Any one be so kind to tell me I'm crap?

Jazajay

Active Member
Hi peeps.
Right I have built this website for a client and I was wondering if any one can pass judgement.

Please use the contact form, you do not have to enter any details, I just want your opinion on the effect.

The form will check for empty fields when the site is up and running.
On the response page my email address will be changed to the users phone number or thier email address if the phone number is left empty.

Things I would like to know ~
How easy is it to use, useability?
Whats missing that would make you contact him if you where intrested?
Design?
SEO?
Accessability?
Browser bugs?
Any little things you notice.

If any browser bugs are found, please tell me the bowser and preferably the version number. I only code to the latest version of your browser, unless the browser is IE. The site has not been tested in IE6 yet, that will be done hopefully in the wee hours of tomorrow morning o joy :)

PLEASE NOTE

1. All istock images will be bought, except the picture of the van on the home page this will be replaced with the clients image.
2. The meta noindex above the title element will be removed, it's there due to the site not being live yet.
3. The site has no domain name as of yet as we are finalzing the design.
4. All other photographic images of people at work have been "borrowed", these will be removed as I am waiting for the client to get back to me with his images and I needed to see what they look like within the design. This section of my site is blocked from indexing and these images will only be seen by people of this forum. They will not be on the live site nor will this section of my site be referanced to by the client until the domain.
5. The shadow images on the contact page again will be replaced with pictures of him and his team.

SEO wise all concalization issues will be resolved, obviously this can not be checked right now due to client not having a domain name.

Site ~ Roger Needle - Window cleaners covering Birmingham

All feedback good or bad is welcomed with open arms.

Thank you very much for your time, it is very much appreciated.
Jaz
 
Well your are definitely not crap by any means...

The design isnt anything special but it works - forgetting the design, il just get "codey" and will break it down for you...

Home Page:

Safari and Mozilla show the "tick box" for yout Residential and Industrial selections on your form being too far left so they overlap your text and it cannot be read easily.

Shows fine in IE

What Is Page:

Again, same problem with the form in Safari and Mozilla.

In Safari all text seems a few sizes too big with lines overlapping and text missing where it goes too far off the page or content area

Shows fine in IE

Residential:

Shows fine in IE

Same problem with form in Safari and Mozilla

Industrial:

Shows fine in IE

Same problem with form in Safari and Mozilla

Contact:

Shows fine in IE

Same problem with form in Safari and Mozilla



Basically so far youve done well - your site works fine in IE. Just try and sort the fixes for Safari and Mozilla.

I normally design the other way round - I will design a site so it works for Mozzila and Safari and will use include files to make it work in IE.

Hope this helps,

Phil
 
Hi philjohns
Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.

Yeah that would be an issue cross site due to the fact that the site uses 1 CSS sheet and that is the same code.

O.K. what browser versions are you using?
I code to Firefox 3.0.4 and Safari 3.2.

I do code in Firefox, then Safari and Opera, first and on my version of Firefox that is not an issue.

I did change a section and I cant remember if I checked it out in Safari afterwards, so thanks for that I'll have a look to see if the radio buttons, as they are not tick boxes, I'm sure that is what you ment, no? is acting up in that browser.

Any advice on the design, as I'm more of a programmer TBH and this is something that I'm looking on improving in general.

Thanks for the help so far it is very much appreciated.
Jaz
 
Hay philjohns.
Again thank you for your feedback.
I can not see either issue in my versions of Firefox or Safari.

It may be down to you running out of date versions as both of mine are up of date. Apart from my version of FireFox due to the fact that I am waiting for them to bring out the British version of the latest beta, but that beta only contains updates to the JS rendering engine not CSS rendering, so that would not be an issue ~

If you download the latest versions, which also include up to date CSS support, bug fixes which I believe that to be, as well as security fixes, and let me know ~
Apple - Safari - Download
Firefox web browser | International versions: Get Firefox in your language

Even though I would like to get every browser, and every browser version, I unfortunatly do not have enough time, or even know enough specfic hacks, to hit them all so as it is still useable I may ignore that issue in those versions, sorry but thank you for letting me know none the less.

