Hi,

Ive just started a web site as Im setting up as a freelance developer doing asp.net, css, c#.

 

Ive been building sites for a few years in the banking sector but never gone freelance before.

 

Any reviews would be appreciated..Good or bad

 

The site is (currently down -- see below)

 

Thanks for your time guys..

 

Cheers

 

UPDATE 16TH MARCH...

 

Thanks for the fed back all. A lot for me to think about..... Ive taken the site down and will be updating over the next few weeks....

 

Thanks again and Happy St Patricks Day!

Design Wise:

 

Nice clean navigation bar.

Unsure about the font type in the "Package" squares to the left. Perhaps something more friendly on the eye? Verdana? Arial? or Calibri is a personal favourite of mine.

The white space at the bottom needs filling; Too bigger gap between the last content box and the footer.

Remove the "::" from the title bars of the section boxes - looks abit garish.

The slanted text in the main header underneath the title and "Freelance web designer" text. Saying "Click here for a free no obligation quote!" ect. ect. I would prefer a normal non-rotated chunk of text. It's a general tad-unprofessional put off.

 

W3C/Coding:

 

Very Friendly, Very well written!

Nice Use of CSS.

 

Well done, If you make the changes I suggested, I think it would be a nice clean site The only designs flaws I though were (as stated) on the homepage. the rest of the pages I'd say are fine and don't need any alteration!

 

Goodluck!

B.

Cheers SLG.....Will make the changes (nice to have a 'fresh pair of eyes' look ot the site!) as your probably right (me trying photoshop for the first time and getting carried away )

 

Any comments gratefully accepted!!

 

Thanks again..

Sorry Festa, I'm not a big fan of the site, it reminds me of a market stall, you hit the nail on the head when you said about getting carried away with Photoshop, there are so many different effects and colour themes running through your text it looks like you have used 100 different fonts.

 

The cheap high quality web design section has nothing relating to it no border etc so the woman holding the money just finishes at the waist, looks like you have half a random woman floating on your site.

 

The portfolio section text "Click to see a working example" looks really naff, the strange thing is you have some really well thought out and put together sites in your portfolio, so why have you not done the same for your own site? it looks like you ran out of ideas and just applied effects to every element going.

 

My advice would be to stick to simple and elegant (which I have seen you can do well) get a good grid going, visit some colour inspiration sites to get a nice pallete together, pick 2 or 3 complimenting fonts maximum. and let your work take center stage. Lose all referances to cheap, it will do you no favours, people will think " oh well I cant afford a decent site, so I'll use this guy at least he's cheap" surely thats not what you want to aspire to? people will look at your previouse work and will make thier own mind up weather you are value for money or not.

 

Sorry to be harsh, hope it has been constructive though.

Thats the problem with Photoshop, it's got so many different effects and when you first start you want to use them all and think they all look good. After using it a while, the novelty will wear off and the effects won't seem so good

 

I think there should be some distinction between the background and the actual site. Like T Break said aswell, there doesn't seem to be a well thought out layout and I dare say there are too many colours on the site. I'd maybe strip out all the effects, get a more solid colour theme worked out and then re-apply the effects but when doing so ask yourself if it actually helps the site or not.

 

I also agree with T Break on the portfolio, some of the work looks great

I agree with the people above, the site looks a little messy. You have some great stuff in your portfolio though.

Thats the problem with Photoshop, it's got so many different effects and when you first start you want to use them all and think they all look good. After using it a while, the novelty will wear off and the effects won't seem so good

 

I think there should be some distinction between the background and the actual site. Like T Break said aswell, there doesn't seem to be a well thought out layout and I dare say there are too many colours on the site. I'd maybe strip out all the effects, get a more solid colour theme worked out and then re-apply the effects but when doing so ask yourself if it actually helps the site or not.

 

I also agree with T Break on the portfolio, some of the work looks great

 

Photoshop does not just have "effects" to be scattered.... People can make there own effects. It's just another digital art platform.

 

Your portfolio work is far better than the current site you have... I don't really know what went wrong.

Photoshop does not just have "effects" to be scattered.... People can make there own effects.

 

If you know the software, yes. I'm talking about layer styles mostly, satin, shadows, strokes, bevels etc. You first get on the software and you want to use them all.

sorry i've got you all wrong mate, but you forgot to take off the 'designed by template world' from the second one down on the right in your portfolio.

 

if you're passing other people's templates off as bespoke web designs no wonder you're cheap.

