I'm not really a designer ... I'd like to have your honest opinion on this site. This was a redesign. Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks.
Many Thanks.
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Site Review 6
- Thread starter VBRookie
- Start date
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1
- #2
TheConeHead
Programmer
looks good - nice colors for a builders site... nice clean design... the only thing I might say is the nav does not exactly fit in with the design of the site (don't like the think rounded lines separating the nav members) Also, get rid of the web counter image at the bottom - looks very amatuerish....
nice site!
![[conehead]](/data/assets/smilies/conehead.gif "[conehead] [conehead]")
nice site!
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1
- #3
I actually like the rounded lines.
A couple suggestions:
Fix:
(also, you should probably make it 4.01 transitional while you're at it)
Fix:
This will make your site more friendly to modern browsers.
If you need help making the page look right yet still validate let me know. It doesn't look like there is anything too major keeping you from validating though.
Also, one final suggestion:
A couple suggestions:
Fix:
(also, you should probably make it 4.01 transitional while you're at it)
Fix:
This will make your site more friendly to modern browsers.
If you need help making the page look right yet still validate let me know. It doesn't look like there is anything too major keeping you from validating though.
Also, one final suggestion:
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1
- #4
Very nice.
Only things I would do are:
[ol]
[li]Make sure the pages validate.[/li]
[li]Add some kind of rollover to the navigation.[/li]
[li]Work on optimising the text for search engines. I am guessing that traffic generated in this way is going to be useful to Mr Lindsay. Think about what words and phrases potential customers might use and work at getting them in prominent places on the site (titles, headings and body copy). There is a Search Engine Optimisation forum (forum828) here where you can get more info on this.[/li]
[/ol]
Other than that.. nice work. Well done.
Oh yes.. loose the counter or find another way to track visits (webserver logs perhaps).
Only things I would do are:
[ol]
[li]Make sure the pages validate.[/li]
[li]Add some kind of rollover to the navigation.[/li]
[li]Work on optimising the text for search engines. I am guessing that traffic generated in this way is going to be useful to Mr Lindsay. Think about what words and phrases potential customers might use and work at getting them in prominent places on the site (titles, headings and body copy). There is a Search Engine Optimisation forum (forum828) here where you can get more info on this.[/li]
[/ol]
Other than that.. nice work. Well done.
Oh yes.. loose the counter or find another way to track visits (webserver logs perhaps).
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1
- #5
A very good-looking site. Well done!
However, there's always improvements that can be made...
[ul]
[li]Use a FULL doctype (you've only got the first half). I'd suggest using
[/li]
[li]Validate your pages to that type
[/li]
[li]Consider using text for your navigation bar instead of images. You can use CSS to make it appear pretty much the same. I'd lose the little right-pointing triangle, it implies (to Windows users anyway) that there's going to be a drop-down list appearing.
[/li]
[li]Where you do use images, include an [tt]alt[/tt] attribute to pass on the content of the image. Purely eye-candy images can have [tt]alt=""[/tt]; you may want to add [tt]title=""[/tt] to prevent IE from displaying [tt]alt[/tt] text in a tooltip
[/li]
[li]Consider using a named or relative text size instead of a fixed one. Your current choice cannot be resized in IE. See for an approach to using the named font sizes.
[/li]
[li]Consider calling your current first page "Home" in the navbar, and adding a new "About Us" page. The new page would tell the visitor about the company - when was it founded, how many employees, what trade bodies is it a member of, what qualifications do its staff have. I'd put the Horizon Painting stuff on the same page - at the moment it looks like the painting of horizons is a service offered by your company!
[/li]
[li]Try to integrate the individual image pages in your photo gallery better with the rest of the site - They should have the same header, colour scheme, navbar etc.
[/li]
[li]Expand the content of the Photo Gallery section to include some text. Have a paragraph or two describing each building project, highlighting what was special about it, the quality of work done, challenges overcome, etc. Pictures can be used to support these points.
Longer term, you could look to introduce page-long descriptions of past building projects, each with its own little slideshow of the work taking place and the finished result. At the moment your use of a slide show isn't really necessary.
[/li]
[li]Be aware that placing your email address in a mailto: link will attract a certain amount of spam. Consider using a CGI script-based form instead.
[/li]
[li]Lose the counter on the front page. Give the site owners some more subtle way of examining the number of hits they're getting. I'd probably put their phone number in the center-bottom of each page instead.
[/li]
[li]Try to work the company's geographical location into the copy on the front page (and elsewhere) so search engines will pick up on it. They tend to ignore meta keywords. You want to appear high in searches for things like "Georgia builders".
[/li]
[li]You shouldn't need to use as many nested tables as you're using - in fact you could lay out the site without using any tables, but maybe you're not ready for that challenge. You should certainly look at using simple CSS [tt]padding[/tt], [tt]margin[/tt] and [tt]float[/tt] settings to reduce the number of one-or-two cell tables though.[/li]
[/ul]
Amazing how many improvements can be made to a good site, ain't it?
-- Chris Hunt
However, there's always improvements that can be made...
[ul]
[li]Use a FULL doctype (you've only got the first half). I'd suggest using
Code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">[/URL][li]Validate your pages to that type
[/li]
[li]Consider using text for your navigation bar instead of images. You can use CSS to make it appear pretty much the same. I'd lose the little right-pointing triangle, it implies (to Windows users anyway) that there's going to be a drop-down list appearing.