I have also noticed a few other issues in Opera and IE7 which are now fixed so thank you as I forgot to check after I made changes.

The page with the large text was down to me trying to close a H1 tag with a H2, the other browsers fixed my mistake Safari didn't so all the text was rendered in a H1 format. That has now been fixed, so again thank you.

Would you or any one else care to let me know how the design can be improved?
I would be very greatful.

Also if you have viewed the site already you will either need to disable your browsers cache while viewing, delete your cache of ctrl + F5 at the same time on the first page you view, otherwise you will more than likley load the old version, as I have not added any file versioning to the latest update.

If you haven't viewed it already then it will be fine.

Cheers.
Jaz
 
Hi Jazajay

Heres the alignment problem in safari (I think mines pretty much upto date)

picture3.png
 
I'll get back to you later on with some thoughts on the design (sorry bit hectic in the day job at the mo...)
 
Hay buddy.
Cheers for the pic very, very much appreciated but the latest version is 3.2.
If any one knows of a hack to hit 3.1 I would be interested but I cant imagine there is 1 with out going overkill and bringing in some mental coding, that I would prefer to leave out due to the preformance hit for all the other modern browsers.

delete.jpg


Yeah thanks buddy, any comments on the design are more than welcome as that is 1 area I want to improve on.

Jaz
 
Um...drop shadow. Steer clear of it. As well, all of the title elements are too big. The istockphoto images should be scaled down, the "CONTACT" header should be scaled down, and the navigation could be smaller as well.

While I'm on the navigation, the colors do not match your site design or color scheme. It stands out, yes, but in a particularly tacky kind of way. The contact area at the bottom is also huuugggeeee. There are some alignment issues with the form as well. May I suggest just not using dark colors at all unless it's for something like links or bold text? The colors are everywhere.

The design, fundamentally, is very well done. You just need some tweaks that might not seem noticeable at first to a designer. I know that was kinda harsh, sorry. Lemme know if you want more info. I've got tons. :)
 
No that is fine.
My take on life is that you only learn by constructive critism of your work which that was.

I disagree that, that was kind of harsh, that was honest which is a rareity and not the same thing, my talents, by far, lie in programming, now I have mastered that to ruffly where I want to be, I'm turning to the design element and 1 reason for joining the forum.

The design, as you rightly cought on, has been through 2 different colour schemes, unfortunatly I have blended them and not merged them lol.

Can you comment on the alignment issue?
What about the background?

Honeslty Sneakyheathen let me know what you think I honeslty don't mind, I cant say I will use all your ideas but I will listen.

Jaz
 
Hay morning tbwcf, you seem happy this morning.

Sorry it was still referancing my localhost, changed now -
Roger Needle - Window cleaners covering Birmingham V2

I have to shorten the images as well, but the design is the main thing at the mo. Any comments, good or bad, what you like, what you would improve in the overall design would be very much appriecated.

Still only done the home page though.

Cheers for your time. It is very much appreciated.
Jaz
 
Hi Jaz,

Yeah in a good mood so far thanks - sure that will change by the end of the day....

Here's my thoughts....

At first glance it's not obviously a window cleaning site, the image you've used in the header is obviously relate but doesn't have impact, also with the van I know this is a stock image and will potentially be changed but it could be a builder/courier anything, maybe superimpose company graphics to it?

Logo - not too sure on this to be honest for similar reasons to the above, I don't think it may confuse people as the reference to windows / blackboard / cleaning are probably too much for you average jo. Change to blue ish colours - maybe use an outline of a squidgie - something like that?

Colour Scheme again, I don't think this reflects the trade....

Body Background: you could do something bold and interesting here by using some sort of image of a pane of glass with watermarks on it / soap?? heres a few istock references from a quick look 2282120, 2363512, 5724356 (<this guys portfolio is worth checking as he has a few) 7054626, 5395860 none of these are necessarily right but you can get the jist...

