution. The English text will be available soon.

The contact page says fields in bold are obligitory, but all of them are bold, it might be better to just say all the fields are required to cut down on any possible confusion. I would also style the submit button to match the colors of the scroll bars and such rather than leave it looking generic. Perhaps increasing it's width to 150 or 200px and centering it would be good as well.
The input fields from the contact pages are dynamically put on the page. The people from the company can easily adapt the form by simply adding a new field to the database. I tried to make sure the text's always right. Maybe they will add another field and forget to adapt the text. This will bring confusion too I guess.
I'm a student Multimedia and Communication Technology and in the classes of Webtechnology, they always said us that using an image as a submit button is unprofessional. So I always use generic buttons because of that...

Who is who: Looks unfinished. If all of the names are going to be indented like that I assume you plan on putting pictures of the people next toi them. A better wording for this might be "Who we are" or "our Staff" or something like that. "Who is who" seems a unprofessional to me.
I'm still working on that. Most of the people from the firm are on the road most of the time, so I don't really get the chance to take pictures from the website, but it comes...
The term 'who is who' is literally translated from dutch to English. I was desperately looking for a good description, but now you helped me out... From now on it's 'our staff'. Thanks for that.

Request Catalogs: Not liking the wording in the intro paragraph, seems like you should only have to mention filling out the form once, maybe reword to something like:
"Please fill out the following form in order to place a request for publications, bold fields are required."
I added the bold because in this case you do have some bold and non-bold field entries.
Again a matter of translating right from my side. Sometimes I don't really know how to express myself in an understandable way. I adapted it with your expression if you don't mind for copyright reasons ;-)

All forms: You need to set up some scripts to check the entries in these, for example, an email address should at least have an @ symbol and some dots as a simple check. As a sidenote you will problably want to remove the email address "asdad" from your newsletter list.
I'm still working on a good asp method to check the syntax of an e-mail address. For the newsletter there's no problem because it's a special newsletter module that's been installed on the webserver. This module checks if the e-mail address is valid or not. If it's not valid, it's ignored. And you also have to confirm your subscription to the newsletter. The instructions are in an e-mail that's being sent to you. Non-confirmed e-mail addresses are being removed after a short time.

I just noticed this, you need to make sure your menu items are consistently cased, ie some mutliple word items have all the first letters upper cased, some only have the first letter of the first word uppercased. I would suggest uppercasing all of the words, as they are similar to titles when viewed in a menu and should be treated so.
I'll fix this soon. I didn't see this until now and it's unprofessional. Thanks for mentioning.

Hope some of this is helpful, and feel fre to ignore anything I mentioned, I sometimes get carried away
You were very helpful. Don't feel guilty for getting carried away. It's a sign you're passionated in the things you do and this is the only thing a real professional needs!

Thanks again for your help,
Steven