Hi,

 

I'd love to get some feedback on my new company web site MossFace Ltd

 

We have only been up and running for a couple of weeks and the site has been evolving over that time. I now feel its ready for some constructive criticism.

 

I look forward to hearing your views.

 

thanks in advance

 

Kips

My first suggestion is to make your navigation more obvious on the front page — you're making people jump through unnecessary hoops just to get to the main content.

My first suggestion is to make your navigation more obvious on the front page — you're making people jump through unnecessary hoops just to get to the main content.

 

I totally agree with this. I looked at it baffled for a moment until I realised the circles are in fact hover-button thingies. Most peculiar, I would lose them or make the inactive state a faded version of the hover state. Personally I'd lose the splash page entirely - start users on the home page.

you might also want to look at the coding aspect of your site, changing from using tables to css is a good start, as tables should only be used for tabular data and not for layouts of sites

 

Also look into making your site validate

 

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ine&group=0

 

 

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ine&group=0

Thanks to both of you for your comments.

I was initially concerend that this may be an issue but after quite extensive user research we have found that the majority of people imeadiately found the route through the splash page. In fact most of the people who had issues were what you would describe as internet savvy (web designers etc). I would be interested if anyone has ever done a rigourous study into this strange paradox.

 

The main issue with the splash screen is obviously the lack of direct info for the SE's to crawl although i have got round this to some extent using alt info for the flash images.

 

Any other comments would be great.

 

thanks again.

 

Kips

Hi there,

I'm not too sure about the pictures of the animals for the different sections.

I don't see how they're relevant to the site

I can't see your site...

It seems to be fine here but we have had issues with our hosting company/server and are about to migrate to a new dedicated server. This should put a stop to these embarrising little accidents.

 

hopefully you can reach the site now. Please do come back and comment.

 

Kips

Mystery meat navigation on your home page!

 

All pages - you've used heading tags for plain text copy, that throws any accessibility aspect right out the window!

 

Confusing link text - some items are links, other aren't, need to check your consistancy

 

Register - why????

 

Web design page - your nav dropdown disappears under the flash movie

 

No portfolio?

 

Table based layout, lots of silly html errors, and use of depracated tags which needs sorting

I can see your site now

Personally, I like the animals theme, I think it adds character to the project.

However, I'm not a fan of the splach page, and it sticks out a bit because it doesn't really tie in with the design of the rest of the site.

I found the fact that your drop down menu disappears under your flash content very frustrating. It would be my first priority for a fix as your customers will not want this kind of problem on their site.

I also think your imagery and flash take up too much of the space above the fold - not enough plain content. I agree that a portfolio page is a must if you are offering web design.

I would also question the value of using rounded corners (a personal beef of mine) as I wonder if they were a conscious part of the design or whether you've used them because you're used to seeing them everywhere? (I've also done this in the past )

I do like your use of colour and shadow on this site, gives it a nice clean look.

Validating your code will also add to your credability as a web designer.

 

Mystery meat navigation on your home page!

mystery meat? I can't see any meat! Am I missing something?

mystery meat? I can't see any meat! Am I missing something?

 

It means you have no idea what you're getting, because there is no text (or images!) on the navigation in it's default state.

It seems to be fine here but we have had issues with our hosting company/server and are about to migrate to a new dedicated server. This should put a stop to these embarrising little accidents.

 

hopefully you can reach the site now. Please do come back and comment.

 

Kips

 

Kips,

 

I really like the look and feel of it.

However, you really need to alter your web.config page to display graceful errors to your users should one be encountered.

 

See the link below for more info....

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/h0hfz6fc.aspx

 

Other than that, I think it's great.

Thanks for your comments.

 

I have changed a few things.

 

Let me know if you think they are improvements or if you see any other issues.

 

thanks again

 

Kips

 

(the current projects is temporary, it should be completed tomorrow)

Mystery meat navigation on your home page!

 

I worked it out pretty quick. Some will like and some won't like whatever you do.

 

I do find this wholesale dismissal interesting again, some people may not always get where you want them to go as a result of image navigation. But we are seeing increasing use of this with css rollovers and where once underlined text said nav and then other ways of marking text said nav - users are perjaps beginning to epect that images will be links more and more so?

 

I'd cover all bases and drop some subtle short text under the pics to reinforce that they are links.