Hi Guys
This site has been up for about a year now and has been almost a hobby but now as demand for our products has increased we are going to be going ltd next year and would like to present a more profesional look. Any feedback and sugestions will be most apreciated.
Hopfully the name will give somebody an idea :)

thanks

Carl

Hi Carl,

Nice and clean design and nav appears to be OK.

Missing a link for the resevoir on your fron page.

The only other niggly bits are your site is slow to load and I only use ISDN so 56k is going to be even slower.

Your site is big and bold with very clear graphics which is a huge plus, so all I would say is reduce the size of the text or put in an option of changing text size to suit (CSS) and look at optimizing your graphics. Thsi would obviosly be done by reducing everything but I think you could get away by reducing the colour depth as well.

Apart from that I think you have a very clear and easily navigable site. Well done,

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Keimos - Always learning something new each day
www.keimos.co.uk , www.keimos.net , www.selfpacedit.co.uk

I really have no constructive criticism except to say that the reviews page looks somewhat unfinished. Maybe remove the extra spots or better yet fill em up. :) Got some nice looking machines in the gallery though.

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Creative Logic - PC Accessories
Brett Child

Hi Carl,

I like the site. It's easy to use and the navigation round the site is easy. If does take a few seconds to load, but think that could be due to your dancin snowman!.
If you want a more professional look, then i would keep the colours, but change the font's. use a diffo font for the your title than the rest of the text. Also put a title on the page (in the head of your page), the tab on the taskbar just says index.

Andrew

Sorry! I sat staring at a blank page for much to long, so I moved on!

If you used Dreamweaver to develop you site there is a free extension that allows you to place a moving loading bar on a page as another preloads in the background. After the reload finished, you are then redirected to the already loaded page, just like a flash file can do! If you don't use Dreamweaver, you might find something similar on the web. I would put your logo or something on your loading status page to let people know where they are at while it loads.

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Timothy A. Keneipp
Managing Member/Designer
TAK Designs, LLC
PO Box 418
Baker City, OR 97814
info@takdesigns.com
www.takdesigns.com
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Professional design services for
web, print and branding.

My post is going to sound negative, but that is mainly because I am going to point to things that I think need improvement. So, please don't take this personally.

The site takes quite a while to load for the average visitor. Remember, the vast majority (about 75%) of users on the internet still use dial-up modems, not broadband. I estimate your Home page's file size to be close to 140kb. That equates to a load time of about 40 seconds for those using a 56k modem.

What is taking up your load time are the images. The dancing snowman is about 17kb and serves no purpose. I would remove it. Your thumbnails for you roll-over images are each over 10kb, ecept for the one on the far right, which is about 5kb. All of them are too large in physical size, too. Cropping the excessive white borders from both the thumbnails and the roll-over images would go a long way to decreasing the file sizes. The roll-over images themselves are large. The default image is about 50kb.

The layout is too wide and too long. Many small to average sized monitors will have a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page. Not everyone uses 1024 x 768 as a display setting. Also, because of the dancing snowman, the roll-over thumbnails are too low to catch a full view of the roll-over image as the cursor passes over the thumbnails on other settings.

I think your navigation buttons look a bit cluttered. I would suggest placing the main ones accross the top of the page in a text mode and move the Flash images of the buttons to the traditional left-hand column. This would move your main product image more to the center of the page. I think I would end the Home page just before it says "Latest News". You may want to create a separate page for recent news that can be reached via a small table with the links to the headings of that page.

Most of your site is consistent, which is a good thing. The one issue I have is that when going from the Home page to the Links page, for example, it's difficult to realize that it's a different page. Yes, the title heading changes, but the main images do not. I think the main images of the various pages should change within the consistent layout. Otherwise, it appears that it's just page after page of the same content. Oh, the Home page has a light blue background, while some of the other pages have a white background. I would pick a color and stick with it. Personally, between the two, I prefer the white.

Touching on tags, your title tag for the Home page is currently "index". As a matter of fact, all of your pages are titled with the page's file name. Use a brief, yet desciptive title that uses a keyword or two for each page on your site. This will help you with the search engines as well as look better. Many will discount the use of a keywords meta tag, yet I would still recommend using one. Also add a meta tag for the site description. As long as you don't spam and stay relevant, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from them. Make sure to continue keeping your title tags at the top of the meta tags, just after the start of the head tag.

All of your text is centered. I think that it would look better, if it was left-justified. Titles and such look okay centered, but not the main body of text. You have chosen Comic Sans as your font. This is a personal choice, however, be warned that many people actually hate this font. There are even groups organized to stop its use. Do a search for "comic sans" (without the quotes. The first result I found in Google was "ban comic sans".

Let me end on some positive notes. I think the site's over-all look is good. It's clean with a good use of color blending. The text is fairly easy to read, bar the centering. The images are crisp and clear, but I would definitely crop them more and compress them to reduce the load time, especially on your home page. You have used the alt attribute in with the images, good show!

