Gravitational FX Web Desig

I think it makes sense to present your main content, proposition and call to action where visitors are likely to see them first so that does mean towards the top of the page, however, I'm with BlueDreamer - websites are dynamic and visitors will scroll and interact with a site so the whole page has to be considered. Wil.

Nice and clean. I would increase the typography size and add a clear call to action on your homepage to funnel the visitors in a clear direction. Cheerz, Wil.

Yup - i think that was what I was implying and u nailed it by answering the questions. If it's just for fun that's great but you're pretty much designing blind without a goal or purpose in sight. It's difficult to give your design feedback based on that premis. Cheerz, Wil.

Yup - that's the one I use too for vertical sites that disappear beneath the scroll line. Love FF for development.

It's very dark and gloomy. I don't think that inspires a lot of emotional connection with the site. Perhaps introduce some bright colours in to cheer the site up a bit? Wil.

I like the video content but for me the logo doesn't match what's being offered by the content. Too gothic-y and hard to read what it says without straining the eyes. Wil.

Depends on what you're wanting your 2% of customers on mobiles to experience. If you want them to experience the full website then perhaps use CSS to deliver this as Renaissance sai. However, maybe you'd like them to experience a very cut down version of your site: What We Do, About, Contact, Latest etc, You could develop a few simple pages presented more like an app and give mobile users the choice to view that or your full site. Wil.

I would go back even further. * Understanding your customer and their business * Defining project and website goals * Looking at example website content * Keyword research ..then perhaps get into the actual physical designs such as layout, usability etc Hope this helps. Wil.

Press the "Print Scrn" button and paste it into your graphics program the crop to fit. Don't know why people but screen grabbing software when it's been there for free for donkeys years. Wil.

Your "Contact" menu item is wrapping at the end of the div and dropping down to the next line in IE9 Wil.

Nice one. You should start with a tall skinny guy and "evolve" to a burger eating obese westerner. Is that evolution or devolution? :-P

Well I get the cigars message big time. Cigars, cigars, cigars, cigars, cigars, cigars, cigars, cigars, cigars... and cigars. Definately tone down on images and introduce some calls to action. Cheerz, Wil.

I gave up doing final designs in Photoshop and rolled it back to using it for basic wireframing prototypes. Unless you're using graphics, I found it difficult to replicate the text and font rendering in Photoshop with what the browsers can acheive. Customers were always picking up on things like "the text looked nicer in the initial designs". So now I pretty much develop in the browser itself once the wireframes, logo and basic colour schemes have been OK'd. What about you guys? Wil.

It's interesting to watch your design evolve from the logo and color scheme. Personally I prefer to design around the actual content of a website and it's main goals. Why is the visitor here? What are they after? Where can I direct them next? What do I want them to achieve? Cheerz, Wil.

The "Join Our Mailing List" section is quite large and there's no reason on why I would join. What's in it for me if I join? Why whould I give you my name and email address? Those are some of the initial thoughts that will go through visitors heads. Turn it around and make a proposition such as: "Free Monthly Design Tips Subscribe to our top design tips to receive your free monthly web design tips. You can unsubscribe at any time." Cheerz, Wil.

Yup - keywords and phrases first for meta, titles, h1's and openening paragraph. FireFox 4 as my primary, Chrome as well. If it's part of the customer branding then I guess you're stuck with that. Perhaps you could use cufon or similar to render them into graphics. That way you'd have a consistent look across most of the browsers that support javascript. Cheerz, Wil.

Your colours are just too bold and strong. They completely take over and take focus away from the main content. Try to build your design around the main content of the site and not the navigation or sidebars. It should be the content that stands out. Try some pastel - just off-white colours for the navigation and sidebar, introducing some colour and immages into your main content. Why not grab some logos of your top 10 brands and place some of them in your scroller to see how that would work. Have a look at the myvouchercodes.co.uk site. The design isn't particulary inspiring but it's certainly focused on the content rather than the navigation. Hope this helps ya. Wil.

Forums are a lot of work and require a fair bit of moderation otherwise they get spammed with porn and ads. Live chat - if you mean chat rooms - you need to be careful about this and there are some legal requirements you should be aware of so that you don't leave yourself open for liable, defamitory or illiegal actions of people using the chat system. Then there are policies to put in place regarding minors. Have a good think about it before you jump into chat rooms if this was your angle. If it's a one-2-one live chat system with yourself then that's fine. I have one on my website linked to my Google Talk account and it works very well for me. Cheerz, Wil.

Hi t3chnobear I think the wireframe design is nice and clean but I don't think the colour scheme is quite right. The logo is a poor contrast against the dark background. The brown main content area doesn't seem to work well with the dark blue background and the red box just screams out and it's the first place my eyes are drawn to. I think the site could do with some pictures of people to create an emotional connection with your visitors and some calls to action on the homepage. Just having text explaining what the foundation is OK but try to turn it into a selling proposition. e.g. "The HIND Foundation is here to provide funding for exciting cultural community-based projects in the San Luis area. Contact a memer of our foundation team and let us know about your local project. We may be able to help you." Hope thelps. Cheerz, Wil.