[/li]
[li]Where you do use images, include an [tt]alt[/tt] attribute to pass on the content of the image. Purely eye-candy images can have [tt]alt=""[/tt]; you may want to add [tt]title=""[/tt] to prevent IE from displaying [tt]alt[/tt] text in a tooltip
[/li]
[li]Consider using a named or relative text size instead of a fixed one. Your current choice cannot be resized in IE. See for an approach to using the named font sizes.
[/li]
[li]Consider calling your current first page "Home" in the navbar, and adding a new "About Us" page. The new page would tell the visitor about the company - when was it founded, how many employees, what trade bodies is it a member of, what qualifications do its staff have. I'd put the Horizon Painting stuff on the same page - at the moment it looks like the painting of horizons is a service offered by your company!
[/li]
[li]Try to integrate the individual image pages in your photo gallery better with the rest of the site - They should have the same header, colour scheme, navbar etc.
[/li]
[li]Expand the content of the Photo Gallery section to include some text. Have a paragraph or two describing each building project, highlighting what was special about it, the quality of work done, challenges overcome, etc. Pictures can be used to support these points.
Longer term, you could look to introduce page-long descriptions of past building projects, each with its own little slideshow of the work taking place and the finished result. At the moment your use of a slide show isn't really necessary.
[/li]
[li]Be aware that placing your email address in a mailto: link will attract a certain amount of spam. Consider using a CGI script-based form instead.
[/li]
[li]Lose the counter on the front page. Give the site owners some more subtle way of examining the number of hits they're getting. I'd probably put their phone number in the center-bottom of each page instead.
[/li]
[li]Try to work the company's geographical location into the copy on the front page (and elsewhere) so search engines will pick up on it. They tend to ignore meta keywords. You want to appear high in searches for things like "Georgia builders".
[/li]
[li]You shouldn't need to use as many nested tables as you're using - in fact you could lay out the site without using any tables, but maybe you're not ready for that challenge. You should certainly look at using simple CSS [tt]padding[/tt], [tt]margin[/tt] and [tt]float[/tt] settings to reduce the number of one-or-two cell tables though.[/li]
[/ul]
Amazing how many improvements can be made to a good site, ain't it?
-- Chris Hunt
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1
- #6
Nice site but one little sugestion leave the default margin in the body, I kept trying to get to the top of the graphic of the homes. It looks cut off at the top and a margin would define it better.
Glen
Glen
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1
- #7
One small comment -
I find it's more user-friendly when the design of the homepage looks slightly different from the rest of the pages. Don't get me wrong, the design looks good, but maybe something a little different on the homepage, just so the user can easily tell when he/she is on the homepage or on another area of the site.
Example of a site done by a webdesign company near me:
Notice how, on their homepage, the icon is slightly bigger than on the rest of the site.
Just a suggestion.
HTH.
*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!
I find it's more user-friendly when the design of the homepage looks slightly different from the rest of the pages. Don't get me wrong, the design looks good, but maybe something a little different on the homepage, just so the user can easily tell when he/she is on the homepage or on another area of the site.
Example of a site done by a webdesign company near me:
Notice how, on their homepage, the icon is slightly bigger than on the rest of the site.
Just a suggestion.
HTH.
*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!
- Thread starter
- #8
Wow! Great suggestions guys ... I've already implemented many of them. The first thing I did was lose the cheesy free web counter on the home page. I also removed the hit counter and replaced it with a phone number as was suggested.
I haven't gotten feedback from the builder yet on the changes though. He wanted a counter so he may request that I put it back. Thanks so much for all of the helpful feedback.
I didn't know about the validator tool. It really comes in handy.
Many Thanks,
- VB Rookie
I haven't gotten feedback from the builder yet on the changes though. He wanted a counter so he may request that I put it back. Thanks so much for all of the helpful feedback.
I didn't know about the validator tool. It really comes in handy.
Many Thanks,
- VB Rookie
Tell him that he can't have a counter and to stop being so silly. ;-)
Why not put the counter on a different page, hidden away, that he can go to when he feels the need?
You see, with counters generally the "users" aren't particularly interested. And a counter with a low number just makes the site look unpopular.
Why not put the counter on a different page, hidden away, that he can go to when he feels the need?
You see, with counters generally the "users" aren't particularly interested. And a counter with a low number just makes the site look unpopular.
The site looks great.
The one thing I noticed was the face located here: seems to be a bit grainy. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be or not. The rest of the images seem to be a bit more crisper.
Great looking site though
Regards,
Tread42
The one thing I noticed was the face located here: seems to be a bit grainy. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be or not. The rest of the images seem to be a bit more crisper.
Great looking site though
Regards,
Tread42
DaleWatson123321
Programmer
VBRookie,
The site looks great. There's just one item that requires changing - a typo - located in the following sentence:
We like to use the same [highlight]poeple[/highlight]...
Considering the objective to project "perfection" for both the website and the homebuilders, I'm sure you'll want to eliminate even the smallest imperfections such as the above.
Hope this helps.
Regards, ...Dale Watson dalwatson@gov.mb.ca
The site looks great. There's just one item that requires changing - a typo - located in the following sentence:
We like to use the same [highlight]poeple[/highlight]...
Considering the objective to project "perfection" for both the website and the homebuilders, I'm sure you'll want to eliminate even the smallest imperfections such as the above.
Hope this helps.
Regards, ...Dale Watson dalwatson@gov.mb.ca
My question is this. Did you make the website so that it can handle expansion? Maybe learn a little php so that you can make changes to the website faster and remotely. Other than that, I really just wanted to mainly comment on the usefulness of this thread. I'll be making a site pretty soon for a magazine and this kind of input would be awesome!
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