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Lawrence, I agree with Mark; it’s a nice looking site but the photos that need scrolling to be viewed, should be reduced to be seen in one “frame”. It would help keep the pics larger if, by clicking on the thumbnail, your header and sidebar would disappear, leaving the entire (or almost entire) browser for display. You could include a “back” or return button under the photo for those that haven’t learned about their own button yet.
I’m sorry to disagree with Mongo; I wouldn’t reduce the file size. Presumeably the photographs do some of the selling, and keeping them large and clear can only help. Admittedly, I have a very fast modem connection and the longest pic took about 3 seconds to load, but more and more people will be getting faster modems in the near future. If you’ve got the extra bandwidth, perhaps you could offer a high/low resolution option; I’ve seen it on a few pages.
Otherwise, I thought it was very nice; after a couple of days, maybe you’ll tell us what you don’t like about it?
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I'm probably due for some heavy flaming but our new website is up and there's a few things I'm not happy with, and with your help I may find a few more glaring deficiencys, or mabee some good old fashioned abuse, (I can take it...I'm on my medication).
http://www.gardenstructure.com
*Lawrence,Just took a quick peek.First very nice work. Some excellent detailing.One criticism if I may. When you click on the thumbnails to view images, they aren't viewable without having to scroll. This would be better to see as a complete image, Particularly as it is difficult to get a sense of scale when scrolling.Regardsmark
*The side bar and bottom links are good, easy to navigate. I like the fact that text is there to be read while the thumbs are loading below. I thought a very nice job with the colors, very stylish. No glaring retina-burning color combos. I'd consider "dumbing down" some of the thumbs. I'm assuming the same pic is used for both the thumb and the full sized pic, just the defined size is changed. I viewed with both IE and Netscape, some of the thumbs took a bit long to upload. I checked their size, some were 18-19 KB in size. It shouldn't be difficult to get a thumb down to just a few KB without losing quality.I only spent a few minutes, but I'll be back to peruse again. Very nice site, very nice work. No hokey graphics, either!Congrads!
*Lawrence, I agree with Mark; it's a nice looking site but the photos that need scrolling to be viewed, should be reduced to be seen in one "frame". It would help keep the pics larger if, by clicking on the thumbnail, your header and sidebar would disappear, leaving the entire (or almost entire) browser for display. You could include a "back" or return button under the photo for those that haven't learned about their own button yet.I'm sorry to disagree with Mongo; I wouldn't reduce the file size. Presumeably the photographs do some of the selling, and keeping them large and clear can only help. Admittedly, I have a very fast modem connection and the longest pic took about 3 seconds to load, but more and more people will be getting faster modems in the near future. If you've got the extra bandwidth, perhaps you could offer a high/low resolution option; I've seen it on a few pages.Otherwise, I thought it was very nice; after a couple of days, maybe you'll tell us what you don't like about it?
*Lawrence - I wouldn't remove the hammers. I thought about it all day. They weren't offensive when I went there and they carry a "work" message. Hell, even the Russian flag has a hammer on it to symbolize work. You are not a reseller, you make stuff. I vote for leaving them in. yb
*The pics were fine, it was the individual thumbs that I suggested he reduce file size on so the group of thumbs would load faster. They loaded ok on Net, slower on IE.
*Yup, the hammer on the front page bugs me. When enlarged that much you can see that it's a curved claw stanley...cheezy. I think we'll just dispense with the hammer and common nails on the first page...leave it on the others though. In the past 5 years I have approached 5 people about designing a logo...this was the first actual attempt. Hugh did some fine work. Thanks for the critiques guys. I'm at 28.8 and it loads in less than 20 seconds...I do like the fact the thumb nails are actually legible. I'll ask him to fit the pictures on one page...he won't be happy, 70 some odd photos. I've found plenty of grammar and layout errors, incomplete things etc...I'm sure he will finish(the fellow runs an on line newspaper). If anyone else see's any glaring deficiencys I'm all ears, and thanks again guys!L
*Oh Man Lawrence, I had been critiquing your page for almost three hours when I got the dreaded "This program has performed an illegal operation and will shut down" message from Netscape. That's enough to really piss me off. If Internet Explorer didn't suck too I'd switch. I've got a bunch of tips for you but I've gotta get to work. I'll post 'em tonight if I can.Dan
*I don't have much criticism Lawrence. Beautiful work. My only question is, what's your focus at this point, the garden structures, the renovations, or both?
