Quote:
Originally Posted by DannyV
I'm not very impressed with your website. Please take the following as constructive criticism.
On the technical side: - I feel there are too many colours and it's hard to focus on the content.
- The choice of font could be better, Times New Roman seems a bit too plain. On the other hand, Jokerman is difficult to read.
- Looking at your code, you're using tables for the layout, which is outdated. CSS divs are the way to go nowadays
- Speaking of CSS, your classes are generically named (i.e. style30). I feel they should bear descriptive names - for example where you use the Jokerman font, instead of the class being called "ki" it shold be named "pageHeader" or something along those lines. Programming classes have taught me from early on that an appropriately named variable saves much time when debugging. The same applies for web-development
- You're using javascript for your rollovers. They won't work if the person viewing your page has javascript disabled (a wise choice on his or her part in terms of security).
- What about PHP, ASP, .NET, WEB2.0, SQL, etc?
- EDIT: check out your home page in IE8. It does not render properly. You will need to test your and your customer's websites in the major browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, FireFox, Opera, Safari, etc.)
On the business side, - You suggest people "Take advantage of these unbeatable prices on all [your] services!" but I haven't found any prices.
- Along the same lines, in your portfolio, you should describe who the customer was, what were the needs and how did you meet the customer's needs?
- Please double check your spelling and grammar.
- I don't know what your sales figures are, but how are "custom buttons" doing?
- What does the customer get for your Web Hosting packages? (how much storage space? how much bandwidth? how many databases? how many email addresses?) These are things a savvy customer would know to look for.
- Price plans? How much is this going to cost me?
- You have a pretty long list of Terms & Conditions...they seem better suited for a contract.
- EDIT: You need to put the prices on the services page (you mention "Summer Discounts (Until Fall ’09) : As advertised on the Services Page" but there are NO prices on the services page
I think you need to sit down and come up with a business plan. It doesn't have to be extensive, but it should cover the things I've mentioned above (i.e. prices).
As well, keep in mind that a simple design is sometimes years ahead of a flashy and busy design.
Overall, if I was looking for a company to take care of a website (a position I have found myself in before) I would have to pass on BlackDragon designs at the moment.
I do wish you good luck in the future though, always great to see entrepreneurs! |
Danny Brings up many good points. I will also bring up some other things that I feel could also be addressed and haven't already been brought up, as well as elaborate on other things.
DESIGN:
The design is all over the place. In general, you seem to apply banners that follow a typical "grunge" style in terms of photoshop tutorials describing it as such. In terms of difficulty and site design, this is a no-no. Not only does it spell "beginner", it is an eye strain and doesn't give a good impression on possible clients.
Secondly, your use of colors is non-complimentary Greens mixing in with Yellows and Reds. It's an eyesore when you've got warm colors trying to mix in with a cooler green color. You should look towards using color palettes that are complimentary, and subtle on the eyes.
FONT COMMENT:
Another big point is the font as it has been mentioned numerously before. Font is _KEY_ to your design. In your design, you simply go with numerous fontstyles, and ignore simplicity. As well, it's wise to consider that not every machine will have a font like "Trajan Pro". What happens when you don't have the font? Your browser will automatically use some default font, and it will most often be very ugly. Because of that, designers typically list of an order of fonts. The browser will go through each font-family from left to right until a specific font is found on the machine.
Illustrating the above, this is an idea of what you are doing, and what it should be:
Code:
/* Some CSS Snippet That you have written */
body{
font-family: "Gill";
}
/* If the user doesn't have Gill, tough luck is what your site will illustrate to the viewer. This is not the way to go.
instead, use something similar below*/
body{
font-family: Gill, Helvetica, sans-serif
}
The general set up is that your "fancier" fonts go first, and the last font listed should ALWAYS be your generic-font family (serif, sans-serif, monospace etc).
While I'm on the topic of fonts, there is actually a well prescribed list of web-safe fonts [
here] (
W3 is another good site to search around for when it comes to complying to proper web standards). These are the general fonts you want to place on your site, and if you feel the need to go fancy on a banner of header, you could consider using a .gif to get the write text. Remember, you always have to think of the end user, and sometimes, they won't have this totally awesome font that you want to show off.
Ah, and don't go overkill on the fonts. Try and remain consistent. Paragraphs in the same body should typically be the same font throughout, and differences should appear in things like headers and whatnot.
STYLESHEET COMMENTS:
Firstly; you're stylesheet is horrible to follow. As danny mentioned above, the classes are supposed to be named in such a manner that are easy to follow. Assume a client likes the general layout of the design, but feels that a certain margin should be readjusted or any other property for that matter; it will be hard to go back and search for the specific property in question when you have an inherited class called "hjgshjagsd". And I'm quoting your stylesheet on that. It also leaves a bad impression on your client, as it shows general disorganization.
As well, you're cascading sheet is cluttered with extra lines for tons of properties that actually can actually be shortened into one deceleration. Doing so, this generally makes your sheet more organized and is a big plus for yourself when you run around looking for things.
