Request for review : gatsbygroup.com

Welcome to TWf
since it has NS4.7 issues I guess I'll use my second favorite browser - Opera

Doh, menu doesnt work in Opera6 (as Opera6), guess I'll have to use IE afterall (was going to use that first). The navigation menu seems as if its sticking, kind of a pain. those page transitions are really corny and let your design down

IN NS4.7 (had to look) I only see two things, the very bottom left td cell is missing something in it (  at least)
and the font size on the email section. the menu works in NS4.7

only thing I can really add is maybe add a "top" link at the bottom of your page, or use naviagtion links down there as well.

Welcome to TWF,

Looks good in IE5 and the menu works fine for me. Nice clean looking site and the only thing I have to add is that the olive green bit down the left hand side looks to me like it should meet the grey top & botton as now it looks like it's just hanging there.

Nice! I would change the text "Welcome To GatsbyGroup.com" into an image, as the font style you have chosen looks a bit jaggered. Apart from that, I don't have anything more to say :-\. Oh, maybe decrease the timout of the drop-down menus. That big one kinda annoyed me

Cheers

Menu seems fine... or is there supposed to be drop-downs? (I'm using Opera 6 BTW)

There is something about this that's bugging me but I'm not sure what it is. For some reason it doesn't seem to be coming together as well as it should be. Hmmm... could be the tahoma font (looked at your stylesheet - should probably use the same font definitions for everythihng. I see some starting with tahoma, others with arial, some with verdana etc.) I don't think that's the problem though... I'll have to think about it. It could be that those glass-look buttons aren't coordinating well with the rest of the design.... maybe because it feels a little disorganized for some reason, and I dont' really know why I'm getting that impression.

I think the lack of coordination between elements is the problem here - the logo, navbar, left side buttons and hosting package boxes on the right all look like they came from different designs.

A few more things - definitely get rid of those flash animations at the top of the page. They're annoying and useless. The compare virtual hosting packages chart really needs to be fixed in terms of styles & colours so it matches everything else.

I sometimes feel like I'm getting lost in the site, even though you do have the breadcrumb trail up there. I went through the process of finding and signing up for a hosting plan. I felt that there were too many links in there, the packages were very deep into the site and I was a little confused as to what I was supposed to do at some points. The entire process was quite different from what I've experienced with other hosting companies - others don't seem to use a shopping cart model for hosting.

What you could do is put your products across the top menu and put the other stuff on the left side... might make it easier to navigate. Also integrate the ordering process more closely with the product pages, so you don't even have to have a separate link for that.

Quote: Follow the image links on this page to find our more about any of our Virtual Hosting Packages.

What do you mean by image links? How is the user supposed to know what you mean by that?

Thanks for the input and warm welcome everyone!

Busy-

We've noticed the Opera compatibility issues on our end as well. Since coding all that in JavaScript would take forever, we didn't even bother trying to re-write everything.

The Webmistress-

I'll try experimenting w/that. I think when we tried that in the past it didn’t look good. There's just something about that side bar, I don’t know..

Wil-

Thank you! I'm not sure what you are referring to w/the timeouts though. Hotspots are over the tab only, so if you move your mouse down further the dropdown menu will go away. As far as the jagged fonts I don’t think there is really much we can do to get away from them. You can turn on your font soothing effects in your control panel if you want..

Megan-

Yes they are supposed to be dropdown menus.

I appreciate all your input. And can partially see where you’re coming from. I think the tabs pull the site together very well. Everything is logically placed; I can’t really see any disorganization.

I do see what you are referring to w/the side advertisements not having the same look as the tabs, but that was done purposely.. we didn’t want everything to have the exact same look.

The flash intros are more for show. Them being there just shows that we have that capability. They only show once per-section anyway. I agree that the price sheet should be updated w/the rest of the site, thanks.

Putting our products across the menu I think is a good idea, but that might take away from the point of having the products drop down menu.

We are working on integrating the MIVA storefront with our product section. So everything should be a lot less confusing in that area.

Everyone-
Thank you for all the input, more is welcome!

hello? Mcfly? All I the only one getting page transition effects here?

That spoils the whole site for me. Nice clean main page, perhaps the nav bar is a little too Mac-looking for my liking but nice all the same. Then I click a link and yuck! I didn't have the patience to go much further - lose the transitions!