Hi folks, new to this forum, wondered if a few of you would look over our site and pass on your comments or suggestions. I have been slowly developing this site but still feel that there is alot of room for improvement. I dont know alot of code for clever scripts or fancy graphics. I prefer to keep things simple, that load quickly and look 'crisp' since we are an engineering based company, we like things to work. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks

www.air-equipment.co.uk

<Mod edit to comply with Site Review Rule #1 - Masterpeace>

Hi,

I'd love to help out. Could you post the URL?

John

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Visit Horror Author John D. Harvey at
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"The Cleansing" by John D. Harvey
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http://store.yahoo.com/shocklines/cleanbyjohdh.html

Sorry, URL is now in original message body.
Thanks

Hello again,

You've obviously concentrated on making the site fast, information-centric, and easily navigated. You've also made it easy for people to contact you about specific products and services. You'd be amazed at how many people create incredibly slick sites that still fail at the foundational things you've accomplished. So, you're off to a very good start.

The (semi) bad news is that you're site looks exactly like every other manufacturing / engineering site that I've ever looked at. It's a bit flat. I used to work in the jewelery manufacturing and machinery industry, so I've actually seen quite a few.

That said, your target audience probably doesn't need (or want) bandwidth-soaking flash animations, web games, and other such bells and whistles. So, my recommendation would be to find several manufacturing sites that you admire and *slowly* incorporate similar tools and graphic devices that make them distinctive while retaining your solid foundation. Eventually, your site will look really polished and be informative and sales-driven at the same time.

Be careful though, too many bells and whistles added too soon = bad site.

Some more specific things:

On my monitor, the blue column in the logo in the upper-left corner (airlogo300dsiiborder.png) doesn't line up with the page's blue left column.

On the home page, you might need a little more space between the three columns of text. And, instead of dividing that area into three rows (title, image, and text) divided by rules, think about dividing them into three colums. It helps the eye scan down, in my opinion.

At some point, you may want to think about doing something to compress or break up the "Products" page so that people can find and get info about your products (and ask you to contact them) without the page scrolling down so far. That's one of those areas where you should look at how other companies present their products / services and see if it sparks some ideas on your end.

I hope this helps! Good luck.

John

__________________
Visit Horror Author John D. Harvey at
http://www.johndharvey.com/
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"The Cleansing" by John D. Harvey
Arkham House Publishers - Shocklines.com
http://store.yahoo.com/shocklines/cleanbyjohdh.html

John,

Thanks for your comments and they will be taken on board. I see what you are saying about the home page text, and yes it is a bit flat, this is what I am trying to get round, as you say, look at other sites and see what works for me.

I have the problem with the main logo on my 19" monitor at home, but am not sure how to stop it happening, I need to fix the logo in place, CSS?

Thnaks for your comments.

I used to recommend to the jewelry manufacturers that they look at websites within the same industry (manufacturing) but in another niche (dentistry equipment & tools, for example).

The manufacturers in the dentistry industry had a lot of parallel processes when compared with jewelry manufacturers (plating, metalurgy, casting & finishing, etc), but they had found very interesting and effective ways of presenting their products and services that the jewelry guys never thought of. Why? Because all the jewelry guys were busy watching, imitating, and sometimes pirating each other's sites.

I'm not sure how to fix your logo woes. CSS might be the answer. I'm just starting to tinker with CSS positioning, so I'm not the best person to answer. Perhaps the best short term solution is a bit of a cheat: pull out the blue background on the logo and shift it to the right side of the page until you can figure something out.

Good luck!

John

__________________
Visit Horror Author John D. Harvey at
http://www.johndharvey.com/
=
"The Cleansing" by John D. Harvey
Arkham House Publishers - Shocklines.com
http://store.yahoo.com/shocklines/cleanbyjohdh.html