My New web site

[Guest Troy Halliday]

Well I have been doing a few design for my website and just wanted some opinions on it. I have the opening page and the home page designed. The homepage design will be the basic format for the rest of the site.

Cheers

[SE Owner :-D]

interesting mate.

ler = lotus esprit restorations.

your name should be on homepage if you ask - it is like a proper name drop thing in that you is the main guru innit?

rog

Edited February 14, 2008 by SE Owner :-D

[matk]

Hi Mate

I'd have a testimonials section with comments from happy owners with cars you've worked on and pics of interesting jobs you've done on them.

[OwenGT3]

Hi,

LER and Lotus Specialist text, especially the big E is getting lost on the back ground dial IMHO. Perhaps fade the dial, or make the letters stand out more, the grey on grey isn't working, nothing wrong with the design, just needs tweaking.

Owen

Edited February 12, 2008 by OwenGT3

[Autocross7]

I agree with the above... Bold the logo text and fade the Lotus background logo - perhaps a very soft tone color image?

Overall looks really nice... I especially like the font of the texting.

Cameron

[talon]

Overall looks good. The idea about testimonials is a good one.

[Mark Blanchard]

Looks very slick. I'd make the Lotus logo more prominate and put a silhouette of an Esprit in there somewhere, so it's more obvious to the average Joe.

[stephenbirdsall]

I think it looks good.

[oneshot]

Are you a limited company? If so then the limited company number and info MUST appear on the website - these regs came into force recently and not a lot of companies are aware of them but the penalties can be quite severe.

[stephenbirdsall]

Do you have some more info on that oneshot?

[USAndretti42]

I agree with the comments that say you need to make your company name stand out a bit more.

Are Lotus OK with their badge on there? They have gone after companies using the logo in the past.

I don't find the yellow-green artwork next to the wheel very clear. Still not sure what it is. May be needs some work.

Like the clean overall effect, though.

[wiseraven]

First impressions are good. It looks nice, but...

I can't make out what the main graphic is, and what's with the grey fish? I'd prefer to see an Esprit on there, and also the Lotus logo, although I think you should check with the factory before using it. I wouldn't think there'd be a problem, but it's the courteous thing to do.

I don't like sites where you have to click to enter - they're an irritating waste of time and bandwidth. I always feel it's like having a shop where you have to knock to get in. They might say welcome, but that's not the impression they give. The second picture works just fine for the first point of contact - it's simple, elegant and lets you get going straight away.

Make sure you don't get too focussed on the visuals and forget the usability. I see far too many sites that look good, but which leave me wanting to strangle the designer after I've tried to use it. Keep it simple, elegant and uncluttered (so far you're doing fine on this score).

Remember, if you have a news page (and I think you should), you're committing yourself to fairly regular updates. If the last update was months or even years ago, it looks like your business is stagnant, even though it's probably just the opposite and you just haven't had time to do the updates. If you think you might struggle to add news items as they occur, I suggest presenting it in the form of a monthly or quarterly news letter. If you have a fixed day when you need to add an entry, it's much easier to schedule and keep it current.

Unlike bigbird, I like the way you've chosen to have the navigation across the page. It makes much better use of screen space than a vertical menu. Once you've got to where you're going, you can scroll them out of the way, leaving the full screen free for content. With menus at the side, they always take a chunk of real estate away from the content, even if they've scrolled off the top of the screen.. If you find yourself needing more entries in your menu than you have already, it suggests a lack of focus in the design. The human brain can only cope with about 6 one-word choices at once. More than that, and you have to start consciously thinking. Instead of adding extra entries, stick with 6 or 7 broad entries, which take you to pages with no more than six further choices plus a link back to the home page. It's quicker to make two easy choices than one from a longer list. Remember that menus are not content, they only serve to let you get to the content.

I also like the way the navigation links are nice and large - it makes it much quicker to find them with the mouse (Fitts's law). The same law shows that horizontal menus are easier and quicker to aim the mouse at.

As the site grows, consider adding a site-map, where you can have links to all the site's pages in one go rather than cluttering up every page. A site-map is also easy to do a text search on. This can be important for the parts section, where some parts are hard to categorize (e.g. does a courtesy light come under "electrical", "interior" or "lighting"?)

Phil

[stephenbirdsall]

I agree that it's definately easier to click a specific option on a horizontal menu and it has the major advantage of a full screen for the actual content, but only half a dozen entries??? I thought the human brain was better than that, still I won't argue with a boffin who has done a study on it, at least, not without having any evidence to the contrary, however spurious it is.

The one problem I always have when there are only half a dozen entries is that they have to be generic. If I have to add something that doesn't quite fit anywhere, I either have to rejig everything or add a new section

('Misc' ??). I'm even worse when looking for somthing specific on a site, I will give up rather than persevere if I can't find something within the first 30 seconds or so (I believe that most folk have a shorter 'boredom' timespan than that)

Anyway, I'm not going to turn this into an argument about the menu bar, I agree that it looks right, it's just that I have found that this kind of menu can have drawbacks later on down the line.

I might have another look at the sites I maintain to see if I can't reduce their complexity again.....

[oneshot]

Do you have some more info on that oneshot? I'll have to let my boss know that we need to change our site, and he'll insist on documentation of some description

Companies Act 2006 and the regs came into force 1/1/2007

Here is a link to a business link website with the details.

Linky

PS Bibs you may want to act on this for the forum.

[SE Owner :-D]

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