Please review this site

Hmmm.... were you deliberatly going for a College Varsity type look? The lettering and colours kind of remind me of that. Did the client ask for something like that? Because I think that for the purposes of this site you should have gone for something more corporate looking.

I would also re-organize the content a little bit to make it look more professional. Change "Qualifications" to "About Us" and summarize his resume rather than including the whole thing. THen add info about some the other higher-ups at the company. THe "Presentation" should go under something else. You also might want to consider adding a "services" section to describe the information on the home page in more detail.

I wasn't going for a College Varsity look. You think its just the color at the top?

I will try a navy blue top with a black line running through it. Maybe tint the yellow down a bit.

As for the rest. The client wanted the entire resume up there. I will see about changing it to about us.

Thanks so much.

P.S. I know about the missing link on the presentation page, that will be linked tomorrow.

You have a horizontal scroll bar at 800x600

I was a bit disappointed with the presentation. Not a great deal to keep you interested with just black & white as colours. As a presentation it should really contain something different to what a standard website can offer, in my opinion!

Thanks for your feedback. I made the top image a darker blue and changed the font. Once you mentioned that Varsity look, I couldn't stand to look at it anymore. If anything, that was the opposite of what I was going for. I changed a button to "About Us" and put them in a different order. Any more suggestions or comments about the site?

P.S. I can't really do anything for the presentation. Thats just the way he wanted it.

http://www.brachmanassociates.com

~Chris

Well, I didn't see it before so I didn't see what font you had in the logo, but to me the arial/helvetica look is just too plain for "Brachman Associates". I'd go with a nice serif font of some kind for that and keep the tag line as is.

There's close to an inch of wasted space after the logo before the rest of the page starts. I'd move it up. Also, there's considerable space between your nav buttons and then a big chunk of space before Mr. Bachman's photo. At 800x600 he's cut in half. I would move it all up so that his entire pic is "above the fold."

Also, while I've never met the man, I suspect that's not the most flattering picture of him because of the shadows casting to the left. It makes his face/throat look fatter than it really is. Either try Photoshopping out the shadows or get him to take another picture with better lighting.

I used to work in the management consulting field ("Big 5") and was very impressed by his client list. Personally, I think "clients" would be a better title than "sample projects".

This may be off-topic for a site review, but one thing I do know is that a lot of clients are very touchy about using their names in citations. We were always cloaking references in proposals by saying things like "a Fortune 100 pharmaceuticals company" or such. Presuming he has permission to use these citations on a public site, perhaps a statement that they are "used with permission" might be in order? Just a thought.

I would also disagree with the wording that they are "all high technology companies". Burger King, Coke and RJR are "consumer products", Marriott is "hospitality", etc. Just an observation from a consulting insider.

On this page I noticed that there's a little extra spacing before the last sentence in every paragraph. I copied this tip from another forum somewhere, haven't really checked it out but it might help. (Sorry, but I don't know who to give credit to for it.)

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Ever wonder why that last line of a paragraph or table tag has an unusual space before it? Its not spaced like the rest of the lines?

This happens for one of two reasons. The ending is not present or the tag is on the next line of code. The tag should be at the end of the line. Once you bring it up to be at the end, viola, your spacing is now fine.
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I would put a space between clients to let it "breathe" more and rather than italics (harder to read on a monitor) I'd consider doing the client names in bold in either your red or blue.

The "presentation" is in 5 frames. Would it be possible to put the expand/contract links on the bottom of the nav bar, as well as the next/back links? And there's a frame beneath the main one that is blank. I think if you could get it down to two frames, it would be better. If you narrowed the nav bar a touch, perhaps the main frame could be larger for better legibility? It also looks like a PowerPoint presentation. Perhaps offer this option as a download besides PDF?

I'd also add a horizontal bar of text links at the bottom of each page to match the nav buttons.

Perhaps this is outside the scope of your designing the site, but there are no meta tags for indexing by search engines. I'm sure he's expecting the site to draw in some business, so getting listed at search engines is going to be a big factor in that. Promoting a site can be even more work than designing one, IMO.

Also, be sure to take advantage of "alt" tags for your images to reinforce keywords. Especially on your nav elements so that the site will be accessible to visually-impaired visitors using a text reader to navigate the site.

Okay, one last "consulting insider" comment. At the "Big 5" firm I worked for, partners were billing at close to $1,000 an hour. One major advantage of using a smaller "boutique firm" like Bachman's would likely be their more reasonable rates. A page about rate structures/costs might be an asset to his site.

I fully understand working within a client's vision of what *they* think their site should be, but sometimes they aren't as savvy about the nitty-gritty and could use a little coaching. Good luck with it.

rivimont,

For some reason, my reply seems to have been rearranged in this post. I've sent you an email with my comments.

Well, I do have to say that from an artist's viewpoint your site looks very nice.
It is a sharp looking resume and I'm sure it prints well on paper.

As I say, I am an artist and the content is out of my field.
What I can comment on is a couple tiny things to make it look perfect on paper.

I don't want to insult your client but... please use a different photo for the intro page.
I would want one where he is looking into the page (taken from the right side of his face)
From an astetics viewpoint it works better, and subconciously people believe he supports the words on the page when he is facing them. (I am used to vewing things in print as much as on the web though, and always want to see pages that look like they belong in a magazine... so that may just be my little quirk)

On your "Sample Projects" page, I don't think you need the words "Large Corporate Clients" at all. Reading through the list of clients, a viewer is impressed by the names. You don't need to tell us they are big companies... we can see.

I am impressed by the job you have done for your client.
It isn't easy to create something that works, gets the message across and looks good when the client "knows" what they want it to look like.
(I am trying to put together a site for an art group. Ever try getting 12 artists to agree on the look of a site... but enough of my problems.)

Really well done job!
Replace the man's picture and you have a winner.

Karen

Thanks again everyone for your critique. This is really a great webmaster community. I feel that I have made the site look more professional with your help. As for the picutre, I just flipped it horizontally for now, so he is looking into the page. I am working on a replacement for that photo. Thanks again everyone.

~Chris

I'm coming late to this thread, but only one other person has talked about that bad picture of Fred. It's the focal point of the page. If you can't get a better picture (my first choice), just pull it into any photo editor and jack up the brightness and contrast a bit. It would improve it dramaticly. Look at this picture:
http://muncyfamily.com/images/ToothlessPaige.jpg . It was taken at 640x480 with a digital camcorder that has no flash and is a poor excuse for a digital camera (it was handy when the tooth fell out). It was taken in a dark foyer to make matters worse. All I did is adjust brightness and contrast to get this result. It will never be a high quality photo, but the original was unusable. Took 2 minutes.

The dark blue banner is fine, but the red text kills my 47 year old eyes. I still haven't read it. The yellow text works well, find another light color to replace the red with. Just my $0.02.