REVIEW REQUEST : Annimac Futures Consultants

Hi Volterra, welcome to TWF

Could you help us out and review a few sites as per the posting agreement first please

Thanks

Thanks for reviewing some of the others sites

The colours go well together and I quite like the header part but the graphics need some work as they are all blurry, especially at the rounded corners and the 'Home Page' bits. I think that it looks a bit disjointed with the white bit between the header and main body. I like the different colours for each sections but I would make sure that everything in the header stays in the same place so it doesn't look jumpy. The first sentence on the 'home page' doesn't make sense to me?

Thanks for visiting

I agree with you that the whitespace can go - I will take that up with the owner.

I am not the author of the original graphics, so I am working on exports and not PNGs. It is hard to keep filesize down and not have text blur in jpegs. The soln may be to convert to gifs - I will see.

Do u not understand the semantics of the first sentance?

Quote: Annimac as futurist of Annimac Consultants, presents seminars, workshops, conference addresses, publications, and life coaching based on the trends impacting us now and in 30 years

Perhaps it should read:

Quote: As futurist of Annimac Consultants, Annimac presents seminars, workshops, conference addresses, publications, and life coaching based on the trends impacting us now and in 30 years

Thanks for your time.

Steve

It's this part I don't understand 'As futurist of Annimac Consultants'

She is a futurist working for/under Annimac Consultants.

Her trading name is Annimac Consultants. ie. this is the business she runs.

Her job title is futurist. ie. she forecasts future trends affecting individuals and businesses.

So she wrote:

Quote: Annimac as Futurist of Annimac Consultants

I am glad you have picked me up on this - it means others may read the text similarly. Do you have an alternative suggestion?

Is her name Annimac?

Precisely; or more precisely, her nickname is Annimac, her real name is Anne Macbeth

So it should really say:

As the futurist of Annimac Consultants, Annimac presents seminars......

Overall this is a great start but you've got a lot of problems with little things. First of all, the logo part of the header area is too faded - it's hard to even see what the site is called. That should really stand out so people remember who you are. Secondly, on the navbar, don't be changing font sizes so much. Try using bold instead to set out the "services" and "publications" headers. I also really don't like the double underline on mouseover. There's got to be a better effect for that. DOes one of those listings say "Tletters"? Is that a type-o or what? Even if it's not, it looks like it is, so better terminology should be used.

In the content area, put some padding on that table cell so the text isn't running into the edge of it. In some cases I'm seeing bullets running into the side menu so be careful about that.

I found the colour changes from page to page to be quite unexpected. Maybe you could do something to the navbar to bring those colours onto every page somehow. Maybe a coloured bullet on the left, or even a full background for each section would work.

I saw something on one of the pages about this company being based in Australia. Maybe you should say something about that on the front page - like where these services are available or soemthing. I'm finding the copy to be a little bit ackward in places but it could just be the written aussie accent Also make sure that every page has a header on it (some dont').

You know, I thought this at first and after looking at it awhile it's still bugging me. I really don't like that white space in between he header graphic and the coloured content box. Either the content area should be white or the background colour should extend all the way up.

Otherwise a good job. I do really like those header graphics and the use of colour is good. Good luck with the site!

Excellent feedback Megan.

I have removed the whitespace for a test page : www.annimac.com.au/test.php

I think you are all right - it does look better without the whitespace

I am unsure what you mean by

Quote: Maybe you could do something to the navbar to bring those colours onto every page somehow. Maybe a coloured bullet on the left, or even a full background for each section would work.

bring what colours onto every page?
do you mean keep the nav colours consistent no matter what header colours?
does removing the whitespace mean a full background?

BTW - to repair the damage caused by "optimising the graphics" I will have to track down the source from the orig author - not sure if possible but I'm looking into it.

I agree wholeheartedly text needs to be clear and succinct - can you give me some examples of Aussieness or unclear language?

Thankyou for your time.

Cheers,

Steve

That looks better without the whitespace. I think what Megan meant by the colours and navbar (where has it gone?) is to tie into it the colours for each section, so that (on every page) the background for the link is the relevant colour to that page.

I think you really need to get the original files as this is the one thing that's letting the side down on this now!

I believe the colour for the navbar is a minor colour from the logo, so that they tie in together.

Do you disagree?

I think what Megan meant was to try somehow to have it so that the page colours are on each navbar/on every page

How is that different to how it is now?
I don't follow...

I'll leave it for Megan to try and explain

What I mean is that the colours of the indiviual pages should be tied into the navbar somehow. Like you might have a blue bullet beside the articles link, a brown one beside Trendsletters, red beside "profile" etc. Just so there's always an indication that there's some colour associated with each of those links.

I am noticing now that those colours are used a little inconsistently. For example, why is "vision" the same colour as "articles" but not the same as "profile?"

Speaking of the navbar, it would be nice if that text was styled a little better. Even if it was just in bold or something to differentiate it from plain body text.

About the wording, it is a little hard to explain what I mean. When I read this with an Aussie accent it makes more sense. Here's an example: "Any queries, please email Annimac". The use of the word "queries" is unusual to me. I would probably have "questions or concerns" there or something like that. However, in Australia "queries" may be the more commonly used term there. I don't know. Actually, that should say "If you have any comments or questions, please contact Annimac at [email protected]".

Another one on that page is "Keep informed about new articles". Use of "keep" in this case seems odd. "Stay" might be better. However, that bit should make it more clear what the action is here. Is this something different from the newsletter?

From the services page, "Believing that communication should be fun as well as a learning platform, Annimac presents lively, stimulating, often challenging, and very human presentations, seminars, and workshops." Use of "believing" to start a sentence is odd to me. I would also separate that into two sentences. Remember to keep sentences shorter on the web, it helps for readability. "Annimac believes that communication should be fun as well as a learning platform. We provide presentations, seminars and workshops that are lively, stimulating, often challenging, and very human." I think most of this could be helped by breaking things up into shorter sentences instead of complicating things by combining several ideas into one sentence.

Use of "Australasia" on that page confused me at first too - that's not a term we're used to seeing here, but your audience may be more familiar with it.

Hope that helps

I didn't read much of the sites content but can tell it's Australian based. I think you need to work out who your target it, Australasia (which means the countries down southern hemishere, NZ, OZ ...) or the world. If you target the world you should write it the American way, but if it's for down under write it the Aussie way or people will think it's American. You American and Canadian people probably wont know what I'm talking about here

You need to add a bit more padding between the navigation box and the content section, as the content sits on the edge of nav box in Mozilla browser.
I'd make the bottom navigation similar to the top, your missing publications in the bottom.
The 'trendsletter' on the top/side navigation goes to the same place as the bottom 'future trends' but is different name, very easy to confuse people
also as suggested already, don't use bigger fonts for the navigation sections, rather use bold or even make the sub section italic (maybe).
Back to the American/OZ thing again, you should watch out when you write the date as well, remember we use d/m/y but they use m/d/y, a way around this is to write the month; 8th July 2003
The topics in profile page etc could be bold to highlight them but would have to change your font colours if you did.