Site reviews requested

Spooky · #1 (**permalink**) 09-15-2005, 05:23 AM

Hi boys and girls.

Would appreciate thoughts on www.global-emigration.com

web_hosting_world · #2 (**permalink**) 09-15-2005, 02:49 PM

Excellent Navigation ! The site is very informative and the navigation is as smooth as one can think of for such a informative site.

If you make the font black or a pixel larger, it would be even more easier to read.

Overall site is perfect

paulduffield · #3 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 03:07 AM

This is an excellent site with the holy grail of good content really underpinning good design and navigation.

You have done a great job. The only thing that I noticed is that my Google PageRank indicator shows up with a zero at the moment ?

I manage a small team that does a site related to your subject area. www.saunders1865.com - Relocation. We don't do the visa's etc as we mainly concentrate on the actual physical relocation of executives mainly between the USA and UK. Doing their homesales and such like for them.

We mainly deal with large corporates that are relocating their executives but I get loads of enquiries from individuals etc - outside of our remit - and wont hesitate in refering them to your site for the information they need about visas etc.

The subject area that you cover is very complex and you have structured it in a way which gives enough information out to encourage an enquiry to take things further rather than the bland approach some take of "just give us your details first and then we will contact you".

In a nutshell well done!

Spooky · #4 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 05:51 AM

Thanks for the positive feedback guys, much appreciated.

Interesting about the font colour and size - I might have a quick play with making the font darker - built this on css so it is only one change to make (I think...). In due course I want to build in some features to allow people to customise the page in terms of font size etc, but needed to get this published in one month so took the simplest route to start with. No PR showing because it was only published this week and no real link building has begun yet.

Paul - I recognise the web site name. I notice that you have an immigration section in your UK guide and that you have a members area. Would there be any chance of getting some sort of link from your web site? I have another immigration web site that is well established and could provide a PR 4 or 5 link back to yourself, thus giving us both one way inbound links.

If anyone else has any feedback about the new site then please let me know. Only the fifth site I have built and self-taught, so very keen to ensure that it is as good as it can be.

Thanks guys!

orfeo · #5 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 10:02 AM

Very nice and clean structure. I would suggest some things, not that they are absolutely neccesary, but its my opinion.

1. Make the search box a little bigger maybe with a title "Search the site". You seem to have space to spare there.
2. The headlines "Immigration Assessments" etc are the same as the links like "UK Immigration". It may be confussing.
3. The font can be bigger. The site is not very long so why don't you make it a little easier to read/eye scan.
4. I think you need a logo, even a very simple one. The domain is absent completely from the surfers eyes.
5. The black header is invisible in Opera.

Generally its a nice site, but there is always room for improvement.

my cents.

orfeo · #6 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 10:03 AM

Very nice and clean structure. I would suggest some things, not that they are absolutely neccesary, but its my opinion.

1. Make the search box a little bigger maybe with a title "Search the site". You seem to have space to spare there.
2. The headlines "Immigration Assessments" etc are the same as the links like "UK Immigration". It may be confussing.
3. The font can be bigger. The site is not very long so why don't you make it a little easier to read/eye scan.
4. I think you need a logo, even a very simple one. The domain is absent completely from the surfers eyes.
5. The black header is invisible in Opera.

Generally its a nice site, but there is always room for improvement.

my cents.

Spooky · #7 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 11:56 AM

Valid point about the search box, although I wanted to try and avoid the left and right navigation bars being too "heavy". Was playing with a form background for the search at the time I read your post and decided to give that a go to soften it up a little bit.

The font size is possibly an issue - problem is that I tried using 12px instead of the 11px that is currently set and the font suddenly looked huge, making the page look a little unbalanced - if the navigation goes up the same jump in size then it gets messy, with some text spilling onto a second line - thus I had to stick with the current font size. Might have to investigate this though.

I am interested in what you said about Opera not seeing the black header - is it not there or does opera simply not display the black background colour?

Thanks for the valuable feedback thus far - keep it coming!

Spooky · #8 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 12:09 PM

Tried a very slightly darker font and you guys were all on to something - think it looks better than with the lighter font given the font size - let me know what you think and cheers for what has proven to be useful feedback thus far.

orfeo · #9 (**permalink**) 09-19-2005, 07:41 AM

The images seem to overlap 90% of the black stripe.

You should install opera (opera.com) and see yourself. It's good to see your site from various browsers.

The font looks better that way.

I had the same dilemma about the font looking suddenly too big when I tried making it 12 from 11. But now I can't see why I kept it 11 for so long. That happened on a Greek nuke site, have a look at it now that it has 12 font( http://www.256.gr * ).

*This is no advertisement or thread highjack since it is a greek site and of no use to anyone here.

Spooky · #10 (**permalink**) 09-19-2005, 08:00 AM

Interesting - see what you mean now. It also mucks up the form background image for the search box (loses the bottom). It appears that Opera is ignoring the fact that the black bar (and everything else on the page) is positioned from the top, which is meant to have zero padding/margin - in other words, the page is not meant to have a gap at the top. Works in IE and Firefox, so I am now wondering if it is worth bothering to fix this Opera problem as less than 1% of my site visitors use Opera - or is it something that would be ultra simple to adjust in the CSS? Probably off-topic now....

Anyway, thanks for the continued feedback.

orfeo · #11 (**permalink**) 09-20-2005, 12:00 PM

Try to specifically give the body margn and padding to 0. Do that for the container div also.

It is safe to specifically give this values because it decreases the possibility that someone might see your site messy.

Opera may have a small market share but it is a quit modern and fast browser (I use it myself). Its not Netscape 4 where you have everyright to say "They should upgrade".

**dharrison** · #12 (**permalink**) 09-20-2005, 03:57 PM

I don't think you really need us SC!

Lets see, you have good content, navigation, the site is all W3C compliant, and its very clear what the site is about.

If we are getting very picky (or me having a mad 5 minutes), the 'bookmark this' page link doesn't work in Mozilla Firefox, but that could just be FireFox and not you in the slightest.

Well done, mate!

Best regards

Spooky · #13 (**permalink**) 09-21-2005, 05:55 AM

Hi Orfeo,

The body already had the margin set to 0, but the padding had not been set and that seemed to sort it out in Opera without causing problems in Firefox or IE. Thanks for the pointer. There are still some slight issues around different rendering of a few small items, but these are so minimal as to be not worth fixing at this point in time in my opinion.

Odd about the Firefox javascript bookmark issue dharrison - I will have to look into that! Thanks for the compliments!