Lastly; you've been using a LOT of inline CSS. That is a "no-no". Never force yourself to use inline, as it's bad coding habbits. There is a heirarchy that css follows, but in general, you should have all your properties declared externally on a seperate css file (or even imported if you need to). But
NEVER use inline.
HTML COMMENTS:
There are a few points here. Once again, as Danny mentioned earlier, you've got a bad setup in using a Table for your layout. He is correct in saying this. Not only is this outdated in terms of today's standards, it's highly looked down upon and actually goes against web practice (once again, you can search
W3 for this). You should be using divisors throughout your html document, and it should be set up in such a matter that you can make better use of your classes and ID's (not that you have used any); which I will now get into.
You should be able to clarify the difference between when to use a class, and when to use an ID. Classes are used for html elements that are required to look a certain way multiple times (i.e, two paragraphs both have to have a certain color font, font-weight, or some other style). However, you've been using your classes wrong, and in some instances, it's much understandable to use an ID. It doesn't actually make a difference, but it's just proper and responsible coding.
I also noticed that you have points where you have a Table for example that will have two particular paragraphs in one cell. Of this, both paragraphs will have them same class declaration located in your stylesheet. This is a bad habit. You should be making use of inheritance and/or Contextual selectors; For example, you post at one point something like this below
HTML Code:
<td>
<p class="style30">Some Text</p>
<p class="Style30">Some more text </p>
This is once again, an example of bad practice. Both are elements located within the same table cell, yet your redundantly give them both the same class. Once again, works, but it's much cleaner to have something like so in your stylesheet
Code:
td p {
/* some css decleration */
}
The above saves a whole lot of time (and space!) by targeting all paragraph elements within table cells. Since you essentially have paragraphs all acting the same, it makes sense to save on pointless bog down for your site's html file.
Another weird thing that i noticed is that sometimes you will use a class on a certain html element, but following the class declaration, you will use inline css that targets the same properties targeted in the class, making it utterly pointless in some cases. What I basically mean is that you'll have some paragraph that calls upon class "style20" for example, which targets the font-color. But immediately after this, you will use inline css to target the color directly on your html file, changing it to some other color. Of course, cascading being a highlight in ccs, the inline css takes higher priority over any external css in the hierarchy.
OTHER COMMENTS:- I noticed that on your site, you do not list the specific skills that you and your partner possess. For example, what sort of languages do you know of? (X)Html, CSS and Java seem to be your particular forte; however, this is very limited, any clients sometiems look for people that are familiar with using MySQL and PHP, much like Danny said. If you guys come to a point where you're really serious about it, you should considering downloading WAMP/LAMP/MAMP (Windows/Linux/Mac - respectively - Apache MySQL PHP/Perl/Python); a free program environment that focus' on dynamic web pages (because HTML is static fyi). You can run it as a localhost, and practice the languages as well as database management.
- From a personal standpoint, your designer should work more to expand his particular style. His or Her designs (from the forum signatures provided in your portfolio) are very generic and hold the same feel to most of them. A designer needs to be flexible sometimes in order to meet with specific customer needs.
- Be careful with PHP though~ for the inexperienced novice, you can open a ton of security loop holes for websites. Practice makes perfect though!
- While you're at it, why not look into Content Management Systems (CMS) in the long run? Things like Drupal or even Wordpress(which you've already been tinkering with from what I read on your site) are fantastic examples of CMS that add a ton of functionality that you can offer to your clients.
- There are a ton of sites that you should consider looking towards when you're doing web dev. Remember, sometimes it's good to see what a lot of big names are doing in the industry. Of course, don't copy their work, but it's good to have a heads up of what's exactly "in" and "out". Just like the modern day world, websites need to sometimes adapt to trends based on what product or service you are trying to offer. To set you off, try a site like Veerle.Duoh. Veerle is a Belgium designer, and she's a pretty notable designer in the industry. She provides a ton of comments on certain aspects about webdesign, and even provides a load of tutorials for css and photoshop/illustrator
- Consider expanding your knowledge in languages, and even continuing your knowledge of CSS and (X)HTML. Tons of others provide a bunch of insight, and you'll be surprised at what you can learn outside of what you might already have a firm grasp on.
- Lastly, jumping on the comic-sans bandwagon, let me quote a designer.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Simon Collision
"...Comic Sans is a bit of a joke... any websites using Comic Sans tend to have that 'My First Web site' feel about them."
|
Simon Collision, author of
Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional
Closing Comment:
Web design ain't easy. It's a brutal industry, and tons of people do it but don't get far. However, if you feel you got an idea to make it far, the dedication to study and learn, you can hopefully pull of a succesful business. They say webdesign ain't the most lucrative profession (considering so many people do it), but what makes it special is the passion that people have for it. Hell, who knows; if you're passionate enough, it might even pay off for you. Regardless, best of luck and please don't take the massive wall of text above as a stab at ya. It's supposed to be constructive, and hopefully it will help you out!
-Cheers
