Website Feedback Greatly Appreciated!

[Mike Rosser]

Hello all,

Long time fan of this site, so firstly would like to thank Chris for this awesome website, which has helped me through some tough times of CSS!

I have designed my website which is live and would like to get some feedback from it. Dont be shy and be as critical as you want.

http://www.mrosser.co.uk

Thanks!

:)

[Luminated]

Well Mike…right off the bat you broke two cardinal rules…the animated intro is annoying and superfluous. It’s not Flash, which is cool, but it has virtually no place and is considered one of the #1 worst web design techniques.

The second worse, you also seemed to use….BLINKING TEXT! YELLOW blinking text, at that! This is considered appropriate back in 1992, but nowadays it’s inexcusable. Please, for the love of all things holy, get rid of it, put it in a box, padlock the box, wrap it in chains, put it inside another wooden box and banish it to the depths of hell from whence it came.

Aside from the that, the site is ok…looks very much like you used a sitebuilder or Frontpage to construct it. The Navigation bar is a bit of a yawnfest, I pretty sure you could style it a bit more, add some padding, make it more like actual buttons than just highlighted text.

Otherwise, the rest of the design is nothing to write home about. There’s no real discernable color scheme to speak of and the bright red and yellow really feel out of place. The intense glow around things is a bit cheesy and "eye candy photoshop plugin-y" for my tastes. The quote at the top is too small to read as well.

One thing I do like is your logo at the bottom left though. I feel your site could use a much more minimalistic and super sleek dark scheme. Check this site out as an example:

http://blackestate.co.nz/

[Mike Rosser]

Thanks for your feedback Luminated.
Points are noted and am making a more minimalist design.
I still had fun making my site that is live now and have learnt alot. Which hopefully will put to more better use in the next design ;)

Thanks again!

[al_m473]

I am looking at the site using IE7,

the navigation menu is on the far right side of my screen, not centered, needs to be fixed for ie7,
I need to scroll to the right to see it all

Al

[Mike Rosser]

Hi Al,
Thanks for spotting that, which I have now corrected :)
Cheers!
Mike

[EamonnMac]

Mike, get rid of the intro. Sorry bud, but it’s got to go.

Pick five colours TOPS and stick to those five colours only – that’s for everything from font colours to backgrounds. You are currently using five for your backgrounds alone. Try using just one colour for headings and/or for plain text and maybe not as curly as the Edwardian font I think you are using (am I right? :) ). Visit http://kuler.adobe.com/ for colour scheme inspiration.

Make sure everything is legible – design it on paper as you would a poster, or, rather, a brochure. Everything in it place, clearly spaced out on the page and easy to read. Small font-sizes do not necessarily mean neat lettering (I might mean that the other way round! :D ). Your headings should be big (you have three main headings on the index page and all three are different sizes and colours) and your plain text should be clear and in high contrast to the background (it’s too small and you’re using two different fonts in four different colours… :? ). I’m not sure if Chris has done an article on this ( a quick search didn’t show anything, but I didn’t look too hard) but have a swing by Smashing magazine who cover this sort of ground regularly and who would be right up your street coming from a graphic design background. Here’s an article to start you off http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/03/8-simple-ways-to-improve-typography-in-your-designs/. At the bottom of each article they list other article in the same vein, so it should keep you going for a while!

Keep going and you’ll get there!

[Mike Rosser]

Hey thanks for your advice EamonnMac. I am working on the font today and you will be glad to know that I’ve ditched the intro :). HA! I am also working on changing the colour scheme slightly, which should compliment the site better.

Thankyou for the link, its a real interesting read.

Thanks again for your advice and pointers. Its all great feedback and I find it very interesting and enjoyable to know what others think.

Keep checking back to see how im getting on and as always please give me feedback.

Cheers!

[Author]

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