Topic: [SOLVED] fire away

[Dorky]

i do hear a lot of what bad about my site but i would love more suggestions of what to do instead of this or that. negativity for negativity sake is not constructive criticism.

[Dorky]

my code is not blocked so if i had bad code why did you not post the code in question.

[Dorky]

i could go on and on but really its a lot of nagative responses and implications with no suggested solutions or examples. if you dont post a suggested fix your just talking to hear yourself.

[Dorky]

cv i asked no question. i posted for review. the rules imply that you give suggestions not just negative comment.

[Daniel0]

[...] but i would love more suggestions of what to do [...]

My suggestion is to hire a designer.

[Dorky]

[...] but i would love more suggestions of what to do [...]

My suggestion is to hire a designer.

well i will implement that on my............. oh wait, i cant. its not actually about my site its about me! wow. almost got me there.

[Maq]

It looks pretty unappealing. The loading screen that comes up all the time seems rather pointless, and the green color doesn't fit the white background. The lack of distinction between regular text and links is problematic, and the general lack of color makes it dull and boring. Also, why did you use textareas for fields on the contact form? Overall it looks pretty unappealing and unprofessional. I would never buy web design services from a website like that.

The thing about statistics also sounds lame. If statistics demand you have 15 seconds to catch my attention, then why are you wasting my time with information that is not relevant to what I'm looking for?

what on my site is not relevant to what i am selling?

Maybe you should re-read Daniel's post.  He was saying that if statistics say you only have 15 seconds to catch someone's attention than you just wasted about 3-4 seconds making the reader read that nonsense.  Besides the content you have is the same shit every other freelance site promises.

i do hear a lot of what bad about my site but i would love more suggestions of what to do instead of this or that. negativity for negativity sake is not constructive criticism.

We did give you suggestions.  One of them is a road block for more.  A lot of us, including myself, suggested using more real estate.  That means use your own brain to create something bigger and better.  Why cram everything in a little tiny box?  I've never worked for a company, or seen a website with that type of design and been successful.  It just doesn't make sense to me.  I urge you to expand your page and have links to other sections in your site. 

EDIT: Just saw that you changed the layout.  Finally!  More real estate.  A few things:

 - I like the simple clean look but you should have some sort of container and maybe not such a black and white look.
 - Try to implement a consistent color scheme (There are resources on this site).
 - I'm not a fan of black arial (or w/e font that is) if you have a white background I would suggest dark gray and different font.
 - Create a footer.   Looks more professional.
 - Have you thought of putting the portfolio in a different section.  I understand it's the main point of your site but maybe have one "featured" site as a taste, and a link to the rest to reduce the scrolling and content on the main page.
 - Try to create a professionally looking graphic for your header.  Again, keep it simple but make it look nice.  I'm sure you can find good tutorials online for PS, GIMP, or w/e you're using.
- Overall a bit more styling and separation, just don't go overboard with it, keep it simple.

my code is not blocked so if i had bad code why did you not post the code in question.

You should add a bit more style and rely less on <br/> tags to margin areas.  Also, why don't you include your CSS instead of inline.

i could go on and on but really its a lot of nagative responses and implications with no suggested solutions or examples. if you dont post a suggested fix your just talking to hear yourself.

I think you're the one who stirred that up.  How about if someone doesn't have anything that you think is considered a suggestion, then you don't respond?

[Dorky]

thank you very much maq. i like they gray front idea and ill play with that a bit. and again the only place i use the br tags are for a loading cover div that goes away after the page loads. if you have cable you will probably never see the loading div.
i do understand making my site larger but honestly that wouldnt appeal to my target demographic, small businesses in my area. most of the people i talk to can hardly turn on a pc and are subject to information overload very quickly. i realize if you are selling to major brands this wouldnt cut it and maybe ill get to that level one day. but for right now im focusing on a more realistic goal for myself and need to consider things related to that goal.
most of that is making it easy to understand, affordable, and visually  appealing. i did make it more fluid in the chance i got a realy old customer tho. 

[isedeasy]

Your contact form does not seem to send, the only error I am getting is "Your contact information was entered improperly. Please try again" which is not very helpful.

I see you sorted the scaling issue 

[.josh]

thank you very much maq. i like they gray front idea and ill play with that a bit. and again the only place i use the br tags are for a loading cover div that goes away after the page loads. if you have cable you will probably never see the loading div.
i do understand making my site larger but honestly that wouldnt appeal to my target demographic, small businesses in my area. most of the people i talk to can hardly turn on a pc and are subject to information overload very quickly. i realize if you are selling to major brands this wouldnt cut it and maybe ill get to that level one day. but for right now im focusing on a more realistic goal for myself and need to consider things related to that goal.
most of that is making it easy to understand, affordable, and visually  appealing. i did make it more fluid in the chance i got a realy old customer tho. 

okay but we are also saying to not only use more real estate, but to also simplify the content.  Info overload comes from too much information, not bigger layout.  People who barely turn on computers like big, easy to spot things.

