[tomsel]

Just looking for some feedback about a work in progress.

It's for a hair salon, and I've tried to keep it all clean and simple. There won't be a huge amount of content on the site so the layout reflects that.

A couple of points; The header image is obviously a placeholder (the eagle eyed will notice the subtle watermark) as my client wants to pick the image.

I've tested it in Chrome, Firefox and Safari and it works fine. There are some layout issues in IE which I'm working on now but as I said this is a WIP, I'm just looking to see if I'm on the right track or on to a loser.

Finally, currently the site requires Javascript to work. I'm going to code a fall back for browsers with no JS, but this isn't done yet. Also, how serious is not supporting Javascript? I accidentally left it disabled and was surprised that using Facebook is pretty much impossible with no JS, I would have expected such a major site to have some sort of fall back.

http://tomseldon.co..../templates/thc/

Thanks

Tom

[CreativeShelf]

I love the logo!

The whole site just looks how a salon website should. Easy to navigate and clean. I would say some things need to be a bit more lined up in terms of the boxes but a very good job, well done!

Polish it up a bit more and you'll be there.

Jake Simmonds,
DesignWebUK - Web designers in Lincolnshire

[JackDanielTracy]

Love it. As CreativeShelf, just how you would expect a salon website to be like..

My only thing is..

When you click on a bar, it feels as if it jumps around abit? Is there a way to make it a smoother transition?

[brightonmike]

Well, I'm using Chrome, and it does not work well for me at all. When the slides slide in, you get messy text all over the page. It's just a very, very messy slider.

It's also bad for usability. I think people are gonna find it hard to use.

Also, why is it 1300px wide?! You do know on most peoples computers your site will require horizontal scrolling? 1000px at the most...

Sorry, I just feel you're trying to be clever here but you've actually over-complicated what only needed to be a very simple website. Good effort though.

[Jason Dexter]

brightonmike, on 04 January 2012 - 04:24 PM, said:

Well, I'm using Chrome, and it does not work well for me at all. When the slides slide in, you get messy text all over the page. It's just a very, very messy slider.

It's also bad for usability. I think people are gonna find it hard to use.

Also, why is it 1300px wide?! You do know on most peoples computers your site will require horizontal scrolling? 1000px at the most...

Sorry, I just feel you're trying to be clever here but you've actually over-complicated what only needed to be a very simple website. Good effort though.

Seconded. There is no need for the sliding content and it makes he website really uncomfortable to use.

I "get" what you're going for, but when it comes to a business website and something that will be used to get clients to walk through the door it needs to be a lot easier to use.

Also, the three boxes under the header graphic take far too long to appear.

I'd take the sliding content out, put in a nice horizontal navigation and take it from there. Everything other than that slider thing is nice and works well

[tomsel]

Ok thanks for the advice and I'll take it on board.

As for the width, it's a maximum of 1300px, or 95% if smaller. So on smaller monitors there would be no issue. The minimum resolution is set at 800px so there would only be horizontal scrolling below that.

I might move away from the slider. I don't have the same issues regarding text over the page etc but it's good to know, my main concern was the usability.

[TheNickyYo]

To the audience the hairdressing site is aimed at they may have difficulties knowing a navigation bar even exists!

Nice design but i feel the sliding navigation style is more for a portfolio site.
That is my opinion.

So you know i love the design!

EDIT: make sure it validates for those with poor eyesight and for good SEO yes im sure Google takes this stuff into account.. http://validator.w3....=Inline&group=0

This post has been edited by TheNickyYo: 06 January 2012 - 06:28 AM

[Sogo7]

It's got some nice ideas but a tad overcooked on the javascript in places particulary that double sliding action, sort of reminiscent of a door being unbolted.

The trick to good design is achieving a compromise between the impression that site owner wants to create and providing the information the users actually want. Unfortunately for some types of site male web designers have no idea what women want.

Salons tend to be booked well in advance often by several months forcing customers to search wider into surrounding towns where they are unfamiliar with the street layout. Written directions therefore are not always sufficient thus forcing the user offsite for a map and if the salon is heavily booked it's probably going to be a wasted phonecall (not just for the user but the salon as well).

[tomsel]

I think I have to agree about the slider. On reflection it's a case of style over function, so I'll work on designing a better menu function later today.

Sogo7, thanks for the advice, but unless I missed your point entirely what do you suggest I do regarding directions? At the moment I believe I've listed directions which would make sense for any local customers, with an address and link to Google Map directions for anyone who isn't. What do you suggest?

Thanks again,

Tom

ETA: I've checked the validator: It all validates save for 3 'errors'. Two of those are empty img tags which are placeholders at the moment so won't throw up errors in the final version. The third error is:

 Line 13, Column 64: Bad value X-UA-Compatible for attribute http-equiv on element meta.
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">

Which I've been led to believe isn't a big deal, though I'm more than happy to be corrected.

This post has been edited by tomsel: 06 January 2012 - 01:38 PM

[tomsel]

Hi again.

I've reworked the layout, including ditching the whole slider menu thing and it would be great if you could have a look. There may be one or two margin errors, but I'd still like to know if you notice any as I may have missed some.

Also, as you can see it's still mainly placeholder content but it's the actual design and layout I'm looking for critique on.

The couple of issues I already know about are:
> I need to sprite the menu images, so no delay on hover effect
> Pre-load the hover image for the Facebook and Twitter CTAs on the home page

Thanks in advance

- Tom

ETA:
http://www.tomseldon...k/thehaircentre

This post has been edited by tomsel: 16 January 2012 - 07:07 PM

[Kat Harvey]

Great site, looks as though it should. Logo is fab too.

[zed]

Kat Harvey, on 20 January 2012 - 09:28 AM, said:

Great site, looks as though it should. Logo is fab too.

looks as though it should what?

[hodephdesign]

The general layout and style you're going for looks really good. It looks like there are a million different fonts on there though due to size, font family and capitalisation differences. You need to be a bit more consistent (I can see at least 3 different fonts and at least 4 different sizes of font).

I think the logo idea is great, but it looks a little cartoony at the moment, it might look better if you make the lower parts of the t, h and c all the same height (it looks like there is an odd perspective at the moment).