REVIEW REQUEST: Blue Lake Design

This is a nice, well formatted site Andrew. I especcially like the fact that in addition to the images (which is a nice touch) you have easy to read text navigation at the top. It looks like you do good work.

One suggestion, some of the pages are quite long and when I scroll to the bottom, I have to scroll back up to navigate anywhere else. Maybe you could have either a "Back to Top" link on every page bottom, or maybe reflect your top navigation left aligned on the bottom. Maybe both? Just a suggestion.

HTH - Good job.

PS: You don't have a doc type specified. W3C Validation

Nicora - Ive made a note of your suggestions and will put them straight within the week (bit busy on other work at the moment).

Thanks for your advice.

I will put a back to top button on ASAP, and thanks i didnt realise i hadnt a doc type specified - just shows i havent tested my code, but i'll do that when making the site optimized for SE.

thanks

Andrew

The colors are real smooth and the site is easy to nav. Wish I could design that good! Yep, nice job!

only one suggestion, some people may just click on the links at the top rather than the meus they create when hovered over, maybe make those link to a page with links to the lpages on the sub-menus.

other than that great site.

My first thought was get rid of the splash page if you want it to be optimised well for SEs as there is no text on that page for them to crawl & be intereted in and no text links for them to follow. IME as a designer & SEO you have to do both at the same time and not design first then optimise!

I personally don't like the blurred photos for the portfolio, I think a portfolio should have screen shots so that it is clear from the off what people are viewing, rather than seeing blurred images that you have to hover on and then have to click on to find out what the site is and that's then confusing as on a small screen it doesn't actually look like much has happened unless you then think to scroll down. This is not the best way of showcasing your stuff IMO, too many clicks.

I definitely agree with jammin about the links needing to be clickable rather than just the sub menu and you definitely need a set of text links on there at the bottom for SEO as much as anything.

I do like the general feel of the site but everything is too low down the screen. The links at the top feel disjointed and appear to float on their own, I'd try to incorporate them within the main body and move everything up to the top of the page.

Thanks for all the comments,

Jammin - good point i will create those extra sub links within the pages.

Webmistress - thanks for your post, i do actually like the blurred images as i think it gives the user a sense to explore more, however i take your point that the pages are low down on some resolutions, im thinking of using an anchor link to get around this problem. Or if this does not work with any effect i will take your advice and move the navigation into the web page.

thank you

Andrew

I really like the look and feel you've created here. It's very well done. You might want to check the shades of blue you're using in the graphic there though. They don't seem to be matching the background colour as well as they could be.

I would definitely do something about the mystery meat navigation though. The little buttons are nice looking, but there should be some indication of what they're linking to. Putting in some text on mouseover would be a good addition.

What I really don't like about this design is the grey. It doesn't seem to flow with the rest of the design at all. It's very drab in comparison. I would try white instead (and make your logo text a darker blue maybe). The blue header text is slightly difficult to read on top of that too.

Is this Cornwall Ontario or Cornwall, UK? Might want to make that clear.

I definitely agree with Webmistress about the portfolio links. She said it all there.

Overall this is a really nice looking site and with a few improvements you'd have something really fantastic.

Mystery meat, yes. Yet I like the blurring idea. If you could somehow stick a caption of some kind there, it'd work better.