New E85 Ethanol site for review

whipnet · #1 (**permalink**) 04-14-2006, 10:34 AM

New site about the new E85 fuel. Please review for errors and suggestions. The site map is the only thing missing. It is coming shortly.

Thanks in advance!
E85 - Ethanol Flex Fuel

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CJacobson · #2 (**permalink**) 04-14-2006, 05:50 PM

It's a very nice looking website and I find it makes a good first impression (from a design point of view.) However, I do find the text to be quite small, and I expect some people will have trouble reading it.

The contact-us button at each page's bottom doesn't seem to function. Sometimes it pushes me to the top of the page, but it never gives me contact info.

I recommend you validate your CSS, and correct the way you spec colors. Everything looks okay on my browser - but non-compliant code can cause unpredictable results across platforms.

The Google ads are prominant... and there's no information on your site telling me what your business is or providing really unique information to me as a user. (Believe me, I'm familiar with other E85 websites.) That leads me to wonder if the sole purpose of your website is to make money on Adwords clicks.

The information you're providing on E85 is, frankly, pretty shallow and one-sided. It doesn't answer many important questions people should be asking.

For example:
1. what fuel mileage do real world "flex fuel" cars get when they burn E85 instead of gasoline (Answer: flex fuel cars burning E85 almost always achieve less than 85 percent the fuel mileage they would have gotten on straight gasoline).
2. when people promote E85 by claiming it burns cleaner, are they honestly figuring in that you have to burn more of it to go anywhere? Are they figuring in the ecological cost of producing E85? (Sugar cane and corn are both crops that tax the eco-system pretty badly.)
3. what happens when you mistakenly put ethanol in a vehicle or engine that wasn't designed for it. Will your old car or your lawnmower wear prematurely - and if so will they pollute more and be expensive to repair. (E85 tends to wash the oil film off of cylinder walls before start-up, and to contaminate the crankcase oil worse than gasoline when it pours past the cold piston rings. E85 causes more difficult starts in cold weather. E85 will actually cause excessive pollution and will run rough in most carbureted engines, such as lawnmowers, even if the mixture adjustment is tuned by the user.)
4. what other costs are associated with using E85? (Some car manufacturers, including Daimler/Chrysler last time I checked, won't honor their warrantees if you actually use E85 but fail to purchase special crankcase oil.)
5. how much have the corn-industry lobbyists paid out to push policy toward E85?

You might assume from these questions that I'm biased against E85... that's actually not the case, but I feel a website that's clearly un-balanced fuels skepticism.

#3 (**permalink**) 04-14-2006, 06:13 PM

The first thing I noticed off hand was how small the text was. I would bump the size up right away. I don't think too many people will sit and strain their eyes looking at a screen to read, no matter how great everything else looks.

Good luck!

whipnet · #4 (**permalink**) 04-15-2006, 11:38 PM

I appreciate you guys taking the time to review and submit your comments. All has been duly noted.

Cjacobson, you seem quite verse on the subject. Your contribution is greatly appreciated. We will be creating a section for the "other side" of the story.

Thanks again all!

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John

wariental · #5 (**permalink**) 04-16-2006, 06:06 AM

The website is above average for sure.

You need to take away the shadow on the left side of your website. You have a shadow being cast on the other side which would look a lot nicer if there was no shadow being cast on the opposite side. The only other thing is get rid of your borders around your adsense and align them the same as your text.

I also think that if all the background images had the background color of the website it would look better. By this i mean that some of the images within the text of the website could be more integrated. Try getting rid of the square look of the image and try to make it look like it flows through the page.

Otherwise this is a great start. A lot better than my first website :).

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Debt Consolidation and Debt Management
Starting a small business

jeffposaka · #6 (**permalink**) 04-17-2006, 08:59 AM

Site is visually appealling. I noticed all these meta tags, I think the big-4 search engines ignore them.

Code:

<META name="allow-search" content="yes">
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="1">
<META name="audience" content="all">
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="0">
<META name="robots" content="all, index, follow">
<meta name="author" content="CO3">
<meta name="copyright" content="©2002-2006, WhipNet Technologies">
<META name="Language" content="en">
<META name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="rating" content="general">
<META name="Classification" content="Energy Sources">

Also the code on the first page does not validate. You didn't put a !doctype statement. You should try to fix these problems.

Lastly, I noticed that you have a lot of javascript in your code. Why not move it into an external file? Your pages would load better.

Remove all the junk out of your trunk.

Good luck!

freeloader42 · #7 (**permalink**) 05-09-2006, 02:51 AM

I have made several updates to the site, incorporating several of the suggestions that were posted earlier.
Thanks to all who took the time to check it out!
Seems like the more you do, the more you figure out things that should or need to be improved or changed.

Any further quality suggestions would be appreciated!

e85.whipnet.net

Spectur · #8 (**permalink**) 05-09-2006, 01:55 PM

You still have an issue with font size. when I increase the font size the layout get messed up. you may want to set the bgcolor behind the images to the same green and have the imge top position set to 0.

panic36 · #9 (**permalink**) 05-09-2006, 10:25 PM

Not too bad, i like the layout... but I have a question why does Site Advisor hate you so badly to give you a Rex X?

crush123 · #10 (**permalink**) 05-11-2006, 06:41 PM

the font-size of text is too small to read.
the links on the page are difficult to find unless we hover them. usually links will be blue. but here is bold black. This may confuse some visitors

whipnet · #11 (**permalink**) 05-24-2006, 07:22 PM

Hey thanks again for all the feedback. Early signs of the sites potential are already looking great.

The big 3 have picked it up.

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sands · #12 (**permalink**) 05-25-2006, 04:06 AM

As nearly everyone pointed out, increase font size. Also the font size in the inner pages do seem to be slightly bigger and better than the home page. Maybe different fonts were used.

Add a doctype declaration.

Why use Flash for the header when it does not do much? Flash is used for animation and the only animation I see in the header are the clouds that appear and disappear in the drop in your logo. Also logos are best kept static.

Put the headings in the inner pages within H1 tags. For example the line: "Live Green Go Yellow" in the Go Yellow page. Would be a good idea to make the heading more descriptive.

Lastly better optimize your other image files as now the file-sizes are a bit too big.

MikeinFlorida · #13 (**permalink**) 05-25-2006, 11:43 PM

Well, I know I still have good eyes I guess to a point. As everybody practically is saying increase the font size of your text.

Are you aware that in many surveys yellow is regarded as a negative color? Frankly, as a result many sites tend to stay away from it. Yea, I know about the corn but yellow does have a negative impact to surfers. You might consider getting rid of it. Overall, I like the site's design and with other suggestions made here I think you'll be on your way.
Good luck on the net!