We're nearing completion of a re-do of our corporate site (an 11-month project).

Any expert comments would be appreciated before I sign-off on the project.

Thanks: Cast Lighting

Dump the flash. No good for rankings.

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Steve Douglas
Computer Repair St Louis

Cannot agree with that. The Flash here is more like a large image. And there is plenty of copy underneath. If anything the image is on the large side.
The site looks very professional if a bit cluttered for me (but I ain't no designer).
Couple of markup errors related to the swf file but these are minor.
Of course, you need some more relevant page titles - "About Cast" is just a waste of time - and pages need descriptions in metas.

There is one thing tho. Once you are in the site the "home" page appears to be diffetent from the index. How odd.

It is not really clear what CAST lighting is. Lights, light fittings or what? The large splash, takes the eye away from the text so maybe something in the splash that hits the punter with what the product is and a call to action. Ask yourself, what is the reason to go to next page.

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Ian Young
http://www.iyesolutions.co.uk

I cannot agree with that 'flash' comment either.

As long as enough relevant text using your chosen keyword phrases is used, along with a site map link, there is no reason why some flash content shouldn't be used. It makes it far more interesting visually and can be faster loading than a single image of that size.

Pen Hunt
Auckland New Zealand AMG Web Design affordable New Zealand custom website designers

overall I like it a lot - very clean and modern design - out of the box and creative. Clean code (mostly) - other than having to fill in your meta tags (title/description/keywords), but you are not ready to launch.

First impression - very nice!

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Project Manager
Glendale Designs: WebDesign - Miva Merchant - SEO

Wow pretty cool site. I liked the design, really a lot of information out there. How many people worked on the project ?

Anyway here are a few points:

1) The submit button on the bottom of the register looks so plain.
2) The message after registering sounds strange to me. It says "You will also receive your chosen password via email at this time." what's the point of sending the password I choose.
3) Although I know you're validating the people who are registering I tried logging in. I enter my email and password and to an error message saying "undefined"
4) Forgot password: the same plain button.
5) Contact form: looks very deep
6) Contact form: I would add a warning message saying that a new form will be open for the registration process. You can join the list without entering a mail address.
7) Contact form: if I answer No to the question of beeing a professional and then "No" to "Would you like to receive a product brochure" I think the part of the form asking for the address should be hidden
Contact form: the right part is really veryyyy long.
9) The calculator looks old comparte to the main site.

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jean-luc
www.corobori.com

Jean Luc and others,

Thanks for the comments.

We had a fairly large team, Interactive Developer, Designer, Programmer, Project Manager and I provided all the images and content.

I like the idea of putting something into the splash images to say what we do.

As for metadata, since each page is dynamically generated, the programmer said it wasn't within the project scope to develop code to generate metadata for each page. I could pony up another $3,500 (their fee to do this), but decided I would launch the site and see how well we do in Google before investing the money - they said Google doesn't even look at page descriptions and keywords anymore. Do you guys agree with my plan?

If that is the case, time you found another developer as they are clearly ripping you off. I work with a developer who does this kjinda stuff all the time - and certainly doesn't charge that just for the bit that generates metatags. We have just finished a dynamic site with the facility to have each page's metatags tailored.
As for Google, page Title and descriptions very important. Yahoo and MSN both read keywords.
If you want to get anywhere, you will still need to have page titles relevant to the copy which can be searched.

Cheers

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Ian Young
http://www.iyesolutions.co.uk