Layout: at the moment I feel the sections need a bit more lining up (not saying everything has to but it looks a bit confused at the mo ie. logo box ends half way across strapline, strapline half way in the gap. what we offer half way across residential box etc - maybe its just made obvious by the grey background.
the top section of the layout feels a bit crampt up the top of the page here - maybe some margin at the top of the content?
Fonts generally could be a bit bigger - there's not a lot of text so you could get more impact (without going early learning style).

The contact area could be moved into the sidebar - contact info in my opinion should be constantl visible on this sort of site...

here's a very quick mock up of what Im tryna say / the kinda way id go with it:
wc-example.jpg


I couldn't rly find any nice window cleaning sites but this ones worth a look for layout ClearTech - although I rekon you can do better...

I hope that helps & I've not sent you to sleep!
 
ps: sorry for the ridiculously oversized image - I know ive used an image of a woman n its a male cleaner your doing the site for - just thought that kinda image would be cool.

Andy
 
Thank you so much Tbwcf.
My other 2 designs I have done before this, are in comparison, far superior than this site.

But with them I had a look at other sites around and, not copied, but brought ideas/inspiration from them.

As you have had a look, which I'm very impressed with I may add, the quaility of window cleanging sites out there are quite poor, in fact from what I have seen that is an understatement and makes my first stab in the dark design seem top of the bunch lol, and as I'm definatly not as creative as I first thought this is where I have been struggling on this one and thus the help thread.

Thank you very much for the mock up, not at all what I was expecting, and should be able to provide me with the inspiration I need on this project.

I do agree with the colour I should have gone with a blue I think, as technically water is clear/white, but blue makes more sense.

Another area I have been stuggling with is that there is no images to work with either, nor till this weekend, so that does not help, however I know the writting is blue on his van so that would work.

The reason I put the contact at the bottom on all the pages is from a useability point of view, but I'll try it on the left, as above the fold does make more sense, and I can then reduce the site by 1 pointless page which reduces the actions involed by the user so it is more benefitial.

I also agree with you that the site does lose what it is about in version 2.

Thank you Tbwcf I have learnt a lot from you, as design tends to be the 1 thing you can not learn from books and I have struggled when inspiration as the surronding sites are quite poor from the ones I have viewed, i'll give it another go, bring on version 3 hay.

Very much appreciated.
At least this is giving me the hands on practise I need to develop my design skills to a higher quaility hay. :)

Jaz
 
PS ~ About the logo, I know but I really like the window on the chalk board graphic.
I'll have another go anyway. lol

Cheers
 
no problem Jaz - you we're very helpful with my validation tread the other day helping me massively where I lack - code / also your website reviews I've read on here have been excellent from a technical side of things!

like you say the standard of other cleaning sites is poor which doesn't help with inspiration but hey once this is finished and kicking arse you could clean up by approching other window cleaners (maybe just avoid this guys patch so not too upset him - lol).

Keep up the good work - I'll happily be of any further help I can!
 
I would, unfortunatly the clients family so that's abit out of the window lol.

But yeah code is definatly my thing, that's why I lack I creativity lol

Thanks again.
Jaz
 
Right version 3 is up I have combined V2 with inspiration from tbwcf, thanks again for that.

Still got to shorten the images, add in the nav and contact form in textual form, AJAX and fix only minor issues in IE but the design is up.

Opinions?
I personally like it, but I think I could do with changing the background image, and if it was like this first time around I wouldn't have posted.

However what do you peeps think, any honest, constructive critism?

Any improvements you can suggest?
Areas you like?
Areas you hate?
Logo?

Roger Needle - Window cleaners covering Birmingham V3

Thanks for taking the time to have a look.
Jaz
 
hi Jaz, just one very quick observation - looks like the bg image & the main image are streched out of proportion... ( a cardinal sin in design) you need to hold shift when resizing them to keep proportions the same..... will have a closer look later on!
 
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