InterSurge Internet

It looks pretty good. For some reason, though [and I really cannot put my finger on it] on the main page those hosting prices look out of place.

Also, that grandmother on the 'Support' section scares me..

>> Also, that grandmother on the 'Support' section scares me..

What we were going for with that picture is the grandma looks like she's serving you cookies, and that's what InterSurge support would do... serve you.

This, I realise. It's more like she's serving me.. grenades, or something.

Maybe I've been watching too much 'Captian America'..

Wow! It's a great site in my opinion, I wish I could be half as good as you.

1)very fast loading.
2)Easy to move around the site.
3)Excellent graphics - I am really ashamed of myself when comparing what I know, guess I got a long way to go.

[Edited by NSS on 08-01-2000 at 05:52 AM]

Very nice!

How did you make the "glow + fade" effect for your logo?

I'm guess that was a blur/wind effect jackchen.

This site looks great! Very professional looking and more of a personal feeling than most hosting sites (the photos of people help a lot). I also like the way you've played with the text headers on some of the pages. The quote on the side is a good idea but I would have picked something that sounds better - "you guys" kind of sounds unprofessional, even if it's coming from someone else.

I really like the expanding layout - hard to do sometimes but it always helps IMO. That "30 day guarantee" graphic looks really out of place - that looks like it came from a cheap clipart gallery.

Something needs to go across the bottom - with so much structure at the top it looksl ike the bottom part is just kind of hanging there. Even a simple horiztonal line would work.

Something needs to be done about the packages listed on the right side - you should try not to have a sidebar that is longer than the main content area IMHO and that's what's happening on most of the pages. YOu could probably just have that on the front page and take it off all the others.

I'm kind of new to all this hosting jargon, and I'm sure some of your customers will be too, so it would be nice to have explanations of some of the jargon on the Hosting page (ie. what's the difference between CGI-Bin and System CGI? what's the difference between anonymous FTP and regular FTP?). I'd also want to know if you support SSI, ASP, shockwave, real media etc...

Overall, a great job as always. It's interesting how little details make all the difference (like the dot and line across the top and the dark line underneath the menu). Will the sign-up page be going into the template?

Ok, here's my review...

1) Before I forget, I was looking at the sign-up page and it says on the header image "New Accounts Setup Within 1 Minutes." The word "minute" shouldn't be pluralized. Another little flaw is that on the main page it says the "commerce" plan comes with 4000MBs. I think you were going for 400MBs.

2) I agree about the 30 Day Money Back Guarantee image. It looks like you got it from a site that had a while background. Why not try creating your own so it blends in with the site more?

3) The top bar under the navigation bar that holds the page names is good, but why not make it the same color as the left side bar? You should also try pondering with the idea of rounding the corner where the two meet, so it's not so boxy looking.

4) Heh, the lady on the support page looks like she's serving up bagels with too much butter on them By the way, where do you get the pictures of all the people? To me it adds a very professional feel to the site.

Everything else looks good...

Hi everybody, thanks for all the replies so far...

Quote: FROM MEGAN:
The quote on the side is a good idea but I would have picked something that sounds better - "you guys" kind of sounds unprofessional, even if it's coming from someone else.

You know, I would have liked to have something that sounds better also. But seeing as how we weren't 'officially' in business until today, I took what I could get from one of the customers who was moved from my old hosting company. We'll get a better one soon, hopefully

>> 30 day money back guarantee graphic..
I see your point, I'll try to make my own/think of something else to put there.

Quote: FROM MEGAN:
Something needs to go across the bottom - with so much structure at the top it looks like the bottom part is just kind of hanging there. Even a simple horiztonal line would
work.

That's another good idea. I'll see what I can come up with ... As is your idea about the hosting explainations.

Quote: FROM JUSTIN:

1) Before I forget, I was looking at the sign-up page and it says on the header image "New Accounts Setup Within 1 Minutes." The word "minute" shouldn't be pluralized. Another little flaw is that on the main page it says the "commerce" plan comes with 4000MBs. I think you were going for 400MBs.

Justin, that was supposed to be 10 minutes . The clock was supposed to represent a zero.

