Anyone care to critique a charity website for me?

SouperComputer

Hi guys, not much of a web guy myself, any thoughts on this draft website that somebody has put together for a charity Im helping out. Any technical or aesthetic viewpoints would be are great to have.

http://educate.christianoestreich.com/index.php

Thanks in advance....All thoughts appreciated!

Duckjob

Well, the layout is neat enough, but I wouldn't be a fan of the color scheme - a bit sickly IMO.

I think it's a mistake to have that orange as the background on the page, I'd say you need a receeding color for the background to bring out the page itself. As it is, the background is competing for attention with the page and its contents.

Also I think the main navigation could be a bit snazzier to stand out more. They're a bit lost in the page.
Edit: actually the nav seems a bit confusing, is there a reason for the sidebar nav and the tabs to be separate?

Rollo Tamasi

Layout is very nice, I quite like the colour range.

I'm not a fan of the four site options in the top right hand corner. If the user needs to increase the font size of the site, chances are that they know how to do this already because they probably needed to increase the font size on other sites. Those buttons are unnecessary clutter and could confuse some users.

Umm.. you have a button to switch between a fixed and fluid width version, but neither version seems fluid to me. Both are just different sizes of fixed width.
I'm in Firefox3 beta4 btw

cgarvey

Deleted User wrote: »

Umm.. you have a button to switch between a fixed and fluid width version, but neither version seems fluid to me. Both are just different sizes of fixed width.
I'm in Firefox3 beta4 btw

Yup, on Safari/FF3/IE7 on Windows that's the same for me. I like the layout. Orange a bit hard on the eyes when reading the more conventional black on white, but that's all. Nice job.

PixelTrawler

I like this layout a lot - tone down the orange a little though but the layouts spot on.

Gordon

Maybe not a big deal for you depending on your target audience, but it isn't obvious what the website is about to me. Everything is blocks of text with very little difference between header texts. What is Educate Tomorrow? Can you show a visual representation of it? I know you say a brief statement on the top left box, but I skipped that box immediately as it doesn't look like headline news to me.

Looking at Amnestys site doesn't give a good example of what I mean but for example, on their site, I am automatically drawn to the middle of the screen - "Join Amnesty" and then to "We stand up for humans wherever justice, freedom and truth are denied." and then on to the article.

Just an idea.

edit: ok, that's not the index page of the amnesty site, I thought it was, it's actually just an article as opposed to the front page.

EKRIUQ

There’s nothing wrong with the website, its a joomlashack website without much customisation and it is a nice simple layout that needs some more content.
Like alot of joomlashack sites.

Original is here http://demotemplates.joomlashack.com/voodoo/

SouperComputer

Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate it!

mewso

Have to second the font resizing thing. I argue with people about this constantly. A well designed site should not need this as the font should resize when the user chooses to resize it using whatever is the normal method on their client software (e.g. Ctrl+ on FF). It's a gimmick that too many sites use.