My first proper website http://www.michellecarrington.co.uk

Overall I like the design, you've either used a template or have a good eye. Also the fonts on the menu/logo are good.

Also try changing the body fonts for a serif, a rule of typography is that you shouldn't use two sans-serif fonts together, it will look better with a serif like Georgia (although I don't want to pick your fonts for you - do play around! Thanks to Megan for that tip )

As you're just starting-out I'll try not to complain about the use of a table based layout too much, but will mention that all the best designs are done using XHTML/CSS these days (Busy will kill me for saying that ). This will require quite a bit of coding knowledge though and I can tell you used WYSIWYG Dreamweavr to build the site so will content myself with shutting up and pointing you in the direction of: csszengarden.com - one XHTML file with different CSS for each design... Mmmm, CSS.

I'm finding the menu a bit boring, there're no rollovers which is a shame - beating through the spacer.gif's and Dreamweaver template stuff I can spot an image map, perhaps not the best way of doing the menu as there's no real way to breath life into it. Ah, I stand corrected, A List Apart to the rescue for the third time today: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/imagemap/ take a look at that if you want to stick with your image map.

The default blue links with underline don't look nice at all, these should be changed to be more in-line with the rest of the colour scheme, and again rollovers would be good (easily achievable with a little CSS).

The image of Michelle doesn't seem to have compressed in size well, she seems a little jagged.

Next problem are the URL's for pages, you should never include special characters (suck as spaces, ampersands etc.) in a URL, this could potentially break a link and I doubt search engines like them either. So where you have: price%20list.htm you should use: pricelist.htm or price_list.htm instead.

Overall this is good, very good for a first effort - you don't want to know what my first few sites looked like!

Many thanks for being the first person to help!

CSS is my next thing to get my head around - no doubt I'll be back to this forum many times over!

I didn't reaslise I was using an image map - in fact I don't know what one is!! Must do some more reading. Thanks for the link.

Yup, blue links have to go - agreed - CSS here I come.

I'm getting an updated picture of Michelle any day soon - unfortunately that's how I received it. I promise she won't be jagged much longer.

I'll change the url details in the next couple of days - actually, rather than do that I'll sort out CSS then change them . I guess it would make sense to leave the old page (price%20list.htm) on the server as it is already appearing in certain search engines and link it to the new pages...

Thanks for your final compliment - it means a great deal.

Matt.

p.s. Anyone for a haircut in Buckinghamshire!

Jeeves seems to have covered all comments up; but hey I checked your site out and it looks quite ok, i'll be waiting for the update soon...

Hi, I know this reviewing thing is a real pain in the bum - but if you could take a minute to put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for a "mobile hairdresser" then I'd really appreciate your feedback on the appeal and draw of the website + the general design...and if you're feeling really generous, about the technical side also.

Many thanks in advance,

Matt.

p.s. If I can review your site then please let me know and I'll be more than happy to do so.

Ok first Design:
The picture of mechelle is still not anti-aliased so it looks a little jagged...
Get rid of the default hyperlinked texts look(Toni & Guy, links, etc), you could put a you could use whatever color you like for those links and get rid of the default blue underlined look. Consider this an intro to CSS, coz if you also did the links with CSS it would look way better...
If im a shopper:
Well if im near your location I definitely would add up a plus if a local hairdresser have their own web site, thus being able to look at styles when im planning to cut my hair, the problem here is that you need to promote it to existing customers as well as to attract future ones... Also better if you make it obvious on the salon itself that they have a website, with flyers detailing the use and the purpose...
Thats all for now...

Agreed with demonhale here, the site address needs to be present on all her company literature/advertising. If you want this site ranking high in google btw you've got some more work to do

[edit]
I should change the page names now, having spaces in page names is not a good idea.
[/edit]

Hi chaps,

Quick post in response. I think you may have possibly pointed a major balls-up. Michelle is a 'mobile hairdresser' and does not have a salon...does the site come across as if she had a premises???

Matt.

Quick Counter Post
She should have pointed out clearly that shes only doing housecalls... That wsant clear enough...

The picture you use is not sharp enough. Although u r using female lady picture , the color is not that bright cant catch the visitor attention.
Navigation wise quite good clear and straight.

but i think the connection is a bit slow. Not really sure is my problem or your server problem. Might be mine

This a nice site. Right to the point, fast and effective. My only problem is the yellow-green color of the pages. It bothers my eyes. Maybe if the background color was white, leaving the graphics yellow-green color it might not be so bad. Being a small site and designed with Dreamweaver Fireworks and/or Flash, changing the colors shouldn't be difficult. Just my opinion, but all else is very well done. Good luck.

