REVIEW REQUEST: financial-assessment.com

Firstly welcome to TWF and thanks for reviewing some of the others sites.

I get qet quite a large horizontal scrollbar at 800*600, because of you header graphics. You really should design to fit 800*600.

Over all I quite like it but I think the header section is far too deep and dominates the screen too much, you want your content to be the most important thing on screen and not push it down the screen.

You also have too many text graphics. Text should be text not graphics! This will slow down loading, can't be read by search engines or text readers and it looks fuzzy. The testimonials bit looks awful having a greyish background to it and to me looks like it's been put there as a bit of an afterthought, it also makes the page too wide for 800*600.

To me the bullet points down the left look like they should be the navigation and the navigation looks forgotten about. What's with the three symbols at the top? They look like they should be links but aren't.

It's a nice site but needs a little bit of work.

On the 'Take Tour' page I get a massive horizontal scrollbar even at 1152*864 which for me is full screen!!

Nice looking site but like Webmistress said, you should really design with 800 X 600 in mind. I agree with everything else she said as well.

Those are some nice looking graphics you have there but IMO, all of your images could be smaller and still be effective.

You might also conside adding a set of secondary text navigation links at the bottom of each page. And some color change on mouseover for the links.

BTW, welcome to TWF!

what they said.
lol.
Most folks don't want to scroll 'across' a page. You're lucky enough to get them to scroll down anymore.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have attempted to incorporate many of them and ask that you revisit financial-assessment.com to see if this looks better.

I truly value your opinions and appreciate the help.

I'm getting a scroll at 800x600 because of your top image, it's made of 3 sections (954px wide) and nearly 3/4 of one section (184px) needs to go to loose the horziontal scroll bar. It's about 770px max for 800x600. Maybe put the money 101 over top of the notes (center section)
you also need to set your background colour to white

The site feels kind of bulky, you have square link at very top and rest is curves, things like the login in box could be half the size.

your top affiliates link has extra quotes in it, remove the %22's from your code

I see that you have taken off the testimonial bit and the little images at the very top but I can't see what else you have changed, certainly not the improvements that were suggested.

Are you sure you have the latest version? I took everyones suggestions into consideration and worked hard to accomadate them because I know my visitors will have some of the same opinions as you would.

As per your suggestions I have:

- Reduced header from 3 images to 2 images that fit in 800x600.
- Changed txt images to regular text
- remove larged horizontal scroll from take tour page

theres tons of white space between ?S on FAQ page.

now now. let me enter my personal financial data into some website that only accepts paypal payments.

I should warn you Im a finance major. Cough. Now anyone sending you anything is an idiot, your site is not equipped with SSL secure socket layer my friend.

the sign up password doesnt even do the **** thing.

Seriously kids, DO NOT send your SSN or CC # to anyone. this smells like scam o matic to me. no privacy policy, no ssl.

Hey send ME your bank numbers, and Ill personally withdraw and count your money to make sure its "all there" I wont mention the fact that basically youre putting numbers into a spreadsheet and churning them out. That is not financial advice. FYI you need a license to be a certified financial planner. Im sure you have one right. Do you offer customers a complete FICO score? I doubt it, the credit statements cost more than your fee. I doubt you operate on a deficit basis unless you really did poorly in that financial planning test.-Josh

Obviously I didn't see the updated version

I still think the header section is too deep and everything now looks a bit disjointed but at least there are no horizontal scrollbars. I think I prefered the overall look of the previous version but the text is much better as text.

One more thing - the bottom graphic seems to have an off white/grey section to the top and really appears to be floating on it's own there with no purpose. Try and tie everything together a bit more.

Quote:
Seriously kids, DO NOT send your SSN or CC # to anyone. this smells like scam o matic to me. no privacy policy, no ssl.

Josh your review seemed to represent you as angry. First of all,
this website is not open yet. I'm still trying to get a look we're happy with. Second, we don't pass numbers into a spreadsheet but we cpature them and anaylize them based on proven financial principals.
Our software was coded by developers while being overviewed by a licensed planner and professionals who have been in the feild for many many years.

Maybe you should take a tour.

so you will of course have a secure site and a secure database for all those CC and SSn #s that you will deal with?

Angry? No. Educating the mis guided public. Yes. You do not have privacy policy or SSL, a point you dont refute but use smoke and mirrors to shadow, look at this guy he's "angry".

Avoid scams. Scammers are NOT smarter than you, they just make a hard to resist offer. THere are Off the shelf financial planning suites mate. Why you hired developers to custom code you something?...thats just suspicious. -Josh

PS any financial planner who offers you a "financial solution" in less than 15 minutes isnt worth the time/money. Serious analysis of your financial plans takes hours.

