REVIEW REQUEST: Compact Vision - Free Services

Welcome to TWF Max and thanks for reviewing some of the others sites.

Nice looking site my only real critisisms are that I first thought that it was going to be a site selling contact lenses, both because of the domain name and also the look of the site!! Also your links - it's hard to tell what's a link and what isn't, especially as you have the link headings underlined! Make the heading a different colour to the links and maybe bold and then in the main section make the links obvious. Also maybe have them change colour on hover to introduce a colour other than blue/black.

Yeah, thanks for that. We will try and make it easier.

could someone register and give me feedback on the members area? Would be greatly appreciated.

I think the header area here looks great but the rest of it could use some work. First of all, in Opera 7, I'm seeing a big darker blue box taking up most of my screen in the content area. There's text in the middle with "Welcome To Compact Vision! Browsing as: Guest__[Login | Register]" and that's it. The actual content appears below that, past the viewable screen area. This is fine in Mozilla, so that's what I'll use instead.

My overall impression of the design here is that the content area and navbar aren't nearly in the same league as the header. You really should try to lighten up these areas to give more emphasis to the header graphic. It would also be a good idea to create some other graphics or something to tie into the header. Like maybe for the content headers or something.

One of the things that really bothers me here is the links being black and bold. It's confusing to see black links, particularly because you've also got non-linked text styled the same way. Make sure links are more obvious. Something really needs to be done to make that navbar more interesting anyway.

Okay, so I'm registering. I'm wondering why you need all this information here. Why do you need my full name if I've already given you a username? Isn't that enough? I'm still unsure as to what I'm registering for anyway so it's a little confusing. Also, why do I have to enter my website name AND the URL? That's annoying.

So, I've gotten through the form, and have your "success" message. If you were going to convert usernames to lower case, why not put a note on the form that says usernames must be lower case? That way at least people could take that into account if it was important to them.

I can't activate my account because I gave a fake e-mail address. I hope that doesn't matter. We'll see.

Now when I clicked on the "remote scripts" link I got a weird message about clicking on a nother link to get into the scripts area and that I wouldn't have to do it again. That's weird. Now I see a list of scripts, which is confusing because there's nothing that explains them further, even a little bit. Like what is "myMembers"? I have no idea. There should be some sort of explanation here. There's also a link to a hex chart (why?) and a bigger button with something about html headers and footers. So why is that bigger and what is it actually doing?

Now I'll try one of these. I'll go with "Pass it on" since I have no idea what that means. Once I get there I still don't see any explanation, just a bunch of form boxes. So I have to look at the demo to even know what I'm doing here. Why not just call it "refer a friend"? That's what it is. Another thing is that the demo should open in a pop-up so I can see it and my screen at the same time. I'm trying to figure out what you mean by font size and such (which text does that refer to?). Now I understand why you had a link to a hex chart on the first page, but it doesn't do me much good now. It should be linked from this page, in small text beside the entires that need colour choices. For font face, should people be allowed to pick anything they want here? You should really do a set of choices even just so people don't make spelling mistakes or choose non-standard fonts (since your audience is probably newbie webmasters, they could try to do that). Now that I've created something I'd really like to see what it looks like. I'm wondering if my colour choices turned out right, but this way I have to plug the code into my site and blah blah blah....

Is that enough feedback? Things just need to be a little more clear.

I'm trying to get back to the home page now but I can't find a link anywhere. What I was going to say when I got there is that there doesn't seem to be any indication when you get to the front page of what this site offers and why you need to register. You can look at the directory list and get the idea, but I was looking for some sort of text or something stating that you offer free remotely hosted webiste services (would probably be a good idea from an SE perspective to have that there). I also see that you can get more info about the scripts from the front page, so why wasn't this available when I went through the other way? I am finding the font size here (on the more info page) to be a little too small for large amounts of reading.

I also see that there's something here about upgrading to the ad-free package, but I didn't see anything about where and how the ads would be displayed with the free version.

So, overall this isn't bad, it jsut needs some refinment. I'm sure that building a site like this is a complicated process and it would be easy to miss out on the little things. Good luck with it!

P.S. I agree with Julia about the contact lenses! That's what I thought too
P.P.S. This has got to be the longest review ever written!

what's the URL for the site? I can't seem to find it

The design is ok. The problem is with your layout and content. It is pretty difficult to determine the nature of your business. I poke around a bit and see some information on webhosting - are you a host? maybe. If this is your primary function, you want to bring that out a little (a lot) more.

There is certainly room for some sort of explanatory content in your banner.

I kept trying to click the eye to get back home - you may want to consider hyperlinking that.

You could use some page titles/headers to help a user know where he is.

You need to better indicate your links somehow. As it is now, every chunk of bold black text may or may not be a link.

Edit: I realize that after my "design is ok" comment, a lot of the issues *are* design-related

Hi

I'm the other guy that has helped to do this site.

Megan,

I do agree with a lot of the suggestions that you made. All links on the site are bold but there were other non-links which were bold as well so I've changed this now. I know the navigation is very plain but I wanted it to be something simple. I'll try out some different ideas for it.