Yeah I noticed she was mobile. Perhaps that could've been clearer, up to you really. All I was saying is that she should have the site on all her literature - you don't have to have a salon to have literature

Thanks for all your help guys. I've got a load of stuff on CSS which I'm going to go through this week. I'll put on a post when things are updated.

p.s. Michelle sends her thanks also!

I think that a couple of tricks could spice this site up. So that I don't point out stuff that was already said I will just stick to two things that I think might help to take away from that table layout look mentioned Jeeves.

- use a non-repeating background with that leaf/flower background like I did here. you gotta use CSS, but I think the result is professional and interesting. Sigma Kappa Temp - KSU - this is a web design for a sorority on campus, its subtle but that small image behind your text removes that feel of being boxed in.

- There have been gripes about the pic which im sure you will fix. You might think about removing that black box around her and go with a full upper body shot. removing and the box and making her look like she is "there" might contine with the effect of removing the table layout feel. ~Hatcliff this is design for a professor in my department which I did that has the effect I'm talking about.

I am new to websites myself and have only just set up mine. So from a not too "Techy" point of view I think its clean and polished.. Maybe a few pictures of some of the haircuts you have done yourself would be a good idea, also unless I missed it how far out you will travel...

Hi,

I know you're mobile but the thing that hit me was when I saw a mobile telephone number that you perhaps weren't a serious outfit. Perhaps it's just me? Have you thought of publishing a local telphone number and having it divert to your mobile when you're not around?

If you've got broadband and a router, check out vonage.co.uk - they'll give you a virtual local number for your area and call forwarding is free (apart from the cost of the call to the mobile of course). Plus you'll save a heap on calls too!

Just my 2c

Good luck!

The colours don't do much for me and the coloured text is just to much I think.
The logo is a little confusing at first, maybe a bigger seperation in colours.

The images on the main page are confusing, which one is Michelle ? My guess is the one on the right but the one on the left is bigger which also could be. It's not as confusing on other pages, just the index.

I don't have flash installed so have no idea what the very bottom section is or says, so if any of the following is in it, just ignore this

On your other pages it appears like a saloon site rather than a mobile one, search engines aren't always going to deliver people to your index, if anything most of your traffic will come through the other pages and some may never even see the index page. So really all pages need mention it's a mobile service

Your page titles are also way to long, keep it short and to the point, you also have missed some real basic key words from your site/meta tags, things like, when someone wants a hairdresser, they want their hair cut or trimmed etc

Another thing you may want to point out is use of power, do you use the persons power to run the hairdryer or do you have a cordless one, or run from generator? what if the person had some maintaince work done that day but wanted their hair done while they waited ... could include it into your small print (which you dont have), heaps of questions, like is there a traveling/call out fee? do you do perms or highlights ... do you sell shampoo, conditioner, combs, rollers ... the more information you give, the more keywords you have used, the more the search engines have to find ...

The Web site looks good - and I like your choice of complementary colors. I would suggest making all the hyper link text (whether traditional or graphic-based text) blue. So that the link color does not get confusing... so people know for sure what is clickable. I think blue would be the way to go for the image text links - cause totally monochromatic would be a little drab. On your main page you have a photo of yourself (I think) and another woman - you can use Photoshops eyedropper to grab a color from there for your hyperlinked text and gifs...

Your title tag reads, "Ex Toni and Guy hairdressers" - you could run into a problem with that if it is a tradename ( I don't know much of the hair dresser industry). Like I couldn't put any reference to Ebay in my title tag hoping to draw from their search results... but if they don't contest it - you're good to go!

Your upper left corner is just screaming, "GIVE ME A LOGO!" lol

Hi.
Looked at the site. It's not fussy. But I will agree with the comment made in here about the colour scheme. The contrast of light brown text on a white page can make it hard to read, especially on an LCD screen.
Another thing I noticed is when you click on the price list and referals links, the page seems to do a shimmy to the left! Only a minor thing I guess, but something that might need looking at!!
One other thing... Michelle's telephone number is probably the most important thing of all, so having it flash past in some text at the bottom of the screen is probably not a wise idea. I would put it as static text on the page somewhere.
Hope this helps.

Hi all,

Thanks for all the suggestions - some of them are good common sense that I've overlooked - others are pure genius. I've had hardly any time to do things to the site recently but will be updating next week (my day job is rather busy at the moment...!). I'll also make a concerted effort to review some more sites also.

Great site!

One suggestion, can you reduce the length of it slightly to prevent the need for scrolling at all. That's always a good thing.

The phone number is important information and is in a good clear location but does not hinder the view the rest of the site. Impressed!

Overall, thumbs up!

spice up the nav a little