Okay, well, I have just finished rebranding my design. If you have seen it before, its almost exactly the same as my old site design. Let me know what you think from a design point of view, ignore scruffy coding and the fact the forms dont work - that is being cleaned up and sorted. so:
www.JKomp.com - Opinions Please! Thanks. If you want your site reviews, just post on WPW, cos i review most sites here anyway. Thanks again!

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Pet Care - Pet Cat Care

Anyone out there wiling to review my preliminary design? Nobody at all???

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Pet Care - Pet Cat Care

Branding has a lot of meanings. Mostly "rebranding" means, not changing this or that on the site, but altering the perceptions about the company in some major way. It is unclear how this is to be accomplished.

And have you looked at the site in anything but MSIE? For example, check out the services page in Firefox. Navigation does not show the user what page they are on which is a uaability faux pas.

The logo doesn't really match the rest of the site, there is no real business proposition, it isn't explained how ROI is achieved or improved. The tagline "web design at your fingertips" seems to suggest web design isn't at everyone's fingertips, all the time, from tens of thosands of competitive sources.

Sans the logo, the site looks like tens of thousands of others. It doesn't communicate a "brand message" or any of a handful of ideas about what a brand is or how successful brands are developed. Since the logo doesn't match other site elements, this raises certain questions which are not addressed in body copy. Since the site takes quite some time to load, it may be a bit of a letdown for users when the site finally shows up. Navigating within the site is bandwidth agony, and a time consuming task few (on any connection type) will put up with.

High bandwidth connection makes users more impatient, not less.

Keep in mind branding is supposed to differentiate, as not differentiating does not promise a good ROI. The site mistakes branding for small, inconsequential differences from a vast hoard of lookalike competition.

Thanks for the review, i didn't think anyone was going to take the time. You make some really good points, the logo is pretty terrible, i know. I just had to throw something in there to replace the old brand. Any idea for something else. Should i use the same sort of JK entwined theme? Also I know the loading thing is a problem, it never used to be when i used the same design on a different site. Its funny I just wrote an article '@kins Diet for Web Pages' about how people can speed up loading and how us web designers should use increased connection speeds as an excuse to clog up the web with excess media. Maybe I should start practicing what i preach ;)

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Pet Care - Pet Cat Care

It would depend on what you are trying to do. Most sites make the exercise a superficial decoration. Check out the Geeksquad site. Flashy? Sure.

That is simply not an issue.

Geeksquad asks a simple question: What would a "geek" "squad" actually do? ....How does this theme traslate into policy, work practice, and so on. In other words, how do we take the theme and weave it into every nook and cranny of how we do business. Goofy? Yes. Memorable? Yes.

That is branding.

One site used the picture of a tree, and, then ...nothing. A business consultancy uses a flash header with the word balance -- never to mention it again in word or deed. When this disconnect takes place, it just reduces the fancy decoration to pointless overhead. 1K 1,000K -- still overhead. Still pointless.

Making sure this does not happen is part of branding too.

More dancing Flash that I can't stop. What's the point?

I get a sintax error in line 214 of the home page. Golden web awards aren't worth the the paper they're not printed on.

Why use antialiased text in graphics when text would be clearer?

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Paul Bilton design services ~ Sites not Sights

all very good points. Thanks. Oh and btw the Geek Squad site is very nice. Very nice indeed.

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Pet Care - Pet Cat Care

I'm viewing your site in Firefox and your interior pages have some serious errors in regard to layout. Things are not lining up properly - you might want to check that out. (I didn't view your site in Explorer.)

I'd recommend adding some type of rollover effect on your navigation bar so visitors know those are active links.

Your logo looks very "amateur" in comparison to your Flash header - consider revising that to be more cutting-edge, if that's the overall look you're going for.

To clean up the overall feel to your web pages, lose the bold body text. It's too heavy and feels almost like you're yelling at your audience. Use a normal weight font for the body, not bold.

From experience, the most visited page on our design site is our Portfolio so it must perform well. An online portfolio provides you with the opportunity to present your capabilities and instill trust in a potential client...With the errors on your current portfolio page, a first impression of your design firm will not be a good one.

For example, the first sample link to CNTV returned a "connection refused" error; the Hyundai site has credit by another design firm (not yours); the third link to TVFC "could not be found"; the remaining links are either anchor tags to the same portfolio page or another site that could not be found. I was frustrated by just trying to view a sample design!

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Marcie Wolf
AlphaGeek Web Design | MarcieWolf.com