Opinions Please

mkdon05

www.owengerrard.com

A friend of mine got this website created by a guy who charged a fair bit of money as a nixer, but to me i think its terrible, Dark, unclear, Horrible sound when you hover over a link, which in turn makes the looped music sound sh ite.

Anyone have any views?

irlrobins

Yea the sound effects have to go. They're not in keeping with the background music or the music style of Owen I imagine. Also the scrolling bio is a pain. It should be static text that I can read at my own pace. And the title of the pages needs to be changed from Owen_Gerrard_final to something more descriptive.

But not bad apart from that.

yeraulone

This looks like a template website from templatemonster.com, or a similar site.

Are you sure its original?

cgarvey

irlrobins wrote: »

Yea the sound effects have to go. They're not in keeping with the background music or the music style of Owen I imagine. Also the scrolling bio is a pain. It should be static text that I can read at my own pace. And the title of the pages needs to be changed from Owen_Gerrard_final to something more descriptive.

But not bad apart from that.

Snap! Without seeing irlrobins' post these were my 3 only complaints as well.

mkdon05

irlrobins wrote: »

Yea the sound effects have to go. They're not in keeping with the background music or the music style of Owen I imagine. Also the scrolling bio is a pain. It should be static text that I can read at my own pace. And the title of the pages needs to be changed from Owen_Gerrard_final to something more descriptive.

But not bad apart from that.

Yea I totally agree.

yeraulone wrote: »

This looks like a template website from templatemonster.com, or a similar site.

Are you sure its original?

Well as far as i know it was supposed to be original, but it could be a template?? I wouldn't know if it was or not and I doubt Owen would know either.

The designer probably made a tidy profit for "DESIGNING" it but might have just used a template!

Eoin

I was expecting a lot worse actually. I get the feeling it could be a template too, the scrolling text seems to behave like a link, but it isn't. Also, the opening image looks a little naff, and not in keeping with the rest of it. The markup isn't pretty either.

Don't know how much was charged though, so it's hard to tell if he got a good deal or not.

EKRIUQ

First off if your on a slow connection It takes at least 10 minutes to load so it has major accessibility issues and goodbye to all of rural Ireland and a lot of urban too

That music in the background, what’s meant to represent??

It’s a very dark site and the navigation is very difficult to read and work out the navigation.

A lot of web designers stopped using flash as a structure for there website in 1998 and I’d suggest they should too.

But, I can see a good bit of time and effort going into the making of the website so how much is a lot.

To be honest I just don’t like the site but if that’s what the brief was and after consultation and input from the owner of the website. I’m hope there happy with it

Liam Byrne

Sound effects are grating and dire....would make me close it immediately. I had to turn off the speakers in order to put up with the remainder of the site in order to pass any other comments.

Having everything in Flash is annoying and will prevent Google indexing the site properly, so you won't be found.

Site is slow, and dark.

Navigation is too small and confusing.

Words in the text highlight to red when you roll over - why ? This behaviour is normally associated with links, not text.

When you roll over a pic or an album cover, it flashes for no reason and looks bad.

Name should be on top left so that it's visible in all screen resolutions.

That's just from a 2-minute look.

Axwell

I would say the sound effects need to go - very template monsterey type thing.

The backing track should be a full song not a loop os you can hear where it starts over again. Possible even put a small media player on the site with some of his tracks and let the person viewing the site sample his music through that. I see there is a streaming audio section but i think this would work better.

I think the site could be centered aswell it doesnt look right sitting to the left.

On the contact form the fields could be a different colour as you cant see them and its only when you click on name you know you can type in the area.

Apart from that its not bad at all

death1234567

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Sound effects are dire....would make me close it immediately. I had to turn off the speakers in order to put up with the remainder of the site in order to pass any other comments.

Having everything in Flash is annoying and will prevent Google indexing the site properly, so you won't be found.

Site is slow, and dark.

Navigation is too small and confusing.

When you roll over a pic or an album cover, it flashes for no reason and looks bad.

Name should be on top left so that it's visible in all screen resolutions.

That's just from a 2-minute look.

I agree with all of that and I would just add that the whole thing is off centre and you have to scroll down for no real reason as the big black empty space at the top of the page could be filled by moving everything up.

Not well designed at all IMO, and looks like the desginer has just tried to use flashy graphics to impress (it doesn't work).

mkdon05

Thanks for all the replies, I agree with pretty much everything that has been said.
I said it to him before about what i thought but he didn't really take much notice, so i'm now gonna e-mail him the link to this thread so he can hopefully take on board all the (Constructive) critism.

- Owen get it sorted! -

miju

thats a template from template box.com IIRC

kjt

The first thing I thought when I saw the site was, Template.
The riffs gets a bit annoying after being on the website more than one minute, nothing personal it's just very short so repeats a lot. The contact form doesn't validate so anyone can click away all day and your going to get lots of blank emails.


Also, in my opinion the website's overall feel doesn't convey the artist. I may be wrong but after listening to Owen's song Cest La Vie he doesn't seem like a big techno/futuristic/daft punk type of artist which I think this website would be more suited to. The colour of the website is very dark and I think a lighter/brighter colour would have suited Owen better.

The media page looks very last minute and thrown together too.

Hope that helps

forbairt

Similar to a lot of people on here ...

First thing I think is template ... the swooshing noises ... the layout .. the fades and so on ... its all very template monstery. so hopefully it was 50quid your friend spent.

The repeated clip gets annoying very quickly as well its only a few seconds long .. if you're going to do flash for the love of god have a few tracks that you can choose from its quite easy to do ... (assuming its a media showcase website then you are excluding the dial up users for the most part)

zardette

Hi there,

From a first glance I love the photographs and the music - maybe thats just me
I think its got great atmosphere for me ..

If its from a template .... please ask the developer if:

How easy is it to manage the site - I am sure he will produce more music going forward. If the developer didn't understand the flash code behind the template he may find it hard to update the site .... and might not be willing to do this at a economic price ...

An artist should have a dynamic site one that can be updated easily so that if there are new tour dates etc how easy is that to upload.?

The site itself :

The validation on the site is poor...
The flash style has some issues as well in that it flickers a lot....it might be a bit intense for this kind of music.

Flash site:
The Issue with a a pure flash site is that search engine may not page rank the site.
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterGoogleRankings.aspx#Flash

Maybe have at the start an option to chose if the user wants to view a flash site ... and have another site that the same information content, but without flash.....

Hope this helps,
Z

DJB

I can't add anything to the criticisms already expressed but I'd love to know how much he paid for this? You mentioned he paid a "fair bit of money" - 500, 1000, 2000, more?

I bet ripe did it

Adam

DJB wrote: »

I can't add anything to the criticisms already expressed but I'd love to know how much he paid for this? You mentioned he paid a "fair bit of money" - 500, 1000, 2000, more?

I bet ripe did it

Well thet artist fairly got riped then! >_<