Regarding the rounding of corners and making the top bar the same color: We thought of that earlier in the design process, and tried that but we didn't think it looked as good- we liked the way that this separated the menu from the page header, etc.

***EDIT***
P.S. Justin- got the images from photodisc.

[Edited by Brian Farkas on 08-01-2000 at 02:08 PM]

OK, I made a change to the bottom. Which is better:
Current: http://www.intersurge.com
New: http://www.intersurge.com/index2.html
(this one has a bar across the bottom)

Yeah, it looks better with the thing accross the bottom. An idea that came to mind after I saw that is why not make the bar that's under the navigation menu extend all the way accross also? It's cut of by the side menu currently. I dunno if it would look good, but it would be more uniformed...

The new bottom part looks much better.

I was curious to why the "sign up" pae doesntmatch the rest of the site, it would look good, if it did.

I think the madine table on the "hosting" page, with all the hosting info should be a little smaller, i think some white space is needed.

I think a people image is needed for the faq page, maybe put it beside the Pre-Sales FAQ.

I notice the "payments address" and the "other mail" address' are differnt is that because certian people handle certian mail or what?

Maybe a phone number would be nice to have on the contact us page too : )
---------------
Ken Prescott
http://www.21studios.com

Hi Grandmaster. For those of you wondering, the reason the signup page doesn't match the rest is because sign-ups are handled automatically by a CGI script that processes the order and gets you setup. That way, we can offer setup within 10 minutes. We're currently looking for a solution, though

The payments address is different because basically this company was founded by both InfoStar Web Design and DevStorm Internet. We're handling the main mail, but they are handling billing/accounting.

Brian Farkas

Quote: Originally posted by Grandmaster
I was curious to why the "sign up" pae doesntmatch the rest of the site, it would look good, if it did.

I think the madine table on the "hosting" page, with all the hosting info should be a little smaller, i think some white space is needed.

I think a people image is needed for the faq page, maybe put it beside the Pre-Sales FAQ.

I notice the "payments address" and the "other mail" address' are differnt is that because certian people handle certian mail or what?

Maybe a phone number would be nice to have on the contact us page too : )
---------------
Ken Prescott
http://www.21studios.com

One question, one point.

Question - I couldn't find anything about domain transfer. Suppose I've got one somewhere else and your services/rates combination looks better - so what do I do next?

Point - the multi-coloured, multi-sized text messages used as page headers obviously don't have all the 'bottom' of the text line up horizontally. Some headers have an obvious step down between words, but some make me wonder if my monitor is a tiny bit tilted (or the coffee isn't strong enough). Rather disquieting;)

Quote: Originally posted by AndyB
One question, one point.

Question - I couldn't find anything about domain transfer. Suppose I've got one somewhere else and your services/rates combination looks better - so what do I do next?

The transfer domain question should be answered in the support section: http://support.intersurge.com/domains1.html
Do you think that description is clear enough?

Quote: Point - the multi-coloured, multi-sized text messages used as page headers obviously don't have all the 'bottom' of the text line up horizontally. Some headers have an obvious step down between words, but some make me wonder if my monitor is a tiny bit tilted (or the coffee isn't strong enough). Rather disquieting;)

LOL... We did make some of the text in the headers off intentionally- maybe we didn't make it obvious enough . I'll talk to my partner, see what he thinks.

Thanks for the input!

Brian - yes, that domain transfer info is clear enough. Don't know where my brain cell was when I couldn't find it:)

The offsets are clearly deliberate .. it just looked as though some were more vertically offset than others in the same header - that's what I found a little weird (especially on the hosting page).

Yeah, I was making them at different times so some are definitely more/less offset than others. Thanks again to everyone who contributed!

The sign-up page defiantly needs to be customized to match the rest of the site. You should be able to customize the CGI script and the orderDomain.html to match the UI easily if you have access to the scripts.

Otherwise everything looks great

Yeah, we can customize the signup page (which we plan to do) but we don't have access to the scripts so we would just be calling the script externally. The only bad thing is that we don't have access to the "hosting order confirmed" message after the signup page, though we contacted them to see if we could change that.