Energy Culture
This is a site that I have learnt a get deal from, like make sure your clients know what they want before you start work. It has taken almost 18 months to get this site together because the client did not know why they wanted a site, they just wanted one and for that reason they didn’t know what they wanted on it.
But anyway what do you think?
There are no stupid questions, only stupid people!
slickfish
web site design, production and maintenance for small business
www.justapickle.com
Blogging for the socially conscious
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 08:18 — 4th September 2004.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Nice 'slick' design but what is the connection with the Parthenon?
Abhishek Reddy posted this at 08:22 — 4th September 2004.
He has: 3,348 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
Might have something to do with "culture".
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 08:24 — 4th September 2004.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Well, it is an Australian site, and NO OFFENCE - but when I went over there there wasn't much!
Abhishek Reddy posted this at 09:20 — 4th September 2004.
He has: 3,348 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
haha, well I'm guessing it's a universal symbol of culture and civilsation. Oh there's all sorts of metaphors, from innovation and enlightenment in ancient Greek culture to the lasting, symbolic nature of the structure itself.
I don't know. I'm jabbing the dark here. For all we know, the client might just have a penchant for Greek cuisine...
KarenArt posted this at 11:35 — 4th September 2004.
She has: 354 posts
Joined: May 2001
I think I'm going to have to agree with the others... I don't get the Parthenon connection either. The people in the pictures look very nice though.
I think my main problem is the wording is so vague I still have no idea who these people are or what they do. I'm guessing they do teamwork workshops to help corporations become more productive?
If you have any controll over the copy for this site, I'd strongly suggest rethinking how it reads. Usually I go with the "Music Man" idea...
>There's a problem
>We can solve it
>We've done this before
>Here's all you need to do
>See how much better your life will be
Don't try to be too fancy or vague in your wording or you will loose your audience.
On the plus side, your layout is very nice! I like the colors (although your side links could be a touch darker).
Best of luck with this!
Don't let it bug you though... that just means you have more controll over the end results. 
I understand the frustration of clients who just know they want something "cool".
gotta finish redesigning my sites so I can show them again.
The purpose of education is... to get more jokes!
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 12:05 — 4th September 2004.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Is KarenArt the only one who actually bothers to write long posts?
KarenArt posted this at 12:08 — 4th September 2004.
She has: 354 posts
Joined: May 2001
No.... I'm just the one with too much free time and a really big mouth.
gotta finish redesigning my sites so I can show them again.
The purpose of education is... to get more jokes!
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 12:23 — 4th September 2004.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
lol. I guess I'm just too lazy to write big posts
JeevesBond posted this at 14:12 — 4th September 2004.
He has: 3,956 posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Hey don't put yourself down Karen!
I also write some pretty humungous posts - but I'm not around as much due to work commitments
There are others, Megan is a particularly big post-writer (as good in content as length)
Hey you're not far from me heebie... What's it like in Bristol (sorry to go off-topic, but I just noticed that)?
a Padded Cell our articles site!
mfdc posted this at 14:36 — 4th September 2004.
They have: 160 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
I'd consider this website an excellent starting point! The colours seem also tied in with this 'greek' connection. Also, the whole aim of the site is very unclear. You want the main goals of the site on the first few lines so visitors know instantly what the whole site is about. Also, everything seems a bit static, nice layout, but perhaps slightly more extravagant CSS on the links down the side ? :coolblock
The colours...oh the colours.... there...errr......dull! In my opinion. Perhaps try alternate colour schemes & see what they look like.
I do like it though.
abudabit posted this at 21:44 — 4th September 2004.
They have: 26 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Maybe it is a slang difference seeing that we are from different countries, but I would put "human resources consultants" or something along those lines somewhere in the first paragraph or in a title or what not. Even though I could tell it is a human resources consulting firm, it took a few moments to realize it, and that could mean a lost customer. You don't have long to make a first impression on the web.
Jcon posted this at 01:35 — 5th September 2004.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Sep 2004
I like the nice clean design, it makes for easy navigation
Cryptor posted this at 07:42 — 7th September 2004.
They have: 10 posts
Joined: Mar 2004
The only things I want to comment on is that the color scheme on the bottom bar does nto work very well ( just on that bar - I think it;s darkjer then the rest ). And the photos that you used to blend in on the right side of all the top banners could have been of better quality.
otherwise a very nice site
y0re posted this at 17:58 — 7th September 2004.
They have: 10 posts
Joined: Sep 2004
* colour scheme:great, i like it very much
* common design principles (alignment, white space, visual organization etc.) respected
* common design mistakes:don't see one
* usability:very good
* appropriateness:don't know
* browser compatibility:very good
* resolutionnice
* function of widgets/dhtml/forms, et cetera:good
* image compression:good
* information architecture:excellent
* consistency:very good, i'm impressed
* coding/validation:good
* use of technologies:i prefer only html and css for layout , but tables are still ok
in conclusion i like the site .there are some pages where text areas could delimited somehow..
valentin
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 18:30 — 7th September 2004.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Waht's ur overall mark out of 10 everybody?
syawilim posted this at 11:39 — 9th September 2004.
He has: 93 posts
Joined: Jun 2004
Thanks for all your feedback, sorry not to have replied sooner but I am currently in Ethiopia to collect a little boy my wife and I have just adopted.
As I said this site was a real experience, the copy was all put together by the clients and we are on about the sixth draft, the images….the clients…..everything else me.
Will respond further when I get home….internet access very expensive.
There are no stupid questions, only stupid people!
slickfish
web site design, production and maintenance for small business
www.justapickle.com
Blogging for the socially conscious
Megan posted this at 13:33 — 10th September 2004.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Wow, syawilim! That must be so exciting! Congratulations on your adoption!