I quite like the design - big and chucky text is good. I agree with the guys above - the top gradient needs to be at least 50% more opaque than your current design. Customers will always be "vague" about design aspects because that's not their skill set. They are relying on you to present a design to them and (more importantly) to explain what you've done and why you think it works. Of course I don't know how you and you're customer are working together but I have encountered other design firms that just fire off an email to the customer with a screenshot design of a website asking for "feedback on the attached". I tend to produce two images at first, one the actual design prototype and another with some overlayed references numbers. I can then outline in the email using the reference numbers what's going on in that particular area, then I call and take the customer through the design to give a personal and in depth walk through. Once the basic design has been agreed I move to an actual working website so that the customer can interact and the cycle starts until completion. Hope this helps ya. Cheerz, Wil.

I agree with Eva. The slideshow you have doesn't work as it's cropping images and text making them unreadable and unregognisable. You shouldn't assume that visitors will click on something just to have a look. It's usually the opposite. I would replace the slideshow with one that shows the full image and overlay text allowing the visitor to click through. You can try either full or 1/2 width. Your logo tag line "Movies, Sports, Music, TV and Gaming" has poor visibility due to the drop-shadow. It makes the text blurry to read. I'd remove the drop shadow. There's really nothing on the home page that at first glance tells me what I'll get on the site. Reviews? Gossip? Events? ??? Nothing really grabs my attention to confirm what I'll get here. The top navigation is not very readable due to the imbossed style you've chosen and when the sub menus are highlighted the text almost seems to fade into the highlight. It should pop out with a higher contrast. Logo - the main content frame has rounded corners yet your logo has square edges and you can clearly see the rounded LHS of the content frame behind the logo. Consider making this sit properly with the design. Being honest I think you've got way too much advertising and not enough focus on the content. 1. Huge top banner 2. Large RHS banner 3. Google ads 1/2 way down RHS 4. Love Film towards bottom 5. Time Warner Cable at the bottom Cheerz, Wil.

It's very plain and the text is quite small. Also - there's no <h1> tag which doesn't bode very well for SEO. On the nav when you select a menu item, the name of the item also appears in grey to the RHS of the menu. Cheerz, Wil.

Hi Joe The colour scheme is very cold and way over-use of heavy grey shading makes it look chunky and gloomy. If you're trying to sell the site as a friendly helpful dynamic site you really need to work on a brighter and more elegent colour scheme. You really need to inject some colour into the main body of the page too. The headings on the RHS navigator are black with a green drop-shadow on a grey background. This just does not work. For people with impaired vision this would be a nightmare. I wouldn't reserve a place on the nav for expired codes. People want to know valid codes not expired ones and the word "expired" can send a negative message. Drop the "Welcome to.." from the main headline. People are already on your site so you don't have to welcome them to it. Use the space to sell your main website proposition e.g. "Get Discounts On Your Favourite High Street Brand Names" The wording on the page needs to be reworked to reinforce what the site is offering and put in some strong calls to action. I would avoid explaining what voucher codes are - everybody knows this. Tell it as it is. "We offer you great discounts from top retailers for free! Search, print and get money off your next shop. It's that easy. Never miss a discount. Signup for our weekly top 10 discounts by email and get some great deals or follow us on Twitter and grab those money-off vouchers before they expire." For the Contact Us part - you need to explain /think why people would want to contact you otherwise remove this and give yourself more room. Hope this helps. Cheerz, Wil.

For me the ArialRoundedMTBold font isn't rendering very nicely for your headers. Looks a bit blocky and jaggy. A good SEO tip is to put your keywords first on your page title. You currently have: Home | Reflect Studios | Web Design and Development | Northern Ireland I would change the home page title to: Powerful Affordable Websites in Northern Ireland - Reflect Studios and sub-pages to: <page title> - Reflect Studios e.g. Search Engine Optimisation in Northern Ireland - Reflect Studios Could do with adopting frieldly URLs too. For example your SEO page is /services/item/9/search-engine-optimisation See if you can get a plugin or module to remove the "item/9/ from your URLs. I like the colour scheme and funky icons. Cheerz, Wil.

I like the logo - nice and simple. The navigation would perhaps be better on the RHS to move the relevant content to the right and make it easier to read. Perhaps have a more dynamic home page with snippets from the various sections of the site, e.g. latest forum post, latest article etc Login form can be dropped from the home page- from a visitors point of view - why would I login (here) - what will I get out of it? It's not clear. Unless there are techies amongst your visitors, I would drop the "website updates" section from your site and definately the home page. Visitors will be interested in getting UFO info from around Hampshire and that should be the main goal of the site. Perhaps you could offer a small landing page guide on the homepage to jump to areas of the site, e.g. Latest Hampsire UFO News Report a UFO in Hampshire Read abot UFO reports from Hamphire Discuss UFO related issues in our UFO Forum Visit our on line shop Hope this helps. Cheerz, Wil.