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Website Update

off.the.walls

Problems with the site loading, will repost soon

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cgarvey

I don't know if it's just temporary, but it's extremely slow. It still hasn't finished loading after 90 seconds (web3/4.png taking over 60 seconds). It's not my broadband, it's your hosting; but it might be just temporary.

A basic & functional site is fine (if it's a horses for courses thing), but if it's not functional, you're on a losing battle.

The front page is quite basic, and unfortunately I can't navigate past the front page (but I did see the contact page; no address, no phone number, no human name).

Not a pleasant experience for me, and there's no way I'd so much as email you looking for a quote based on my experience there. Hopefully your hosting will get fixed and not put off others.

When you're advertising some very personal service (such as graphic/web design), an anonymous "contact us" mailer form doesn't really cut it. I don't expect you'll make many (if any) sales based on your site alone, if that was its purpose.

Of course those points may well be addressed else where on the site, I couldn't check.

off.the.walls

Thanks for the feedback didnt realise it was taking so long to load on other machines, just tested it on a friends laptop and am going to try and get that sorted out asap. There is no navigation on the site as such, everything is done using Hidden Divs so once you click a image the information about a service is revealed

off.the.walls

I reduced the images file sizes and optimized them for web so its loading faster.

Horses for courses? bit uncalled for there is a heading stating that if you want to see information click on the images to reveal it (hidden divs, javascript to show/hide them)

Contact page (I agree was a rushed job will rethink the contact page)

Overall i do always appreciate feedback, but

1. I think your tone is rather hostile. I'm new to this and thats my 3rd site.
2. Its designed for computers and tablets not mobiles, i had the option to pay extra for mobile hosting and decided against it.
3. As i say to anyone on this site who critizes work that I do I do appreciate the feedback at least your being honest, but as there are alot of people on this site who just like to troll people, please feel free to show me some of your work and maybe instead of slating the entire thing offer a suggestion on how to better it?

cgarvey wrote: »

I don't know if it's just temporary, but it's extremely slow. It still hasn't finished loading after 90 seconds (web3/4.png taking over 60 seconds). It's not my broadband, it's your hosting; but it might be just temporary.

A basic & functional site is fine (if it's a horses for courses thing), but if it's not functional, you're on a losing battle.

The front page is quite basic, and unfortunately I can't navigate past the front page (but I did see the contact page; no address, no phone number, no human name).

Not a pleasant experience for me, and there's no way I'd so much as email you looking for a quote based on my experience there. Hopefully your hosting will get fixed and not put off others.

When you're advertising some very personal service (such as graphic/web design), an anonymous "contact us" mailer form doesn't really cut it. I don't expect you'll make many (if any) sales based on your site alone, if that was its purpose.

Of course those points may well be addressed else where on the site, I couldn't check.

cgarvey

Loading much quicker now, by the way (might be related to an issue at Blacknight this evening).

Horses for courses comment is about what you want the site to do. If you want it to act as a portfolio to show potential clients who have already got in touch, then it might be fine for that. If you want to sell your services to new clients via your website, then I don't think you'll have much success. Site design, and lack of key data (even your name). The site design is basic enough as well, certainly for someone offering web design. However, you do have some links to your work, etc., so as a portfolio site to compliment other sales channels it's probably fine.

As for my work, you can check the links in my signature. However, I don't want feedback, I know most of what's wrong already. I didn't post here looking for feedback, I mean.

As to how to better it, here's as much as I'm willing to part with for free, but a few subtle changes like:

Lose the "Click images for info" type thing. If you've to explain it, you've already gone wrong. It's also the very first below-the-banner content, and right in the prime space. You need to use that space for something better.
The formatting in the expanded sections (after clicking web design, for e.g.) is very, very basic & amateur-looking. Consider, also, making it more obvious that it relates to the selected graphic (which has now returned to it's normal state, so there's a bit of a disconnect).
You need to work on your brand trust. It doesn't look like you're a company, or that you're selling anything online, so the legal requirement for contact info might not apply to you, however it would help enormously. Right now, you're hiding behind an anonymous contact form and mobile number (a student-oriented Meteor one, too, to make me trust you even less!). If you're not an "us", and are just an "I", that's fine; just tell us about yourself. If you don't have offices, that's fine, promote the fact that you're a freelancer with low overheads. Just don't hide behind it all, if you're expecting this to be a sales channel. Landline, postal address and your name are the minimum I'd expect. A quick bio about you (or your key team members) would help too, I think.
The expanded section background looks all wrong.. it looks to have its own pink gradient that comes to an abrupt end, at the end of the expanded content, where it meets the diagonal design of the main page again. A bit too much pink? The transparency of the images in their normal state makes it all look like there's a problem with my display settings. I realise that's quite subjective.
Finally, your right-aligned content (in banner, and in footer) looks lost on a widescreen monitor. The 4 images takes up about 75% of my horizontal real-estate, yet the textual content is restricted to a left-aligned ~33%. Maybe centred & subtle formatting changes would help, I don't know. The Facebook/Contact in banner and WMD Media logo in footer, then occupy ~20% to the right which means there's a reasonable disconnect with the flow of the page, I think. They look like they were plonked in as an after-thought.

I know nothing of you, and have nothing to gain/lose by your success, so I've no reason to be "harsh" to you. I'm an objective guy, so my reaction is primarily fuelled by my experience of visiting your site; something you control. I don't often get called a troll, though, so cheers for that! Good luck with the changes.