[Dorky]

ok i have made a little progress today. could you point out the part of content i should simplify? also i may have been working on the form when you tried it. i finished it last night. if it still doesnt work could you post the format you used to entered the info, i have strict char requirements on each field.

[gizmola]

I would personally suggest you just lose this sentence:

"Statistics demand I have 15 seconds to get your attention or you will lose interest and move on. I have decided not to waste your time with a reworded version of the same sales pitch you find throughout the web."

I realize you are trying to be clever, but the way its phrased doesn't work.  For example, "Statistics" is an area of mathematics, and as such, isn't capable of demanding anything.   

The main point in this regard, is that you're approaching things as if someone by accident is going to stumble upon your site, and it's your job to try and sell them on your skills as a web design and hosting provider.  Instead, I think you're better served focusing on providing the facts about your services and portfolio in a clean matter of fact manner. 

[isedeasy]

Ok, here is abit of feedback on your contact form.

I tried to contact you with the following details

name - test
home phone - 123456789
cell phone - 123456789
email - test@test.com

This gave me an error "! Your contact information was entered improperly. Please try again !". You mention that you have strict char requirements on each field which is great, what's not so great is the error message I receive.

The error does not tell me which field is invalid and why its invalid, as a potential customer I may give it one more try before leaving your site. If you had a message saying "The Home Phone number you entered is an invalid format, please use the format 123-456-789" it would just be a case of adding some dashes and resubmitting. You have to make these kind of forms accessible for the least computer illiterate people, getting them to guess why the data is invalid is never a good idea.

I would add some client side validation which highlights the invalid field and gives a descriptive message of why its invalid, as well as tweaking your server side validation to do the same.

As for the form it self I would consider adding labels, imo it makes the form look more proffesional and accesable.

I normally use the following format for my forms (not saying you should necessarily)

Code: [Select]

<style type="text/css">
   
    .form_line {
        padding:3px 5px;
        border-bottom:1px solid #ccc;
    }
   
    .form_line label {
        float:left;
        width:200px;
        display:block;
        padding:3px 0 0 0;
    }
   
</style>

<form action="example.php" method="post">

    <div class="form_line">
   
        <label for="name">Name</label>
        <input type="text" name="name" id="name"/>
   
    </div>
   
    <div class="form_line">
   
        <label for="phone">Phone</label>
        <input type="text" name="phone" id="phone"/>
   
    </div>
   
    <div class="form_line">
   
        <label for="email">Email</label>
        <input type="text" name="email" id="email"/>

    </div>

</form>

Also you should change those textarea's to input's.

Hope this helps.

[Dorky]

hmmmmm
did you enter

home phone - 123456789

or

123456789

and cv my roomy says the same but i am terrible at writing, im open for suggestions.

[lostprophetpunk]

The site is a lot better than it was when you first posted it. Although it is a simple design...it has a lot to improve on.

- Layout. The layout of the site is important, a bad layout can lead to your websites content not being read in a good manner...leading to a bad experience and could potentially lead to the user to leave. Look up grids for webdesign, and it will help you with the minimalistic design you are trying to create.
- Spacing. I have noticed a lot of inconsistant spacing within your design. Consistant spacing is important for a light design like yours. Try to keep the spacing as consistant as possible, to allow users to navigate your websites content more easily, this also fits into the grids for webdesign.
- Alignment. The alignment of the body of your design, does not match with the header and footer of your design...which causes it to look a little bit unprofessional.
- Typography. You only use two fonts within your design, arial and sans-serif. A good website design has around 3 fonts within the design. You can use on font for headings...which helps define headings within content. You can then have another font for body text. The line hiehgt of the body text should be about 1.5 times bigger than the size of your font. Such as if you use 14pt for the font size, the line height will be 21pt. This helps with the way the user can take in the content from your webpage.
- Colour. The green is a little too bright and can have an impact on some users eyes when they look at the page.

Here are some general things...
- Contact form. What exactly do you want users to contact you about? This is because all you are requesting the user to enter is their details. You could provide a text area or a drop down box which specifies what exactly the user is wanting to contact you about, such as design services, website feedback, website bugs or even just a message to say hi.
- Contact info. Why have your email at the top of the page in the header? You could possibly mention it on your contact page, or in your footer.
- Footer. Get rid of that huge chunk of text at the bottom of your page...and make a new page for the terms of service and legal information. Then in your 'footer' have maybe on the left...design (copyright symbol) 2009 STUDIO378D. The on the right side have something like Email: YourEmailAddress, the link to the new TOS & Legal Information page. This is to tidy it up a bit.
- Links. Why do you have a '?' after some of your links on your website...is there a need for it?

I hope this helps as that is about all I can think of.