I hope that helps. I didn't investigate every page nor every link. So, these are just major issues, rather than a fine-tooth combing of your site. Good Luck.

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DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com

Hi Guys and thanks for the feedback.
A few bits to take on board there.
One point i would make though conserning the resolution the site is built to be viewed in. Acording to our stats only 1% of our visitors use less than 1024 /768 thats why the site was built using this resolution.
Also re the dancing snowman ,not a permenant feature just a bit of fun for the festive season :)
As the borders are not part of the image but frame borders/frame pading do they actualy increase the load times?.
Thanks again for the feedback guys.

Yes, I understand that the snowman is a seasonal thing, however, your visitors are not. It is nonetheless an obstacle that takes up a lot of useless space and some load time.

No, table borders/margins of empty white space do not add to load time. However, the main image on your home page, smallkitcutout.jpg, is 300 x 300 pixels. I was able to crop it to 295 x 245. Not much excess in height, but a whopping 55 pixels in width. Also, for example, one of your thumnails on that page, amdclamp100.jpg, is 100 x 100. I was able to crop it to 77 x 60. You could still use table cells of 100 x 100 and center the images while saving on load time. Remember, I said I was able to crop them, not resize them, so the image of the product was still the same. Compression is another factor you should explore.

Regarding the 1024 x 768, even with those settings, there was trouble viewing the page properly. Don't forget, many people have other windows open such as their "favorites". Don't just assume it will be a full screen.

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DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com

Hi there,

DrTandem - Good points. The site does I think need to lose the comic sans, I personally prefer Tahoma, verdana or similar nice clean fonts. I think that would make a really noticable change. I think the white background is probably the way to go also.

To place all of your buttons in a row across the top would make it look alot nicer.

The title may be better as a nice logo with some graphic influence to it rather than text, Your photos on your main page look nice and professional and definately add to the feel of the site.

You could probably get away with losing alot of the black backgrounds in some of the cells if your going with the white background.

Best of luck with the changes, I can see this site doing very well.

Nick Foster

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www.prezents.co.uk

I use dial-up (no choice where we live). Took 70 seconds to load.
I also don't use flash (don't push it, this is not religion - and flash takes bandwidth and processor power). Thus, I saw no navigation. If one uses flash, it would be "kind" to offer a non-flash alternative like a lot of professional sites do. Flash may be cool, but not everyone has it (there are sites dedicated to removing and disabling flash, believe it or not - I'm not for that, but am for giving a choice to those of us who don't have it so we can enjoy your site)
I run the typical 800x600 (like at least 66% of the world) so the horizontal scroll was a pain. You can use percentage and make a fluid page that will resize with the window.
I love Christmas and holidays and such, but after a few seconds, Frosty was annoying. Too much animation - something less drastic, like something with less obvious animation, or something stationary would be fine. Or, put him on the side out of the way.
I'd move to a 2 column design at least. The best/easiest to read sites have white space on the sides - margins of about 5% or so. The eyes tire moving from left extrems to right extreme. The sites people stay the longest at are those that don't tire the eyes or have disctractions.
Ignore those that hate the comic sans font - some people have nothing better to do, and are usually affiliated with a certain political party. I can't believe there are people that are so arrogant so as to wish to take away the freedom of choice! I'd not use it as THE MAIN font, but using it where it makes sense if fine! We have some fun kids stuff on our site, believe me, Comic Sans is a perfect fit. An easy to read font like Verdana is easy on the eyes and has been shown to be among the best for monitor use. Arial is fine as well. However, Comic Sans is not exactly bad for the health, so I'd say since it's not causing them cancer, they need to get a life.
Move to a design based on a style sheet - it will simplify your code (you can remove old, deprecated font tags) and they can simply disable the font choice in their own browser using their own style sheet!

You seem like nice folks with a decent product, I've bookmarked your page so I can visit in the future. My machine runs hot most of the time - with 4 fans in it, besides the chip fan and processor fan. (AMD Athalon XP 2200, MX440 video, ABIT KD7, half a gig RAM, dual 40 gig drives raid array, DVD, CD/RW, etc.)

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Shadows Papa
From near a small town in central Iowa, USA
Please review
www.thequiltjunction.com and comment. Tips welcome - I love to learn and grow.
To learn about me and have fun
www.oldengine.org/members/billd

I see you used the premade Flash buttons in Dreamweaver. The only criticism I have is that I have no idea what the site is from looking at it. I feel you need to have an opening paragraph to explain the purpose of the site and how your company can help my needs in this area.

I agree fully with the comment on the opening paragraph suggestion - it's something I overlooked mentioning.
It's important - and will boost you in the searches.
Who are you, what do you do/sell. That should be first.

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Shadows Papa
From near a small town in central Iowa, USA
Please review
www.thequiltjunction.com and comment. Tips welcome - I love to learn and grow.
To learn about me and have fun
www.oldengine.org/members/billd