Deliverance XXV

Any chance of the website link so we could have a look?

off.the.walls

www.wmdmedia.ie

smcelhinney

The guy gave you very honest, very appropriate feedback (I agree with every point he made).

I didnt see your original post, as you have edited it, but I imagine it was feedback you were looking for. Be prepared to take constructive criticism as you are in direct competition with people who are far more capable than you. How else do you think you'll learn? Or did you just come in here for an ego-massage?

:rolleyes:

By the way, you dont "pay extra" for mobile hosting. Mobile is a design feature, not a hosting choice.

off.the.walls

smcelhinney wrote: »

The guy gave you very honest, very appropriate feedback (I agree with every point he made).

I didnt see your original post, as you have edited it, but I imagine it was feedback you were looking for. Be prepared to take constructive criticism as you are in direct competition with people who are far more capable than you. How else do you think you'll learn? Or did you just come in here for an ego-massage?

:rolleyes:

By the way, you dont "pay extra" for mobile hosting. Mobile is a design feature, not a hosting choice.

There was something when I was buying my Subscription that said it was €50 extra for mobile hosting.

Of course people are far more capable than me i've only been at this since july and during that time have balanced learning this and college. I think for a portfolio website this does what I need it to do, it gives me space to show images, audio samples and videos its a portfolio site.

Obviously i'm not as qualified as some of the people on here thats why i've asked for feedback, this doesn't mean, and sorry if this wasn't the tone implied, that someone comes straight out and says its ****.

Thats the Design I set out to make so i made it, can it be improved? of course, will i improve it? Yes once i get ideas to add to it to make it better.

smcelhinney

off.the.walls wrote: »

There was something when I was buying my Subscription that said it was €50 extra for mobile hosting.

Id say they tried to flog you a .mobi domain. Stay clear, no need

Look, design is a very subjective thing, and personally, I dont like dark backgrounds. There's also some accessibility reasons (eg. astigmatism read here: http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2008/10/13/why-light-text-on-dark-background-is-a-bad-idea/) associated with light text/dark background. This is particularly appropriate for your mixed color headings (which dont contrast with black on older monitors). Its also perceived (in the web community) as being highly regressive; these sites were ubiquitous in the initial web boom, and synonymous with free hosting sites (such as angelfire, geocities etc).

When Im giving advice to people designing websites for the first time, I tell them (shock horror!) to forget initially about design, and concentrate on layout. Think about the information you have. Think about how you want to present it. Think about your information hierarchy, and your messaging priority.

Assemble these "blocks" of information into a logical structure that makes sense to you. You can use a technique called paper-prototyping to design a website layout without ever going near a computer. This will allow you to move, place, remove, and replace elements in a more natural way. Unfortunately the temptation for most designers is to start with a design concept they like, and retro-fit (shoehorn) their content into it, which leads to a clunky user experience.

In terms of how your site works, I would remove the large images beside the menu items. Have simple tabs (see here for examples) , if you want a visual indicator (eg. like the equaliser) put it on the page that is linked to. This removes the clutter from the menu, and brings all the relevant information above the fold. Fold is important, familiarise yourself with it.

The fancy animation (sliding) is superfluous. It also prevents you from sending a direct link to specific content to any of your customers. So Id rethink that. There are also SEO implications for content that is "hidden" using javascript, which can affect your ability to be seen by search engines.

In terms of markup, pay heed to the following

Always run webchecks, you have an unclosed meta tag. Check out validator.w3.org
Always run accessibility checks, you're missing alt tags on images. Check out http://wave.webaim.org/ for this.
Careful with nesting tags, the HTML4 specification for unorder lists only allows li's after ul's so that i tag is misplaced. I know you're using HTML5, but having a loose standard doesnt excuse this. You should bring standards forward, not disregard them altogether.
Few other basic mistakes eg.
```
<div id="welcome"s>
```
that would be picked up by a validator
Inline JS. Move these to an external file. It helps your browser cache them easier, and saves on your file size.

If you'd like any specific help, or clarification on any of the above, let me know ..

Cheers
Stephen

off.the.walls

Went through it with a validator, got rid of the mistakes. I know that design is subjective but for now that is how i wish to proceed with showing my site off yaknow? i'm not saying this as a F**k you to anyone its just the idea that was in my head and now that its complete i'm going to be constantly upgrading it and trying new things on it.

smcelhinney

That's fine.

Just remember not to be that single minded with your clients, or you'll never make a living out of this.

off.the.walls

Not really being single minded though, its the design that I had in mind for it and its the functionality that I had in mind for it, at the moment I am recoding the css to try and make it responsive.

But it does what its ment to do it shows off some work, which is going to be updated this week finally sorted all the pieces i want on the site, and it gives people my contact details.

Stephenius

Hi,
This site is a big improvement on the previous version. I like the simplicity of the way the 4 images of your services are laid out. As I reduce the screen size, the images collapse in a nice way and the my attention is focused on the images which shows the important stuff - your services. An easy addition would be to make that text collapsable in the paragraph below so that it collapses as the images stack vertically on reducing the screen size.
I noticed a glitch in the javascript accordion effect that you get when I click on the services. When I click away on image again, I expect the accordion to close up and stay that way but it immediately drops down again. I think this could be fixed so that it only drops down again if I click it again.
Also, only a small thing, in terms of size, I think the follow us stuff at the bottom of the page is too big in proportion to the main content, maybe reduce those a little bit in size.
By the way, I'm only learning at the moment so these are mostly comments from a user perspective.
Goodluck,