new design: critique please

They have: 65 posts

Joined: Dec 1999

I think the site is OK. I still have a few things I'd like to say about it though:

1. Get rid of the guestbook thing. I'd drop dead if I hired a web-design company with a guestbook.

2. There is hidden text at the bottom of the page, which screws up the bottom banners. Remove that so the banner can be centered.

3. Take off that categorie "Advertisements", it almost makes the site sound cheap. If you have so many ads, then people will ignore the rest of your site, and skip on to the advertiser's site.

4. Only put a brief amount of text about D'Angelo Web Design on the main page; in other words, why have links when you just put the whole page on the main page? So only have a little text explaining who you are, what you do, and the important stuff. Not the stuff on the site.

5. Lay off on the golden bubbles a little bit! Jeez, everywhere I go on the site, I see bubbles.

6. On the top left-hand corner, make a smaller logo image about 180x180 or even smaller (just a guess), and make the big logo less plain, insted of just those golden bubbles and 'D'Angelo Web Design' written. You need something spectacular.

7. Take off the image where the copyright is. Just smack a font size 1 copyright in white text (centered). The viewers should know then and there that they are at D'Angelo Web Design by the logo(s) at the top. Don't smother the site with images.

8. DO keep the little thing 'Because the Internet is for everyone...'. Kinda catchy

9. (Like I said before) Center your banners at the bottom to make them more professional. In fact, make a table with lots of cellpadding, no cellspacing, and a border size 1, with a bordercolor of about #999999, and put your banners inside that. In top the top row of the table, make the bgcolor color for the row yellow, and make font size 2 or 3 text that says "Please Visit our Sponsors". This will keep ALL ads contained so they don't clutter like the small 'Advertisements' categorie you added.

10. A MAYBE about the navigation: Make it smaller, or even put a bar at the top with all the stuff you want into categories. Make a table (#999999 bordercolor) with all the navigation stuff inside.

11. MAYBE put an underline to all the links. I'm not sure about that yet, though.

Okay, I know some of them sounded snotty, but I just told you the truth. I'm fresh out of ides now, but I hope all that helps!

Justin S's picture

They have: 2,076 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

What can I say? JFEngle covered everything...

1) Agreed- guestbooks don't work on professional sites. Period.

2) A web design companies site should be making enough money through designs to not have to sell advertising space.

3) The logo is, er, blah. I don't really like the menu either. The text is too small and the bubbles just don't work.

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  • They have: 152 posts

    Joined: Dec 1999

    Justin and Jesse, thanks a lot. I got rid of the guestbook, and I got rid of the advertisements. The advertisements weren't making me money, the people who owned those two sites helped me out with different things, ao I agreed to put some sort of advertisement, but I got rid of them anyway. The guestbook is gone, but I really onle used them to see what people think of Dangelowebdesign.com, not as a fun little thingy like most personal sites.

    I am working on a new logo (I agree with you Justin, "blah") but as far as the menu goes, I spent a while on it, so I'll leave it there for a while. I got rid of alot of the bubbles (which are actually spheres)

    Thanks for the critique, go check it out now, its a lot better I think.

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    -RJ D'Angelo
    D'Angelo Web Design

    http://www.dangelowebdesign.com

    They have: 152 posts

    Joined: Dec 1999

    I sot of redesignes dangelowebdesign.com, I would appreciate some critique along with how I could improve it. Thanks a lot.

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    -RJ D'Angelo
    D'Angelo Web Design

    http://www.dangelowebdesign.com

    They have: 65 posts

    Joined: Dec 1999

    Glad my info helped.

    At the bottom of the page, there is black text, which cannot be seen, what is that for?

    They have: 152 posts

    Joined: Dec 1999

    Search Engine Placement, it helps with keywords and stuff.

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    -RJ D'Angelo
    D'Angelo Web Design

    http://www.dangelowebdesign.com

    Megan's picture

    She has: 11,421 posts

    Joined: Jun 1999

    Looks pretty good. I still think there are too many spheres on the front page - the other ones are fine though. I also think that something different should be done with the navigation menu. It seems kind of isolated over there, and it's hard to read the text over the spheres.

    BTW, under the profile for Jeff A... you list a product called Adobe Dreamweaver... I know of a program called Dreamweaver by Macromedia, but I didn't know that Adobe made one too

    [This message has been edited by Megan Jack (edited 21 February 2000).]

    They have: 152 posts

    Joined: Dec 1999

    Oops, sorry, I forgot that Macromedia makes Dreamweaver, I'll change that. Thanks for pointing it out

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    -RJ D'Angelo
    D'Angelo Web Design

    http://www.dangelowebdesign.com

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