Ouch, one of my least favorite things on a site are things that move. Your home page has 4 things that move including the most annoying of all a message banner down in the toolbar. At least 2 of those must go. Get rid of the scrolling message for sure. You probably don't need the flag to move either. Right now the site is very distracting. So many things that move. Also with all that javascript someone is bound to have browser problems.
Logo and Graphics - the text in your logo looks fine but you need to get something better than that clipart thingy in the top left corner. Overall the graphics, I would say are quite poor and should be improved.
Layout and text - the site layout is simple and logical. I would however change the body text to an unbolded one. Your tax estimator need some help. It probably needs to be in a bigger box with different colors. You should also change Try are tax estimator to Try our tax estimator
Coding and Browser Compatibility - The coding could be a bit cleaner but is somewhat typical for Dreamweaver. Stylesheets should be used. NS wouldn't load on me but I can assure you that there will be problems since somethings like bordercolor (IE only) were used.
Not bad but it needs improved graphics, less moving parts and unbolded text. You also need to help us out here by helping us review 3 other sites.
Mark Irving I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
The Webmistress posted this at 14:10 — 16th January 2002.
I agree with Mairving! I would also add that you could maybe change the font for the main text to Veranda as it looks cleaner and easier to read. Loose everything cheese and animated and get a better logo and it'll look good.
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
mairving posted this at 14:21 — 16th January 2002.
Ouch. I'd also have to agree with Mairving on pretty much everything but the "not bad"
Sorry to be so negative but there just isn't anything good to say about this one. It looks cheesy and amateuristic in IE and has some serious flaws in Netscape.
I would go all the way back to square one on this one.
Again, sorry to be so harsh but from the looks of the credits page, you are billing yourself as a professional here.
I don't see anything moving on here. Oh, that's probably because I have animated gif's and plug-ins turned off.
Overall I think this layout needs a lot of work. First, the logo - that city skyline there looks pretty scratchy. Try looking for the dingbat font called "cityscapes", which you can get here - putting a bunch of those characters together will give you a much nicer looking skyline. The font you've used is okay, but I'm thinking that it shouldn't all be in upper case. CITIPROTAX is hard to read. CitiProTax, as you have it in the page title, is much better.
I agree with mairving about the page text - also put that in a sans-serif font. I'm also seeing a big gap between the first paragraph and "E-file instructions" in Opera 6.
Another thing I wanted to point out is the arrow under the "home" header. What is that arrow pointing to? Empty space. If you're using arrows you really have to be careful because they're going to lead the eye in a certain direction, and you don't want them to be pointing at nothing.
On the services page you forgot to put valign=top in your table cell or something, because the menu is appearing halfway down the page.
The colour scheme is good, and I like the fact that you've mentioned "America" in the first sentence - makes it clear right away who you do and do not cater to. Overall, though, the design needs quite a bit of tweaking. Keep your styling consistent from page to page, and cut some of the clutter.
Quote: Originally posted by mairving
Ouch, one of my least favorite things on a site are things that move.
And my personal pet peeve is music.
I looked at the site, yup, take off the moving things. Too distracting from the message you want to get across, which is to offer a business. And you want to look professional, right? Why don't you put a flag .gif in the head title somewhere? And you can do one of the java thingies to have it in the url address too.
I think that there is just to much on the page. Why don't you move the "Try our tax estimation" (should be spelt this way, not "try are") to a different page or a pop-up window. You can just have a link to it. It takes up a good deal of space on the page.
I personally don't like lavender, but the color scheme flows and works really nicely.
I think all has been said, but one thing you really need to loose (Marving mentioned this) is teh status bar, people want to see where they are going, dont want annoying text (that never gets read) flowing past, looks like your trying to hide your links and for a tax site I dont think you really want to try hiding things, trust is a big issue, so many people cheat links, esp pay per click ones.
and you also need some more info, things like:
who are you, is it US only? do you do off shore returns? (can do mine if you like ) is there any requirments, fees, age limits
i just saw "6.95" flash past in the status box, crap now its anopther message, what was the 6.95? was it a special, a fee, an advert? I'm not waiting around for the whole cycle so i guess i'll never know. Never use the status bar for important info, or any info you want read
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mairving posted this at 13:53 — 16th January 2002.