*DanMOve on over to Netscape v4.5 avail free off the net. . . big file 14.2 megs, long download time, but a huge improvement over earlier versions. . . I used to have the same problems you are having, not any more!!!Lawrence your site looks really good, veryi classywhich should suit your target market. I concur with the other comments about not liking to have to scroll the pics. . . the hammer looks fine to me
*Three hours Dan? Geeze, I'll take that as a compliment plus some. Thanks for the nice words guys, and I will reduce those pics. Adrian, I've been trying to get out of the renovation biz for 5 years now...too volitile, but people will not let me quit entirely. Nowadays we just take the cost plus renovation jobs. I'm working plans for a couple spec houses, those will be interesting for sure. But, that will be a couple of years away. Fine tuning is what I would call what we're doing presently
*Got it already
*Lawrence,Man, painting cabinets sucks. Don't ever get a girlfriend who is a painter. I still can't believe that damned error message.I think your site is a good start. Your webmaster avoided a lot of common mistakes as Mongo points out -- no glaring neon font colors, or blinking widgets... What Mongo said about the thumbs is true too -- a thumb shouldn't be more than 9 or 10 kb if you can help it. This doesn't mean that they'll be smaller or much less intelligable it simply means that at that teeny size, there's only going to be so much detail anyway, why bother storing the detail that won't be seen?That said, here's what comes to mind as I surf through your site:I get to page 1.The image map it too big to fit my screen (my res is 800x600), 15" screen. There's a bunch of images stuck together with large words on the edges.. Some word are hot and some aren't.After looking for a few seconds I realize that one of my choices is "Welcome To Gardenstructure.com" But "Welcome to" kind of bleeds into the pic above representing DIY plans, and seems separate from "Gardenstructure.com". (That's probably why it's hard to see "Welcome to ..." at first glance). But the text "Welcome to..." isn't hot. I have to lower my cursor to the photo below it to get a link. Again, it seems untrelated until I look at it for a little while. Then I notice that the words below that particular photo relate to the welcome message. What your designer did, was to frame a pic with a welcome message above and below. "Welcome to Gardenstructure.com" above and "The Authentic source" below. That's fine. But when all the surrounding photos and text were added, I think the original focal point was lost. I can hear you thinking about getting rid of the hammer... and those nails too.Let's hold off for a minute.There's another discontinuity. The words "The Winterburn""Group"compete (possibly out compete) the words "Welcome to Gardenstructure.com". But they're also sort of separated from themselves illogically --hence the funny spacing.Exactly who am I visiting? The Winterburn Group or Gardenstructure.com?See what I mean? I also think the background is lost within all the photos and text. But let's just quit talking about the first page for a bit and talk about what makes a good site.For websites:Rule #1: Content is King.Rule #2: FAST loading.Rule #3: Make it fit the page.Rule #4: Information should flow logically.For any page layout:ContrastRepetition Alignment ProximityContrast comes from different things. But different things should be very different otherwise you get conflict. The principal being that if two things aren't exactly the same, make them VERY DIFFERENT . You can use lots of stuff to achieve contrast: type size, font style, color, texture, spacing ... the thing is to not be wimpy about it.Repetition is just to stick with a visual idea consistantly. Once you find something you like, stick with it throughout your entire ________.Alignment. The principal is that nothing should be placed on a page arbitrarily. Every item should have a visual connection with something else on the page.Proximity. Place like items together. Group things logically.Ok, back to your site:Once I click something (let's assume I click the center photo), I get a frames page. Here we have a new visual idea only mildly connected with the previous one. I can choose from links along the top and links on the side. Some of them are redundant however and some seem that they should be redundant -- "design service" is on top and on the side. "Information" and "About Us" seems to me to be the same thing.Ok, now lets just click through the buttons on the left:"About Us" -- get's me to the same place I'm already at."Design Service" -- Ok, now we've got something. What do we have? We've got a picture of an arch and some text. "Ok, they must have designed that arch" I say to myself. "Oh cool, it's a thumb". I click. The picture doesn't fit on the screen..."Do It Yourself" get's me some more text and thumbs. Fine. no problems here..."Information" -- I think you should combine this section with "About Us".Now, when I hit "Our Portfolio", all of a sudden the links on the left are different. I don't look there for examples from your portfolio because by now I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm only