New site and logo critique

cormie

Hi,
I'm just about to market www.vantasks.com and thought I'd ask for the opinions of folk here before I do.

I'm still not decided on the colour scheme. I'm quite happy with it at the moment, but I'm not toooo sure if it's the right colour for the business type and would be willing to change if the right reasons were given.

The quote form can be tidied up a bit more (terms and conditions links near submit button open in new window etc) and there is still a bit of content missing from feedback and useful links.

There's a few things I have in mind I want to slightly tweak, like having a gap from bottom of screen, below copyright notice, like there is at the top.

I'm quite happy with the logo, however, I was showing it to a complete technophobe who asked "what's anTasks" so I'm trying to think of how I can make it more obviously "VanTasks" but still keep the logo idea of the tick. Perhaps it's just a case of icreasing the font size of "anTasks", or maybe having the same shadow around "anTasks" as the tick, which I've been meaning to get done anyway?

I'm also in the process of applying for an 1850, 1890 or 0818 number, haven't decided which yet, which will be between the logo and the ticks on the right hand side. However, I would prefer people use the quote form instead of ringing up. Save me time and money.

I think I'll add in some pricing examples on the pricing/quote page too to eliminate the "about how much" requests.


If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, I'd love to hear from you:)

mneylon

The site's design is quite clean and uncluttered.

If you're going to be targetting the Irish market you should be hosting in Ireland or at least get a .ie domain

Seth Brundle

As Blacknight says, get a .ie but IMO don't redirect the site - mirror it so the address remains valid so to speak.

I like the design. Regarding the gap at the bottom of the screen - are you just trying to fit it neatly on the screen with the same sized gap on top and bottom? Users will have different screen sizes so this isn't really practical.

The terms and conditions link spans two lines - change it to T&Cs or Terms or something. This also happens useful links (which is the same colour as the background).

TBH the pricing structure paragraph sounds as if you are going to charge them a lot more than they were planning. Maybe make it sound more positive.

If you are having a feedback page then maybe put some feedback in it. However, make sure its verifiable - otherwise it will look made up. Useful links needs content. maybe remove these two links until you have some.

On a separate issue, whenever I see 0818 numbers I automatically think they are going to be expensive whereas I (and i presume most people) understand the 1850 (expensive) & 1890 rates

edit: given that I presume you paid someone for this - get them to validate their code!
edit2: their own site isn't valid so maybe scratch that last one!

cormie

Thanks for the input

Why would hosting in Ireland make any difference though? The user can't see, or wouldn't be interested in where it's hosted? Blacknight, as you know, were hosted with yourselves for poker.ie, I wanted to keep this seperate though, I'll probably move it to the same server when the year on dotable expires, which will be in about 2 months!

Ah, I know what you mean by mirror, if somebody is at a .com and sees a .ie name, they may be confused? Where as if somebody types in .com and then is taken to a .ie it might be better? I don't know to be honest.

Could you please give a print screen of where the Terms and Conditions line and Useful Links span 2 lines? It doesn't happen for me. What browser are you using?

WOW, just noticed it's all over the place in IE:o the ticks on the front page anyway! T+C's and Useful links is fine in my IE and FF though.

I'll be able to get some real feedback and can fill in the Useful links soon enough too.:)

I'm not sure if you meant to, but you said (expensive) after the 1850 number, they are actually very cheap, it's only about 25 cent or less per call, no matter how long you stay on. 1890 is local rate from anywhere in Ireland inc mobiles afaik.

My designer told me about validation before that it doesn't really mean much in terms of the actual use and workings of the site, that it's just a set of rules made up and it doesn't really matter if it's valid or not.