They have: 2,256 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Ouch, one of my least favorite things on a site are things that move. Your home page has 4 things that move including the most annoying of all a message banner down in the toolbar. At least 2 of those must go. Get rid of the scrolling message for sure. You probably don't need the flag to move either. Right now the site is very distracting. So many things that move. Also with all that javascript someone is bound to have browser problems.
Not bad but it needs improved graphics, less moving parts and unbolded text. You also need to help us out here by helping us review 3 other sites.
Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
The Webmistress posted this at 14:10 — 16th January 2002.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
I agree with Mairving! I would also add that you could maybe change the font for the main text to Veranda as it looks cleaner and easier to read. Loose everything cheese and animated and get a better logo and it'll look good.
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
mairving posted this at 14:21 — 16th January 2002.
They have: 2,256 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
That is what I live for.
taff posted this at 14:58 — 16th January 2002.
They have: 956 posts
Joined: Jun 2001
Ouch. I'd also have to agree with Mairving on pretty much everything but the "not bad"
Sorry to be so negative but there just isn't anything good to say about this one. It looks cheesy and amateuristic in IE and has some serious flaws in Netscape.
I would go all the way back to square one on this one.
Again, sorry to be so harsh but from the looks of the credits page, you are billing yourself as a professional here.
.....
Megan posted this at 14:58 — 16th January 2002.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I don't see anything moving on here. Oh, that's probably because I have animated gif's and plug-ins turned off.
Overall I think this layout needs a lot of work. First, the logo - that city skyline there looks pretty scratchy. Try looking for the dingbat font called "cityscapes", which you can get here - putting a bunch of those characters together will give you a much nicer looking skyline. The font you've used is okay, but I'm thinking that it shouldn't all be in upper case. CITIPROTAX is hard to read. CitiProTax, as you have it in the page title, is much better.
I agree with mairving about the page text - also put that in a sans-serif font. I'm also seeing a big gap between the first paragraph and "E-file instructions" in Opera 6.
Another thing I wanted to point out is the arrow under the "home" header. What is that arrow pointing to? Empty space. If you're using arrows you really have to be careful because they're going to lead the eye in a certain direction, and you don't want them to be pointing at nothing.
On the services page you forgot to put valign=top in your table cell or something, because the menu is appearing halfway down the page.
The colour scheme is good, and I like the fact that you've mentioned "America" in the first sentence - makes it clear right away who you do and do not cater to. Overall, though, the design needs quite a bit of tweaking. Keep your styling consistent from page to page, and cut some of the clutter.
Megan
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DC_Sara posted this at 15:09 — 16th January 2002.
She has: 392 posts
Joined: Jan 2002
And my personal pet peeve is music.
I looked at the site, yup, take off the moving things. Too distracting from the message you want to get across, which is to offer a business. And you want to look professional, right? Why don't you put a flag .gif in the head title somewhere? And you can do one of the java thingies to have it in the url address too.
I think that there is just to much on the page. Why don't you move the "Try our tax estimation" (should be spelt this way, not "try are") to a different page or a pop-up window. You can just have a link to it. It takes up a good deal of space on the page.
I personally don't like lavender, but the color scheme flows and works really nicely.
Sara
~*Sara*~
Busy posted this at 21:12 — 16th January 2002.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
I think all has been said, but one thing you really need to loose (Marving mentioned this) is teh status bar, people want to see where they are going, dont want annoying text (that never gets read) flowing past, looks like your trying to hide your links and for a tax site I dont think you really want to try hiding things, trust is a big issue, so many people cheat links, esp pay per click ones.
and you also need some more info, things like:
) is there any requirments, fees, age limits
who are you, is it US only? do you do off shore returns? (can do mine if you like
i just saw "6.95" flash past in the status box, crap now its anopther message, what was the 6.95? was it a special, a fee, an advert? I'm not waiting around for the whole cycle so i guess i'll never know. Never use the status bar for important info, or any info you want read
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