During registration, a full name is just used for contacting purposes in emails such as the verification and registration ones and the site name and url is asked for as it is used in the remote scripts and also when submitting your site to the Directory. If you want to keep your account, Megan, you can change your e-mail address under 'Edit Account' and then re-send your activation code from the Members Index. If you aren't bothered, it'll just be deleted in 30 days.

The remote scripts button has gone now. The header and footer link is bigger just to make it stand out more. This doesn't appear on free/basic accounts and when you upgrade you would read about the html header and footer option.

I have changed the links for the HEX chart now so they are in the appropriate places. I will also do a preview for some of the scripts instead of just displaying the codes.

As for the Index, I wanted to just keep it simple and didn't really want text/images cluttering it up so I took away an explanation of what the site was which originally I'd put on. The same goes for the Scripts Index which is why I didn't place the 'More Info' links on there.

The home link is on the nav near the bottom in the center. I'll link the eye to the home like taff said.

Thanks for the suggestions and a lot of the ones both of you made I have done or will do soon so thanks a lot.

I like the design but my first impression was too much blue. the black text on the blue background doesnt seem to stand out enough either, but i'm not sure what you could do other than change the bgcolor because white text stands out even less.
maybe changing the background color of the content section white or off-white would help, and it would further separate the content area from the navigation rather than just a slightly lighter shade of blue.

Edit: I photoshopped a screenshot to make sure i knew what i was talking about, i think it looks much better http://www.script-source.net/sample/Image5.jpg

That looks good, ROB. Kind of ties into what I said about putting more emphasis on the header.

Quote: Originally posted by Steven
As for the Index, I wanted to just keep it simple and didn't really want text/images cluttering it up so I took away an explanation of what the site was which originally I'd put on. The same goes for the Scripts Index which is why I didn't place the 'More Info' links on there.

Keeping it simple is one thing but important information shouldn't be taken out for the sake of it. What I think should happen is when you click on a script link from the script index you should get that "more info" page plus the form to create one. That would be simpler - otherwise I have to go back to the main index and find "more info" again to find out the details. That's not exactly simple Oh, speaking of the 'main index', I don't think that's a very commonly used term for the home page at least not on the front end. Just call it "home" - people will be more likely to recognize that.

Wow, alot of feedback, this is great. Thanks alot everyone

As Steven said, we will try and incorporate as many things you said need changing/adding etc.

Could some people possibly give us some feedback on the actual scripts? Ie: using them on their site to test or something.

Thanks everyone, you've been a good help.

from the index page it looks like your selling web hosting, I tried a couple of links and found some sub sections (links to other sites) but nothing about your site. from the help page, i clicked on 'directory' under scripts and got this error
Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /home/skitchen/public_html/help/docs/hlp2/directory.hlp on line 33
the other pages mention age check and newsletter option but still have no idea what the site is about. You've mentioned there are scripts in here somewhere but have no idea where or how to get to them. signing up and trying is an option but with all the spam and affiate click thru sites people (I) are very unsure about doing so, especially when there is no info on what the site is about.
The blue in the content background gets a little hard on the eyes after a while, maybe next shade down?

Well, on the main page there is a banner saying "Join now for free remotely hosted scripts"...what exactly do you want us to have so you can understand what you're signing up for?

where does it say "Join now for free remotely hosted scripts" ?? I see a "Join now for free remotely hosted services!" even the title says "Quality Webmaster Services & Hosting"
maybe an about page, or info, faq, about us or something to tell a little bit more about yourselves.
You have to remember that search engines (if thats your main traffic provider) don;t always send people to the index page, so if someone was sent to, say the link to us page all they would see is buttons offering hosting services.
the most common page on my html site is the 'bad html' page.
Your offering scripts etc for novice webmasters (and pros) but you have to cater for the newbies, you know 'where's the anykey?'
I'm not bagging the site, I quite like the layout, graphics, colours but i guess make it simpler

My bad, the banner does say "join now for remotely hosted services", will change that, and add some more info..ie: about page, FAQ.

Also, we have only been open two days, and myself and the the other webmaster are reasonably new to this type of thing. We are raking out all the problems errors as quickly as possible.

Also, do you know where we can get more exposure? We have a small budget and alot of ad packages etc online are extremely expensive.

Here's a better idea about organizing the scripts pages. Instead of having a separate listing page once a user is logged in, why not just refer them back to the home page? No need to have two different ways of presenting the same information. Oh, and that screen you get after logging in is really unnecessary - it should really just go back to the home page.

About promoting, you might want to consider partenering with another webmastering site of some sort.

One more thing - get rid of that hosting link until you're able to offer the service. It looks really bad when everyone knows that you've had problems with it. If you've had problems with that, will there be problems with a script??? That would make me a little uneasy.

Hi,
Nice looking site, but the domain name don't match the services you offer! more over I notice blank space on right-hand site which is not utilize fully (you can put news or sponsor banners there)! Also advertisement banners are broken (image not found).. Color of the site are looks nice!

One of the things that I wanted to comment about is that how fast things loaded. It's sure nice to go to a site and not wait forever for the page to load.

I didn't read through all the posts, but it the photoshop image of a more white design an option? If it is, I would definately go white. It breaks the blue and adds emphasis on your products.