Website Feedback

pjohnstone

Member
Hi All,
Just recently completed a rather large website for a client.
http://www.thetorridon.com/
The site was built using Wordpress and we have made it responsive so it reads well on tablets and phones.
The booking system is external, but we link through to it via a drop down modal.
The client wanted a site that was highly visual and showcased the area the hotel is situated as that is the main reason people come to The Torridon.
In terms of browser compatibility we have tested back to IE7 and it works fine. As for IE6 we looked at the last two years of analytics and there had been no visits from anyone on IE6 (its almost dead!) so we have decided against any IE6 compatibility (tin hat at the ready!)
Cheers
Peter
 
I'll tell you what goes through my head, chronologically, when browsing the website.

1. Possibly one of the slowest loading sites I've visited in a long time.
2. What do I click on/Where do I go first....?
3. Ahh, the background has finally loaded, it looks interesting... I wonder what this company does?
4. Oh, this right-aligned side nav has a hover effect. I like the fade-in highlight, but the animated arrow doesn't look like it has enough room to manoeuvre, it looks a bit cramped now.
5. Oh they have a video, I wonder if it's any good. (I should say that I was interested in this specifically because I wanted to see the quality of the video, as a designer, not as the sites typical user)
6. That was a good video, I wonder why it's not on the front page?
I don't think there's much wrong with the design of the site, although it could be a bit more appealing in terms of colour choices. Nothing really grabs my attention and more often than not I'm focusing on the background image.
NOTE: I'm focusing on areas you can improve on, rather than glorifying what you've done well. The idea is to improve right? :)
 
As above.... but I was trying to click on the big picture once it had loaded
I went and clicked on the gallery page and I was like why is the gallery so 'tall' meaning I need to scroll when I've literally got enough space to the right to fit the gallery in again.... I would have gone wider with bigger thumbs to suit the design of the site more.
As to the video... does it have any fall back for non flash browsers, like say on an iPad or android (no more native flash support :(). I also wanted to be able to skip forward...
I will say, the sites got some nice 'animations' going on but it might also be why the site seems so slow to load/move around etc
 
Sean Lee-Amies said:
I'll tell you what goes through my head, chronologically, when browsing the website.

1. Possibly one of the slowest loading sites I've visited in a long time.
2. What do I click on/Where do I go first....?
3. Ahh, the background has finally loaded, it looks interesting... I wonder what this company does?
4. Oh, this right-aligned side nav has a hover effect. I like the fade-in highlight, but the animated arrow doesn't look like it has enough room to manoeuvre, it looks a bit cramped now.
5. Oh they have a video, I wonder if it's any good. (I should say that I was interested in this specifically because I wanted to see the quality of the video, as a designer, not as the sites typical user)
6. That was a good video, I wonder why it's not on the front page?
I don't think there's much wrong with the design of the site, although it could be a bit more appealing in terms of colour choices. Nothing really grabs my attention and more often than not I'm focusing on the background image.
NOTE: I'm focusing on areas you can improve on, rather than glorifying what you've done well. The idea is to improve right? :)
I agree speed is an issue. We are looking at CDN to resolve this. Problem is the client wants full screen images which even when compressed to within an inch of their life are still quite large. To be honest though I have had no real issues with speed personally.
The video is on the front page - in fact there is a link to it on every page on the site.
Thanks for the comments.
 
Levi said:
As above.... but I was trying to click on the big picture once it had loaded
I went and clicked on the gallery page and I was like why is the gallery so 'tall' meaning I need to scroll when I've literally got enough space to the right to fit the gallery in again.... I would have gone wider with bigger thumbs to suit the design of the site more.
As to the video... does it have any fall back for non flash browsers, like say on an iPad or android (no more native flash support :(). I also wanted to be able to skip forward...
I will say, the sites got some nice 'animations' going on but it might also be why the site seems so slow to load/move around etc
The video works fine on iPad and other mobile browsers - I just tested it on my iPhone and it plays fine.
Thats interesting that you wanted to click on the image - we thought about making the captions click through to the relevant area - maybe thats what we will do.
The width of the content area is that size as to keep a consistency throughout the site. The gallery has a filter on the left so you can select a specific section of the gallery and then browse those images.
Thanks for the comments!
 
I'm sorry but you're confusing a video with a link to the video. The video is not on the front page. Did you want feedback on anything else specifically?
 
I absolutely love this site. You've done a fantastic job!
Only issues, as above, the landing page doesn't feel very restaurant.
Love the way the site redistributes itself when you narrow the browser window but the buttons do then obscure the logo.
 
Hey Johnstone,
As overall the website looks nice, especially the seethrough grey in combination with the light-brown highlights. Beautiful are also the big pictures and how they are integrated in the layout.
I have some issue with the font used in the top menu. Since there is very little letter-spacing I find them hard to read. See if you can play with the tracking; if you see that it starts getting too loose, try a different font.
By the way, the site loads fast on my end, I think you fixed the problem already.
 
Thanks for all the comments. Responsive issue on homepage now sorted.
The font Kabel is a bit of an issue, but I will play about with the letter spacing. Its actually how the font is which is a bit annoying.
Have been playing about with spped testers. Oddly the main style sheet is taking a while to load. I am wondering if its due to the amount of information in it and not the actual file size if that makes sense??!
Re - the video I accept its a link. In our initial designs we actually had a number of areas on the homepage that had areas for video, recent blogs, but the client in the end wanted the homepage to be a simple and clean as possible and to showcase the scenery and use that as a selling tool.
 
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