 

if you're not, i apologise, and i reckon you should use one of your portfolio designs as your own site.

Sorry Festa, I'm not a big fan of the site, it reminds me of a market stall, you hit the nail on the head when you said about getting carried away with Photoshop, there are so many different effects and colour themes running through your text it looks like you have used 100 different fonts.

 

The cheap high quality web design section has nothing relating to it no border etc so the woman holding the money just finishes at the waist, looks like you have half a random woman floating on your site.

 

The portfolio section text "Click to see a working example" looks really naff, the strange thing is you have some really well thought out and put together sites in your portfolio, so why have you not done the same for your own site? it looks like you ran out of ideas and just applied effects to every element going.

 

My advice would be to stick to simple and elegant (which I have seen you can do well) get a good grid going, visit some colour inspiration sites to get a nice pallete together, pick 2 or 3 complimenting fonts maximum. and let your work take center stage. Lose all referances to cheap, it will do you no favours, people will think " oh well I cant afford a decent site, so I'll use this guy at least he's cheap" surely thats not what you want to aspire to? people will look at your previouse work and will make thier own mind up weather you are value for money or not.

 

Sorry to be harsh, hope it has been constructive though.

 

Not harsh at all. Exactly the feedback I need to be honest. As you know you can get too close to working on a site and sometimes miss the obvious!! Good points that Ill work on...

 

Appreciate the feedback matey.

 

Thanks

sorry i've got you all wrong mate, but you forgot to take off the 'designed by template world' from the second one down on the right in your portfolio.

 

if you're passing other people's templates off as bespoke web designs no wonder you're cheap.

 

if you're not, i apologise, and i reckon you should use one of your portfolio designs as your own site.

Thanks for the feedback. The templates were just pages I knocked up to pad out the site, based on some templates Id seen, as I dont have a portfolio as yet. Most of my coding to date has been within a team of developers in a bank...

Anyway Im removing that for now and just going to add some 'dummy' clients with wording stating these are samples of what I can do etc.....

 

Cheers for the feedback!

Not harsh at all. Exactly the feedback I need to be honest. As you know you can get too close to working on a site and sometimes miss the obvious!! Good points that Ill work on...

 

Appreciate the feedback matey.

 

Thanks

No problem, glad it was useful.

Thanks for the feedback. The templates were just pages I knocked up to pad out the site, based on some templates Id seen, as I dont have a portfolio as yet. Most of my coding to date has been within a team of developers in a bank...

Anyway Im removing that for now and just going to add some 'dummy' clients with wording stating these are samples of what I can do etc.....

 

Cheers for the feedback!

 

 

fair play festa, good luck with it.

I counted 8 fonts (though I guess some could be italic variants or something). You should probably try and get that figure down to 2 (3 max).

 

And I think you need to lose most of the text effects (the outer glows, the inner bevels, shadows, etc etc). Sorry, but I'm afraid they scream "amateur".

 

Oh, and why does every page have about 4 inches of dead space at the bottom? Might be nice to lose that, so that the footer happens about half an inch below the longest column.

 

On the plus side: previous paragraph aside, nice use of whitespace. Some people could learn from you on that

I counted 8 fonts (though I guess some could be italic variants or something). You should probably try and get that figure down to 2 (3 max).

 

And I think you need to lose most of the text effects (the outer glows, the inner bevels, shadows, etc etc). Sorry, but I'm afraid they scream "amateur".

 

Oh, and why does every page have about 4 inches of dead space at the bottom? Might be nice to lose that, so that the footer happens about half an inch below the longest column.

 

On the plus side: previous paragraph aside, nice use of whitespace. Some people could learn from you on that

Thanks Zig .. good point on the fonts. Im cleaning up the site using the (I must admit) very helpfull comments Ive got so far. Only which Id joined this forum sooner

Just didn't dig the site, sorry. Didn't seem to "gel" properly, cant quite put my finger on it. One not about your portfolio: They scream templates, and I picked one at random and it used tables for layout.

One good plan is to first establish one’s credibility as a web designer by initially building a small base of customers. You have to be able to create excellent website design delivered in a fast turn-around time. From this small base, you can now use their testimonies to widen your customer base.I think there should be some distinction between the background and the actual site. Like T Break said aswell, there doesn't seem to be a well thought out layout and I dare say there are too many colours on the site. I'd maybe strip out all the effects, get a more solid colour theme worked out and then re-apply the effects but when doing so ask yourself if it actually helps the site or not.

 

 

 

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