www.ravllc.com Robotic Autonomous Vehicles

JohnF · #1 (**permalink**) 06-21-2004, 06:47 PM

I would appreciate a review of my site. I am rather new to this and will reciprocate although I'm afraid my feedback might not be technical enough for this forum to matter. My site is about four weeks old. I am targeting the phrases "robotic autonomous vehicles", "DARPA Challenge", and "DARPA Grand Challenge". With Google I'm listed at 30 for "rav" (shortened), 40 for "DC" and 565 for "DGC". That is as of a little while ago. I seem to oscillate a bit in rankings. My site is http://www.ravllc.com . I just finished reading some reviews of other sites and am trying out the tools suggested. Question: I've read that clicking on your site from the search engine will increase ranking. Any truth. Thanx in advance. JohnF

ireneherz · #2 (**permalink**) 06-21-2004, 08:12 PM

The problem with white text on a dark background is
1) it's hard to read
2) some browsers don't show colors, so you'll have white text on white background.

May I suggest a gradient, dark on top for your very nice header, then lighter for the text so that you can have it in a more readable color?

Dcrux · #3 (**permalink**) 06-21-2004, 09:27 PM

If the site is just for recruiting and basic description it's fine. I would suggest a detailed analysis of what the first challenge did, and what you're doing differently. You seem to be covering this.

It might be interesting to take on, point by point, articles like Darpa's Debacle in the Desert.

Otherwise, you might want to articulate the purpose of the site.

JohnF · #4 (**permalink**) 06-22-2004, 09:40 PM

Thank you very much for your replies. Irene, I didn't think about the problem with a black background and white text. I'm cruising now to find a color scheme that fits and will work for browsers that don't support background colors. Tough week ahead so it will probably be Saturday before I can change. However, the feedback is most appreciated.

DCrux, the site is strictly for recruiting. We hope to share some information with people interested in the challenge but honestly don't care. I've tried to include enough to keep the casual visitor interested but sponsors and team members are what we're after. My target audience is the manufacturer who is being left behind in the challenge and is seeking a team to sponsor. We need to be that team.

I got a chance to look at the site on several machines today and see that my graphics need tweaking as well as my resolution. I am using 1024X768 here and it just looks like crap at lower resolutions. I plan to fix that this weekend as well.

Irene, I looked at your site and wouldn't presume to offer any advice. I am going to expand my links page with some more categories however and if you wish, will provide a link to you there. Just let me know. Same for DCrux if you would like to provide a site for me to link to.

Thanks again. Much better advice than I get from friends who often give feedback such as "WOW! Did you draw that?"

JF
http://www.ravllc.com Couldn't resist

jestep · #5 (**permalink**) 06-23-2004, 01:05 PM

Hi,
I have been sort of keeping up with the whole event since I heard about it a while ago. Thanks for stopping by the forum.

The white text may or may not be a problem. Most browsers can handle background colors, and from our stats we usually see much less than 1% of all the users that go to our sites that cant use background colors. I just checked, and in the last week we had only 1 user that would have had a hard time reading text if it were white, out of several thousand.

Anyway, its really not that important what the colors are, just that they look good, and I do like the color scheme that you have going. The blue and white looks very good.

Also on the pictures and movies page I get a page not found error when I click on the images to see the full size version.

The other things that I see are the internal pages have a different navigation pattern, that the parent page. While this is not vital to a website to have every page matching, is usually looks better if all the pages are uniform. This may just be a personal preferance.

On the donate page, you should put a list of ways that a person can contribute to your cause. I see that you have a link planned for equipment needed, and you should also summarize on the how to donate page.

I'll post again if I see anything else. Good luck to you.

Jamie

jestep · #6 (**permalink**) 06-23-2004, 01:08 PM

Oh one more thing.

If you had a really good logo, it would really bring the whole site together. You could also put a listing for a logo design under the sponsor section. Im sure that there are plenty of people or companies that would donate their services to help you out.

JohnF · #7 (**permalink**) 06-24-2004, 08:36 PM

Tx for input jestep. I need to rework pics page but been slammed at work this week. I'm planning an overhaul this weekend.

I've been looking for someone to do a logo. All the graphics I have now are 10 mins with a photo program and get em up. I have some nice stuff I did with Xara but they all look to canned. I really want the Alien organic/mechanical look but just haven't been able to draw it or find what I want.

Navigation currently is me messing with flash, java and graphics to determine where I want to end up. I think I may keep the color and graphic scheme and go to an arial text top/side/bottom navigation scheme with abundent links in my text.

Appreciate the feedback.
John