This site looks okay but I do find a few problems that I think could be easily corrected. Firstly, I agree with others about the photos. The parthenon one is confusing and the one of the two women is really poor quality in comparison. When using several images in a collage it's important to get similar quality images and similar tones & lighting. You can try to fake this by adjusting the levels on the two women. Some of the photos on other pages look better but the contrast between professional parthenon photo and amateur snapshots is still really glaring.
I agree with Karen about the text. That looks like automatically generated filler text (Dreamweaver has some plugins that do text in various jargon).
The thrid problem I have is with the navbar. The grey text on beige background doesn't look very good, and may be hard to read for a lot of people*. I would make those links white, and increase the font size a little bit. There's enough room for that last item to span over two lines.
I'm having some problems with the bottom footer. When I mouseover any area there I get a black underline on all of the text in that section (I'm using Opera 7.5 if that helps). It's hard to know which are separate links in that section.
I'm surprised I haven't mentioned this yet - the logo isn't that great. Not really a logo, just the busines sname in plain text. Something more eye catching is needed here.
Speaking of eye catching, I'm finding this design to be very nice but not all that exciting. It doesn't seem to go with the "energy culture" brand. Bright colours and more active graphics would be a better choice.
*footnote - I was just talking to my mom about tiny text and people over 40 (you know, my usual lecture. When you get to be a certain age your eyesight starts to go and it gets hard to read things.) She pointed out that low contrast text is also a big problem. So, not only is it important to make your text a decent size, it is also important to make it stand out enough from the background.
Megan
Connect with us on Facebook!
KarenArt posted this at 13:46 — 10th September 2004.
She has: 354 posts
Joined: May 2001
Well, I think Megan's already hit on everything (including things I didn't catch) so you can't go wrong with that advice.
Just wanted to add my congratulations on the adoption as well!
I hope you'll stop by the Chat forum when you get back and maybe post a picture for us.
gotta finish redesigning my sites so I can show them again.
The purpose of education is... to get more jokes!
xavierj posted this at 03:16 — 14th September 2004.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Sep 2004
The text is very very small and there's enough of it to scare a potential client away from reading through it. If you can't change the size try double spacing??
I'm seeing "people performance" everywhere and again someone's mentioned that it's not obvious what they're selling.
The "Our Focus.." graphic at top right looks a little out of place. You wouldn't see a prominent headline on the New York Times split into two lines and right aligned.
Pictures aren't bad, but nobody's looking at the camera, not one. Every single person seems preoccupied. At least the home page could show someone in a photo interested in the *site visitor*???
Parthenon, photos and "Energy Culture" don't tie in together at all. I dont get it.
syawilim posted this at 13:14 — 19th September 2004.
He has: 93 posts
Joined: Jun 2004
Hi All, well I’ve finally gotten around to responding to all of your feedback. Where to start?
• The Parthenon – originally the client was using this as metaphor (according to them cultural change is built upon 7 pillars). It was only recently that they realised the Parthenon actually has 8, but they wanted to keep it.
• The images – I was provided a whole bunch of images to choose from, but when it came down to it I was voted down because the people in the images that have been used are those that have supported their business to-date.
• The copy – I couldn’t tell you how many times this has been changed and it is now about 1/8 of what it started out as.
• The colours – these align closely to the clients business cards, letterheads etc. but I will look at the menu contrast for sure.
• Body text – someone has said it looks like filler text. Any suggestions, font, size?
And I've got to say this has got to be the best forum I've come across, always good, productive posts.
There are no stupid questions, only stupid people!
slickfish
web site design, production and maintenance for small business
www.justapickle.com
Blogging for the socially conscious
mfdc posted this at 13:40 — 20th September 2004.
They have: 160 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
You'll have to excuse me if this has been posted previously, I just wanted to add something to my comment a while back......HAVE YOU READ THAT INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH!!!???? C'mon, it means nothing. Even when you know what it means, it STILL means nothing! Theres a program called 'business speak generator' that you can download & it generates paragraphs of meaningless text like this! A sort of, lorem Ipsum for business's. No offence, but you really need to simply what Energy culture is about & in my opinion, that paragraph does absolutley nothing!
AyntRyte posted this at 15:35 — 9th September 2004.
He has: 145 posts
Joined: Jun 2004
For me, the parthenon steals from the elegance of the design. Not the parthenon itself, but a picture of one. I think this would work better as a graphic or logo.
Replace the fixed font sizes with percentages, starting with 100% for the body text - it won't break the design
\\// Robert
The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's because they use more manure.
Abhishek Reddy posted this at 12:55 — 20th September 2004.
He has: 3,348 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
True, some of the people pictures aren't ideal, but I think it's a nice touch not using CD stock characters.
The colours are fine.
The menu doesn't do it for me at all. I can't tell the structure of the site from it. The page names aren't obvious, and there's nothing familiar about it. In fact, when I saw it initially, I thought everything in the side bar was links to individual documents (like maybe .pdf -- certainly not web pages). I couldn't really find my way around, such that I still can't tell just what this company is.
On that note, add some keywords to the title. "Energy Culture" at first sounded like some alternative energy source or energy-smart lifestyle movement. Then seeing the Parthenon threw me off completely, confusing me more.
Actually, throw in keywords in the main copy itself. Presently, it's just corporate babble about innovation, systems, strategy. What exactly does this company do? Human resources? You could also add blurbs under keyword headings. Like "Strategic Cultural Alignment Processes / we do xyz to achieve abc with regards to...", and even link from there to an interior page.
Ah, before I go off rambling in a path of infinite tangents, I'd better cut this post short. I hope that was somewhat useful.
Want to join the discussion? Create an account or log in if you already have one. Joining is fast, free and painless! We’ll even whisk you back here when you’ve finished.