going to find "About Us", "DIY", Information" etc. I look for thumbs. "No thumbs? what kind of a portfolio is---- oh, wait there's some links on the left. What are they doing there? And how do I escape this section?" I think to myself. Now, I'm stranded. (Unless I use the text links at the bottom, but those are for weak browsers and I've got Netscape 4.5. No way in hell am I going to revert to weak links...). After using my "Back" button, I click "ProPlans" Here I find nothing but your assurance that you're a good builder. Which I believe, but it doesn't do me any good. I would suggest combining this text with "Our Portfolio" since you mention it in the text.I then click "Renovations" and only get one paragraph that doesn't do me any good. Combine this with the Intro/About Us section.Here's what I'd do:*Combine all the stuff I already said to get the following links:About ________ (the Winterburn Group, Gardenstructure.com, whatever, but decide what it's going to be...)Our PortfolioDesign ServiceDIY ProjectsOrdering InformationEmailHome *Place all the links together (Maybe along the top and use the side for page specific links --such as thumbs).*I'd probably either chuck the image map at page 1 or combine it with a frames page to avoid the discontinuity of page layouts. Combine it with About us/information/Welcome.*re-align the frames pages so that the text works more effectively with the banner. For some reason, the ordering information has a bar along the top (when none of the other pages do) and it doesn't align with anything.I don't mean to tear this thing apart, but you said you were in the mood for abuse...Here's what I like:That the banner gets a new photo in the left corner for each page. This ties in the image map well. I like the font used in Gardenstructure.com. I think it looks professional. I like the fact that we get to see examples of your work.Man, If Joe Fusco isn't pissed at me by now...Your site utilizes frames. Frames take longer to load. You may have a speed of light machine but your customers may not. I don't think that you need to use frames. Since the banner changes each time, new frames have to load for every page. I'd chuck the frames idea. I used frames on a page I built for a photographer for the reason that he wanted a copyright notice and I wanted to avoid a huge Copyright Warning page (because I think they're rude). By makin a two frame page I was able to satisfy him, and get a bunch of java links into a banner frame that never changes -- only loads once.Have a lookJava takes a little bit to load, but if it only needs to load once, it works well in this banner frame. Also, the photos are a bit big (kb-wise) but anyone visiting a photography site has to expect that it may take a minute...Your webmaster's going to bummed, but I think your site ought to be a whole lot simpler. Use tables to achieve the same basic idea: banner, side navigation bar, central text area. Align things so they make sense to the eye. Heck, take a look at the Fine Homebuilding site after thinking about what I said regarding page layout. Sean did a great job.You're pretty close too. Ok, I'm gonna click the "Post My Message" button and see if I can edit this sucker down within my 30 minute time limit...Looking forward to looking at the second version,Dan
*An excellant critique, Dan.Rich Beckman
*Man, that's a really big hammer. The home page has all these pretty photos of garden stuff, then there's this big ol' hammer - I noticed the hammer first. I have nothing against hammers - in fact, I love hammers, and the one on your page at least looks like it actually got some use - but I think the size of this one overwhelms everything else on the page; sizei doesmatter! ; ) Seriously, it's a very nice site, but the hammer stands out a little too much, imho.One other thing (still on that medication?): I really don't notice thei nameof your company until I actually look for it. I know it's in big letters, but being off to the side, it's not as noticeable. I think it should be at the top. Sometimes simple is best.One more thing: if you listen to everyone's opinions, you will need to triple your medication. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to do a web site, and came up with a great name (at leasti Iliked it!); there were a couple of other names floating around in my head, so I asked for some opinions. The site is still not up because I can't decide ...I wonder if "confused.com" is available?Good luck with your site!Patty
*www.confused.com is available. Just go there and see!Rich Beckman
*Why is the hammer on the home page rusty? Are you saying something?
*Yeah, he left it in the grass one day when he got his new air gun and never went back to get it.
*Damn, Rich, you mean someone's all ready taken my site name?!Patty
*No! No one has taken it. It is available. Go there and see. Rich Beckman
*Thanks Dan, Don't know how I'm ever to repay you. Quite a substantial critique, thank you. Next version, next friday. Oh, and Fiyo, I agree with you, and for the boys...not my hammer of course we use air, I've just never felt comfortable with a curved claw in my hand, it belongs to Hugh...nails too.
*You're welcome.
*Oh, okay... duh! : )
*Fiyo,Duh.com is taken