We do have a privacy policy up with our name and adress a link is on the site. Also, we have ordered and are in process of installing a Thawte SSL certificate.

Thirdly, we don't claim to offer a finacial solution. We simply take ones finanal information and assess them and offer recommendations to improve their finances. It's not different than the many calculators found in other software programs except we are more comprehensive.

Our product which we started developing in December of 2000 is of quality and we in no way are a potential scam to people. Our parent company has been in the financial arena for years and we are now offering a new service via the internet.

I don't see why you keep suggesting we are some type of "scam" who are telling people how to do whatever you think it is we are doing.

LASTLY, We DONT TAKE CREDIT CARDS at this time and use Paypal.. so we don't store any CC numbers on our site! When our SSL certificate is setup and our merchant account is complete we will start to offer both.

Before you start blasting anyone get your facts in order and stop being so negative. I invited you to signup and put false info in if you wanted to and see what type of quality product we have but you didn't instead you talk negatively about the website and services we offer and suggest we are here to scam people.

I tried to sign up. As I said, NO SSL on sign up page, and the password did not encrypt.

That is noooo way to run a financial website. That would be like having glass file cabinets, stored outside a financial planning office, unlocked.-Josh

Just a reminder people this is a Website Critique meaning the overall site, not just the product or content.
It's good of everyone to point out things about certs and stuff but please keep it to a helpful, friendly matter.
Offering advice like "you should really have a note stating your not using a secure server and something about details ... for the people to trust you more" instead of jumping down each others throats.

This isn't targeted towards anyone, just a general note to everyone as we (the mods) see things like this getting out of hand all the time and we try snip it before it happens to make TWF a more friendly helpful place.

enjoy your day

Well, the look is plain and simple which I usually like, however it does seem a little too plain. Everything sits on the page however there doesn't seem to be a structure and just floats. Maybe adding a shadow effect on the curved graphic would give it some depth and the graphic at the bottom of the page could do with connecting with the rest of the page to pull it all together. Generally, I think it is just missing a little pazzas.

Hello
ahem, well overall quite clean and business looking, which is good.
I assume the space on the left or bottom will be for your certificate
good luck with the site..

Ythank you spor. the site is currently offline because we have moved to a dedicated and we accept our SSL certificate to be available in the next day or two.

Good! You fixed the horizontal scroll.

You might add a tagline just below the menu at the top using some of your keywords. This comes to mind:
"The Complete Web-Based Financial Planning Tool" or "Get Your Personal Financial Analyisis Report"

This would help with search engine placement. Especially if you enclose it in header tags -- tagline It would also give a title of sorts to the page as well as fill that white space a little.

The text on your nav buttons is a little blurry. Still readable but could be improved. Maybe bolding the text would help or use a different font. ??

The blue bar at the bottom looks out of place. I wouldn't use that. It doesn't match what you have at the top stylewise are color wise.

On your FAQ page, there is too much white space in between each question/answer. I would also remove some of those "Top" anchors. Just put one at the bottom of each section (General, Pricing and Payments, Using the Service, and Reports). That would be enough. It looks too repetative as it. Too much white in between paragraphs on the Contact page as well.

My input, I like the website a lot. I wish I found it before I spent $300 on a report similar to what yours gives.

Your prices however make me wonder how you can offer a report for so low. I don't suggest raising prices of course I't just makes me wonder. Maybe you can answer for me how you offer a long report for such a low price.

Im sure many visitors like me would ask the same thing. SOmething to think about and add to the FAQ

Thank you. I have answered your question on our FAQ. Thanks for your input.

To me the menu doesn't seem to fit the overall style of the website. It might be the font that you're using, but it could also be the roundedness of it. Try keeping with the same font all throughout the website if possible. I think the bottom blue footer image could be gone too. And also, overall it's bland. Maybe a little more color?

I think your server has gone dead... this website is not loading up for me.

SOrry bout that. DOing some upgrades. site is up now

You seem to be stripping away at the site, everytime I go there now it seems to have less on it - which isn't necessarily a good thing! The navigation now looks odd as a tabbed design is normally joined up to somthing and yours looks like it's floating.

OK the new design is up and ready for your review. It should be nice for 800 x 600 and not so bland.

let me know what you think

Its a nice site , but The header Seems to be a bit plain..
I think you need to Show a bit of money , Faded with the Yellow Header

overall the site is simle and easy to navigate.