Dear Sirs,

may you please review the englisch site of our homepage: http://www.tdkv.net/tdkv/default.aspx?CID=2. We have revised it and I'm very glad, gaining more vistiors with it, but less response. Especially our Forum is very neccessary for me to learn more about our visitors needs. We have readers, but not yet very much writers. What can we do better?

Hi Casi,

Your site looks very good to me. The pages load very fast, the colors are eye-pleasing, and the navigation works very well. The site is very self-explanatory. Lots of work went into this, I can tell.

My only problem with the site is that I have to scroll to the right to see most pages. I suppose this is due to the huge yellow left-hand NAV image. If there was some other way to make your NAV info work for each section, such as the buttons you use, it might help this situation. Just a thought.

All in all, the site looks very good!

Keep us posted.

Davey

Casi,

I agree with Davey - the site is nicely laid out, but I'd eliminate the yellow bar on the side. If I have to scroll to the right, someone on an 800 screen would really be in trouble.

The other suggestion I have is to get an editor for the copy on the site. There are many phrases that do not correspond to normal grammar, in the US, anyway. Examples:

"Caused by the high flexibility of both packages we may offer you the perfect solution for the presentation of your company." We'd say something like: The flexibility of both packages offers you the perfect solution for presenting your company's capabilities.

"The manufacturing of equipment handbooks is a very time-consuming and cost-intensive exercise for any company." We'd say production of handbooks, not manufacturing.

"Our demand is to provide you with the most useful documentation and information about mobile cranes and crane rentals." We'd say our goal, not our demand.

I am a copywriter and would be glad to assist. But in any event, if you want to help people present their company capabilities in English, you really do need to edit the language.

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Hey Guys,

Thanks for your comments. I'm pleased about your well-meaning replies. The yellow bar on the left is part of our CI and contains the submenues. I thought it would make the navigation easy and clear. And the text will be overworked again. But texting always takes a lot of time for me. I think on some sites the text must be shorter and more pithy!?

What do you think about our forum? We have a very simple one. I'm always thinking about making a new forum like the phpBB ones. But will this help gaining more readers and posters? What is important to run a much used and visited forum?

Curious for your next comments. :-)

Best regards

Casi

Casi,

For the navigation, I'd suggest a drop down menu. If you don't have time to build one, there are menu builders you can purchase online.

As far as the Forum, I'm no expert, but here's my opinion. I looked at the Forum, and its much more than a place to chat. So, I'd say put something on the home page promoting the Forum and explaining that its a place to get information, find out about crane rentals anywhere in the world, etc.

To me, a forum is someplace to talk about a topic. Since yours is more informational, I might even call it something else - Crane News or Information or something like that. Also, do you intend to monitor the forum? I am aware of another forum similar to yours, and the company uses it as a way to get leads and answer product-specific questions. A moderator from the company reviews all the messages and responds when it is appropriate.

There was this exchange in All About Cranes:

Hanss Persson schrieb am 07.11.2004 um 11:24:31:
Specs for PC 9600 (44)
We search for specification of an older Pedestal crane, the Demag built PC 9600.

The technical information on this page are ok, but we need complete load charts and measures.

We are also interested to know who owns this crane at the moment.

Who can help?

Hanss


Ian Gregory (ian.gregory@mail.com) schrieb am 09.11.2004 um 12:22:10:
PC 9600 (29)
Morning Hanns,

The PC 9600 is owned by Sarens in Belgium.


Regards

Ian


Andrew schrieb am 09.11.2004 um 14:13:16:
Re: PC 9600 specs (35)
We have the complete demag-specs of the crane.

Which charts do you need? I could make a copy and
fax it to you.

Tell me your fax-number and the charts you need.

Andrew

Is the original poster a prospect for your company? Is Andrew someone from your company? If so, can he get access to the e-mail address of the original poster and send him an e-mail directly to see how you can help?

And, I know we all sound like a broken record, but since I have to scroll to see the entire screen, I didn't even notice you had a forum originally, because I couldnt see it!

Hope this helps.

Kathleen

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Good morning Kathleen,

I've made some little optical changes regarding the forum, so the head of the forum might be seen without scrolling.
In the past I had deleted the "latest post" for a while so that there was only the forum itself visible. But I had to learn that people do not read without these "appetizers".

I hope this works out better now.

You wrote: "To me, a forum is someplace to talk about a topic. Since yours is more informational".
I think this might be our "problem". With this sentence you opened my eyes. We don't have a real topic at the moment. It's a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but no real main topic. I have to work this out.

Regarding the navigation, I heard the same from a customer this morning. The problem here is that we run a CMS and those kind of layout-changings will cost a bunch of money.

Thanks for your advise that far.

Carsten

Hmm well it looks messed up in firefox. The whole page is split all funny... You should check it in multiple browsers not just one.

A DHTML drop down menu could work well with a site like that..

overall nice I like the logo :)

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1. Top looks alright.
2. Scrolls like crazy Left and Right IE6
3. Very paragraphy. People penpoint bullets and headlines more that paragraphs.

It would be interesting to see the original site.

Sorry to be so brief, but I am in the middle of a project.


Keith

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Custom Website Design
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Yes, I just checked it in Firefox .... Doesn't look great. But I have no ifluence to it because we are using a CMS. I will talk to our CMS-Designer.

Casi

The bright yellow is used a little too much for my taste. I'd only use a color that bright to emphasize an extremely important point on my site.

This, of course, is just an opinion.

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Nordic Inn NH

This is our companies colors and a kind of brand for us. The directories we publish are in a bright yellow ringbinder. And people sometimes don't remember the name but when I mention the color of the books they do remember.

In the contents of our page this bright yellow appears only in the headlines.

Hi Casi,

If you want an English-language site for English-apeaking people, hire an English-apeaking editor. This is very important! Coincidentally, I will be in Germany in a few months and I can recommend someone (or I can do it for you).

In my opinion, there's no reason to spend money designing a Web site that practically screams to an American or UK reader, "I was written by someone who doesn't speak English very well."

And the excuses your CMS/Web designer is making for the flawed look of your site, as others have noticed, are unacceptable. Hire someone to fix it. If you don't, you'll be losing money instead of making it.

Sorry for the harsh appraisal, but I hope you'll take it as constructive criticism to improve your site.

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