Your thoughts/input requested 4

[MDLU]

I hope no one takes this as a solicitation because it's really not intended that way...

I was wondering if I could get some of your comments on my website: Jaymunda.com

What I'm looking for is thoughts on:
• Creativity
• Usability & Ease of navigation
• Overall Appeal
• Etc.

Please be honest (but not mean ).

Thanks,
J

 

[cLFlaVA]

I think it needs a tagline. Something descriptive in the header banner, like "Creative Design Concepts." or something. When I clicked the link, I didn't know what the site had to offer me.

My other major gripe is the navigation. The nav you have on the left does the job, but you need something either across the top as well, or the nav on the side needs to be more prominent. It seems kinda hidden to me, hard to find.

Hope this helps.

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
Lois: "Peter, you're drunk!"
Peter: "I'm not drunk, I'm just exhausted from stayin' up all night drinking!

 

[TheConeHead]

it looks ok - some thoughts I had....
1. I like a navigation to be together not spread out everywhere (see "start my project" being under news)

2. lots of wasted white space in the header - could you put your contact info in there?

3. I wouldn't put your own site in your portfolio - just looks amaeturish...

4. seems like some of the pages (ie contact us) could be organized better... lots of white space....

just some thoughts

 

[MDLU]

ok, i worked on the contact page. check out this link: contact us #2. This matches the feel of the Client Login homepage.

But what about white space? I'm trying to keep it from being cluttered, so I figured the best thing to do is to leave it blank.

conehead- to response #1, where do you think it'd be best placed?

cflava- what do you think of the top section now? (hope you don't mind me 'borrowing' your tagline)

 

[cLFlaVA]

MDLU-

Yeah, much better already

One thing though - you might want to slightly differentiate the font (different font, or maybe italicized, or different size, or maybe just even right above the blue line, rather than in the same line as the JAYMUNDA text.

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
Lois: "Peter, you're drunk!"
Peter: "I'm not drunk, I'm just exhausted from stayin' up all night drinking!

 

[cLFlaVA]

Something else you should strongly take into consideration:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.jaymunda.com/contact2.php

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
Lois: "Peter, you're drunk!"
Peter: "I'm not drunk, I'm just exhausted from stayin' up all night drinking!

 

[TheConeHead]

much better - I hate white space - you can make it look organized without whitespace without it looking cluttered... just make it organized (ie put "start your project into the nav)


as far as the header is concerned what if you had the horizontal line directly under the text Jay... and your little design element would bleed onto the nav and content (in a layer) That would shrink your white space a good bit and you might be ok just leaving your contact info in the footer

 

[ChrisHunt]

I like the colour scheme and think you've got the white space right along the top and sides of the page, but there's a big hole in the middle under the "Quality and Consistency" paragraph - you need a couple more paras of content, I think.

I'n not a big fan of Flash, especially for things like navigation bars - which are often better in HTML. However you do it, the font needs to be bigger on your navigation, so it stands out more.

Don't underline text that isn't a link - you can use colour, boldness and/or italics to emphasise text, you don't need to underline. At the moment it looks, for example, like "Quality and Consistency" is a link - but it isn't.

I'm afraid your site isn't a shining example of quality and consistency at the moment either. Consistency first: look at the boxes down the sides - on the left, square grey boxes with white-on-red titles (in a different font). On the right, rounded white boxes with blue-on-white titles. I think you need to pull these together a bit more.

On the quality front, check your spelling! "stationary" means "stopped". You design stationery. Check your grammar too - on the pricing page you're saying "a savings of $1,240" instead of "a saving of $1,240" or maybe just "saving £1,240".

Under the hood, it's scary. Piles of layout tables and <font> tags, including pointless bits of markup like

<font color="#FFFFFF"></font>

Learn to use CSS more. Even if you don't want to use it for layout, there's no excuse for still using <font> tags in 2004.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[MDLU]

Well, I've been thinking about changing the left side navigation. Which route should I go? Make an HTML version that is similar to the flash bar- in blue; OR use the rounded rectangles like the right-hand side of the screen.

Now the misspellings, that's just embarrassing.

