Advice on our 4th year minicompany site.

Rich1691

Hey guys, Im in 4th year at the moment and for our mini company we decided to build a website for fuel prices in Cork.We made it on iWeb on an iMac using simple tempates and things and we have a trade fair competition next thursday in Kildare.
I would just like to get some feedback on the site and tips on how to improve it or make it look better.

The site is www.corkfuelprices.com

I would appreciate any comments/suggestions. Thanks!

EKRIUQ

I think there should be a sub forum here for site reviews

dkell

I quite like the design, and it looks useful - If you did one for Galway I'd use it It must be tough to keep up-to-date though!

Just one thing I found - when you click on "view prices" on one of the Google Map markers, the container holding the prices isn't big enough to display the result (using Firefox 2 on a PC). I'd guess you've got overflow:hidden in the CSS for it. You can fix it by changing overflow to scroll (so scroll bars appear), or by setting a width for the container wide enough to hold the info.

Trojan

When you add a price, publish the date it was obtained. If you do that over a period of time you can graph each petrol station & oil company averages.

daymobrew

I was going to suggest comparing your site to IrishFuelPrices.com but it is dead (for sale actually).

I would prefer to see the listings sorted by area rather than brand.
It would be nice too to be able to click on a station listing and get a map to it.
BTW, when the address is not available, the number of dashes is too many, it spills onto the next column for me. Just leave it blank or limit it to a few dashes.

Keeping the info up-to-date is the most difficult part - you'll need help from members of the public, or station owners. At each station listing I recommend having a link to a form to allow the submission updates. Even 'cooler' would be in-place editing with ajax.

Good luck in the national finals next week. Let us know how you get on.

chat2joe

www.corkfuelprices.com

The account you requested doesn't exist or is currently inactive?

I think there should be a sub forum here for site reviews

Second that!

Rich1691

chat2joe wrote: »

The account you requested doesn't exist or is currently inactive?


Ya sorry About that a small technical problem it should be working again on monday this is another link to the web site: http://web.mac.com/Corkfuelprices1

Thanks to everyone who replied already and any other comments are welcome!

Raskolnikov

www.pumps.ie is similar to what you're doing.

cris-2fer

ye!! it a well cool idea!!....the only thing i can think of is maybe tryin a white background with black text.... the black makes it a bit hard to read.... but still well cool...

democrates

+1 for dark text on light bg.

I'm using FF2 on Ubuntu with noscript allowing your domain and mac.com (without the latter javascript permission, no menu appears).

I'd say the main menu should have
* Homepage
* Welcome
* Cheapest Unleaded & Diesel prices
* Google Maps
on the top line, then the brands on a line below that since they are logically similar, maybe that's the way it is already and I'm suffering a display error. You could try emboldening the menu text to see if it's easier to read, maybe just on the top line, and maybe just the cheapest prices link, as that's priority information for visitors.

On the cheapest prices page, I'd list the top 10-15 for unleaded and diesel.
The longer page means the title should link to an anchor for diesel.
Actually forget that I'd give them a seperate page each and have two links on the menu, assuming few people are interested in both fuel types.
There could be the option to "show all", or a search allowing filter by price, area, brand etc.
I'd put the Area column beside the price column for quick scanning.
Is Cork really a city rather than a town? Jackeen humour.

On google maps you could have the prices/dates for each station on the pop-up. Can the blue pins be replaced with red to green shadings reflecting prices? These would have to be split into diesel/unleaded, or use seperate maps for each fuel type, but I haven't used google maps so that customisation suggestion may be pie in the sky.

Overall fair play and well done there folks, best of luck.

Rich1691

Thanks for all the advice came in helpful I might try changing the background colour beacause a few other people have commented on that aswell.

Cheers!
Rich1691