Opinion on my first website

adocholiday

Hello everyone,

I have recently started a course in computer science and am currently building a website for a class project. I have had people review it and they say it's nice, great etc but I think they're just being nice because they know me. I'm relatively happy with it but it definitley needs an honest critique on the design, layout, colour scheme etc.

Because the site is being hosted on my lecturers server I don't want to link to it here if that's ok?

If anyone would genuinely be interested in having a quick look at it and giving me a bit of constructive criticism I can pm the link to them.

Thanks in advance

tricky D

First, getting opinions via PM isn't a good way to go about it. You have no guarantee of quality due to lack of peer reviewing which is a must considering the amount bad quality web design advice.

So, I advise you to post it in a new thread here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1382

adocholiday

thanks tricky will do

adocholiday

Hello everyone,

I have recently started a course in computer science and am currently building my first website for a class project. I have had people review it and they say it's nice, great etc but I think they're just being nice because they know me. I'm relatively happy with it but it definitley needs an honest critique on the design, layout, colour scheme etc.

The site can be found here and all help would really be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Irish_Elect_Eng

• Nice Colour Scheme.
• Simple uncomplicated site.
• Good First effort.

(1) Check ALL Links:

After Care - Link Broken

http://msc16.cmsmotion.com/conduct.doc

http://msc16.cmsmotion.com/conduct.doc


(2) Poor Text: Have a customers really critique what the site sayss to them

"While we are a small company" Never advertise limitations.


(3) Add Links and Pictures of work add recommendations if available.

• The Garavogue Bar, Sligo Town
• Longford Shopping Centre, Longford Town
• St. Emer's National School, Longford Town
• Temperance Hall, Longford Town

Our Commercial services include:

• Shopfronts & interiors
• Restaurant & Bar fronts & interiors
• Office and Apartment Blocks
• Hospitals & Schools

(4) Add Contact Links anywhere you ask a customer to contact you, link back to the contact detail or straight to open a mail:

"If you have a commercial project that you would like us to quote, please contact us to arrange a consultation"

(5) Get a quote form has poor titles.

Jobdesc FName.. etc.

(6) About Us Page:

Change Picture to a picture of the boss and employees, add links to profiles

(7) Lots more pictures change the main picture on each page

adocholiday

Thanks Irish,

I was aware of the broken links and the lack of pictures. These elements are still being developed but thank you very much for the other helpful feedback going to update those elements now. It was the layout and colour scheme I wanted a critique of so I'm happy with that feedback. Someone said that I shouldn't have the navbar the same colours as the logo but I think it works well.

Would you agree?

tricky D

I'd do something to make the navbar a bit more obvious.

Homepage text isn't sales or market oriented. It has a lot of fluff like 'Welcome to', and the last 2 paras have no value. You shouldn't need to tell people how to use the site. Far too much 'we' in use and not enough 'what we can do for you' type of content.

Layout of the footer links and address would be better as horizontal. It should also be consistent on all pages.

Text in the rhs of the logo could be plain html text as opposed to graphic.

Visually is good enough but the content isn't killer enough.

adocholiday

Thanks Tricky,

Will take your advice into account. I'm aware the footer is in rag order at the minute it's another element I have yet to complete. Will do a bit more on the content fair points made.

Thanks for the input

Trojan

Moved & merged.

TouchingVirus

Footer - Should be standard across all pages. Fix the images. No need for the bottom repeat of the navbar link IMO, the pages are small enough so that a scrollbar isn't needed on all but netbook screens. There's also a broken link to the Site Map.

Nav - Re-order the about-us to maybe the second link beside Home. You've got pages in the About page like Job Procedure and Code of Conduct that potential clients will want to see.

About us Make sure to incorporate the Job Procedure/Code of Conduct better in your content rather than tag them on at the end of the page like you're doing now. Also make sure the links work. There's no need to force people to have to download a Microsoft Office doc just to read about your procedure - make a new page and put the content of the doc on there, perhaps with pictures of your set-up and the various stages of your work.