Seth Brundle

1. Google can detect the hosting country and uses that in its site localisation - so hosting in the UK will help it in UK rankings but not Irish ones!
2. by mirror I meant that if someone goes to .com then they stay at the .com 'version' of the site and if they go to .ie then they stay on a .ie 'version' of the site. However, there is only one site which is used by both domains. Talk to blacknight or whoever about it and they will sort oyu out.
3. See attached file. Im using firefox 2 on XP. Terms and conditions is in top right. Also look under the yellow home link.
4. IE is all over the place!
5. The phone numbers is a kb thing then! (read scabby sod!)
6. A good designer should be coding the site up to be valid code. See here for HTML errors and here for CSS Errors.

kjt

Why would hosting in Ireland make any difference though? The user can't see, or wouldn't be interested in where it's hosted?

Google and other search engines can recognise this and thus when you click on the "pages from Ireland" it will show your website. If you want to be in the results when people only searching for Irish websites you have to either be hosted within Ireland itself and/or have a .ie domain.

No offence to your "designer" but he sounds like he doesn't have a clue what validation is. It's people like that who are bringing the level of web design down!

I quite like your logo. The site is nice and clean but the one problem I would have is the "Pricing and Quotes" page, it's VERY cluttered and there's far too many textboxes.

Best of luck with the site.

cormie

Thanks again for the replies.

I spoke to my designer about the validation and he said:

I agree that a good designer will make his code valid wherever possible, however I disagree that a site needs to be 100% valid to be accessible.

He also said that most of the invalid codes were from a wysiwyg editor in the backend that I can use. He's putting in a new one by the end of the week which should sort it out:) He's a good designer, by far the best I've worked with in terms of communication and getting things done on time and great value too.



Anyway, I've registered vantasks.ie now so I'm going to change the hosting over to blacknight so that should sort google/pages from Ireland out. Thanks for that, never even thought of it:o

Kbannon, I know what the problem is with your text, you have firefox to display an increased text size, on what must be, every page you visit, which is the reason the menus are off for you. If you put it to the normal size, that should do the trick.

Will try to tidy up the quote page a bit and make it seem like the pricing is to their advantage!


Thanks for the good wishes too:)

Seth Brundle

cormie wrote:

Kbannon, I know what the problem is with your text, you have firefox to display an increased text size, on what must be, every page you visit, which is the reason the menus are off for you. If you put it to the normal size, that should do the trick.

Think again Cormie!

edit: looking at the site in IE7 you get the attached screen.
The links sit right but the bulleted list doesn't

cormie

huh? lol, did decreasing the size of your text not work or are you saying to think about those who need larger text also? I suppose images in the menu would be the only way around that?

What's up with the print screen from IE7? Did you stretch the image yourself or does IE7 do that:eek:

Seth Brundle

My text size is set to normal - I have made no changes to it. As for using imaes to replace text, this is not a good idea as it increases the total download size for the page and also is not as search engine friendly.

The IE screen capture is 'as is' on my laptop (1400 * 1050)

cormie

Is anyone else having the same problems Kbannon is? Everything seems to be much bigger for him Both my designer and I only have the text/menu problem when we increase our text in FF from the default size. I don't know what's going on with the way IE is stretching the whole site for you either. Or else it's just the way the attachment has appeared on boards for me? The images are stretched and pixelated

Try and come up with something else besides images for the menus so, forgot about the google thing!

Seth Brundle

It could be my screen but I can't really see why.
Your main div is 800px wide

daymobrew

cormie wrote:

Is anyone else having the same problems Kbannon is? Everything seems to be much bigger for him

I am using FF2 on Solaris. My default font is Times size 14.

At that the default size the checkbox list is sloped. See the vt-solaris-ff2.jpg image. Also note the "To get a quote" text starts off to the right a bit.

When I increase the font one step the checkbox list aligns, the "To get a quote " text starts on the left. Unfortunately "terms and conditions" on the top right spills onto the next line, as does the "Useful Links" link.

I don't know my resolution but I'd guess it is about 1280x1024.

Seth Brundle

incidentally at home it looks fine on FF2/Win2k/1024*768 CRT monitor
But with IE6 Im getting the diagonal bulleted list again.