 

[MDLU]

is the site design good enough to keep? or, should I try and come up with something else and re-template it (and fixing some of the under-the-hood things that have been mentioned)?

 

[TheConeHead]

I don't know... I am not being mean really - I myself struggle with design - but for a company advertising services to design for others, I really think you need to come up with something different - something that more makes you say "Wow!" when you first see it...

 

[MDLU]

That's been my struggle. I do great work for everyone other than myself (although, there's always room for criticism there)- from what I'm told and the feedback I get.

Anyone else have any ideas? Abandon the old site design and start afresh?

 

[TheConeHead]

I like

http://www.coolhomepages.com

as a source of design inpiration...

 

[MDLU]

that link didn't work. But I think the site is good enough for the moment. A big change would take much time away from other things I need to do- and I can't be stressing over it.

I think I will work on the portfolio pages though. they kinda suck.

how does the home page look now? I put a border around the main content and that seems to tie up much of the white space nicely.

 

[TheConeHead]

funny - it works for me....

looks much better... like on your about us page - I would make all three boxes in your main content area the same size... If you are going to develop with % it is a good idea to review your site on a variety of resolutions

 

[hotfusion]

Just a few points from possibly the one least qualified to make them......

In the code, you have two instances of the 'keywords' meta, also two instances of the 'description. Regarding keywords, I have always been under the impression that individual words or phrases must be separated by a comma, otherwise it will be regarded as one long phrase. But then, does anyone notice keywords any more?

I don't like the 'replay' bit on the flash intro. I think it spoils an otherwise clean piece of imagery. It's not needed, so bin it!

Many people still browse at a screen resolution of 800 X 600, and your site doesn't fit at this size. A large chunk gets cut off under these circumstances, and apparently people really don't like to scroll horizontally.

Apart from that, I like the site. Not too cluttered, with most of the information easily accessible.

Regards, Andy.
**************************************
My pathetic attempts at learning HTML can be laughed at here:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/index.htm

 

[MDLU]

hotfusion-

keywords- yeah. I realize a lot of things wrong with my programming. One major mistake was using dreamweaver's template feature. It created all kinds of problems (sometimes it even discarded my changes for no reason). Short of redoing the whole thing, I'm forced to use it for now. Templates Bad. CSS Good. Now I know.

Replay button is gone. Good idea.

And as far as 800x600 res. goes, I toyed with that for a while and it'll always be up in the air for me. I think people should just get glasses or contacts or binoculars... But then again, the site's not about me, it's for them. Grrr. I guess I'll just say oh well to that one.

 

[ChrisHunt]

Is the site design good enough to keep? or, should I try and come up with something else...

I think it's good enough to be going on with. I get very picky when I critique sites - because there's always room for improvement in any site, so why not point it out?

From the average surfer's point of view, it's about 90% right as-is. Once you've made some trivial changes that might be nearer 95%.

Under the hood it's less rosy, but that's more of a problem for you than it is for your visitors. A key benefit of using CSS from the ground up is that it makes it easy to fiddle with the look of your site without having to change lots of files. Retro-fitting CSS might take some time, but will be worth it in the end (honest!).

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[AtomicChip]

Not sure if anybody has mentioned this yet (don't really have time to read through all the posts), but the menu on the left side (the flash one) - Nothing drives me nuts more (personally) than having an expanded menu item collapse on me after clicking a link.

For example, if I click "Portfolio" and then "Graphic Design", when the page loads, the menu is collapsed. If I wanted to check out the "Web Design" section, I would have to re-expand (is that a word? ) that part of the menu.

It may be nit-picky, but it's one of my pet peeves

Also - this is pretty much strictly personal - but if you're going to have menu themes and such - keep it consistant. For example, your main menu has rounded corners on the bottom, but the rest of the items in the left column don't (Almost all the borders in your site seem to be rounded besides those ones).

Hope that helps =D

-----------------------------------------------

http://www.liquidfuzion.com

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

 

[MDLU]

Thanks to all. There are a lot of great thoughts in here and they are definitely going to be used in my workings on the site. I am doing away with the Flash navigation- i don't know what I was thinking. I'll let y'all pick the next version apart in the same way you've all done so wonderfully.