Commercial - Resize that picture - It's 2835x1302px and using browser scaling via the <img> tag makes it look terrible. You can see in your picture on commercial that the chairs look very long or out of proportion. This is because 480x345, which is what you've set the size to is not the same aspect ratio as 2835x1302 which is the original size of the picture included. If you want 480px wide then the correct height is 220px. If you want 345px height then the correct width is 751px.Always stick to the aspect ratio of the original picture, or stray only slightly - If you reduce the width by 75% then also reduce the height by 75%.

condra

<just my opinion>

The Good:
The site is centered, and 960 is a fairly standard width.
The traditional layout is easy to navigate and the website highly functional.
Apart from the search thing taking up a whole row of premium space, the information architecture is very good.

The OK
The photographs are pretty good quality, but could be bigger, and better.
If you look at competing sites in this niche, it's interesting how they let images tell a lot of the story:
http://www.designertouches.co.uk/how_we_work.htm
http://www.interiorsmagazine.net/

That sort of background image works ok, but aside from plain backgrounds, a lot of modern websites are doing cute subtle backgrounds that surround the main section, and fade into nothing. Look at this site for example:
http://www.fakeword.com
Still, your background tile is ok, just perhaps a bit too eye catching. You could simply put down the darkness and contrast on your tile image.

The Bad:
The colour scheme is not great. The lemon yellow is insipid and sickly and the red text is too demanding.
Either way, coloured text on a coloured background is usually a design nono, regardless of whether the colours clash or compliment each other. If you remember only one thing I write here, please remember this: coloured text works on black, white, or grey. If your background really must have a colour tone, then please make your text black or white (whichever works best)

The colour schemes of home focussed sites tend to be very muted, natural colours, white, brown, coffee, grey, cream. Often their main text will be just shy of black, eg #222 or even #333

Fonts and typography aren't great. Look into CSS/Typography, which will allow you to make your typography much more elegant, with control over line height, letter spacing etc.

Helvetica is almost always the safest bet for an arty site such as fashion/interiors/music, but any standard font can be made look beautiful with some CSS massaging.

Blue, underlined links don't belong in this decade, and red text rarely works outside "hard sell" landing pages.

"Welcome to.." is old school IMO. A home decorators site like this should be elegant and subtle (bordering on whimsical and pretentious!)

_______

Anyway...

I've been fairly critical here but please take it as constructive criticism. You did a great job, especially for a relative beginner and someone not versed in graphic design.
It doesn't look like "my first website". It looks like "I'll be a pro in a year or two if I work at it".

</just my opinion>

PS. I would reccommend The Smashing Book for anyone who wants to take their web design to the next level.
It goes way beyond the techincal realm and delves into things like colour theory, information architecture, and good old fashioned marketing.
https://shop.smashingmagazine.com/smashing-book.html
(I'm not affiliated with Smashing Magazine in any way. It's just a bloody good book!)

You clearly have lots of technical savvy already. Add some aesthetic strings to your bow, and you will be a ninja.

donalg1

Like the site looks very nice.

Just wondering what you used to create the banner and logo?

mbiking123

Hello

Looks good to me except a few errors as already pointed out, personally the background looks good to me almost wallpaper look to it. The colour of the boxes is almost magnolia and looks similar to the picture, cream very popular for walls and leather furniture etc. One fault is the two pictures at the bottom look off center and the search box at the top looks out of place. get a quote is over two lines, possibly should only be one

adocholiday

Hi everyone,

Just want to thank you all for your feedback was very much appreciated. I didn't know people had been replying because boards never emailed me. I was very tight for time because my assignment was due so I only had a little bit of time to make some of the changes above.

I'm confident of doing well in that assignment now so thanks very much again everyone

adocholiday

donalg1 wrote: »

Like the site looks very nice.

Just wondering what you used to create the banner and logo?

Sorry for the late reply. I used Adobe Illustrator to design the header of the site