REVIEW REQUEST: nextfxdesigns.com

Hmm, somethings I liked, some I didn't. I think that the overall design is great. I think the color selection is err, not so great. Everything is too neonish, too bright. I think that you need to rethink your color scheme. The other thing that I didn't necessarily like is the page layout. You probably don't have a lot of choices to properly layout a page with the type of design that you have. For instance, the search is way up in the top right corner. That is usually the first thing that I look for on a site. Your code was fairly clean although there are some minor things in it that should be fixed.

Overall I would say that I liked the design, disliked the colors.

Overall the design looks really good. I do feel that the right side is a little cluttered looking, and the navbar could maybe be improved somehow. It's rather unsophisticated in comparison to the rest of it. I like the way you've animated the logo without it being too distracting.

In the portfolio area, include screenshots of your work rather than those links on the right side. In the other sections you've used that section for more unimportant information, so I didn't expect to look there for links to your work.

Your writing style needs a lot of work - that's by far the biggest problem I see here. Your writing style is generally poor, and I feel that you should try to take on a more businesslike tone. Learn how and when to use a comma. It's okay to use the first person (you are being honest about being a one-man operation, which is good), but I find that you're using "I" a too often here. The poor writing on here is really taking away from what is otherwise a really nice site.

Here's a sample:

Quote: Inspiring: I am truly a inspired web designer with what I believe is a God given gift, I Didn't always have this talent, I found it within myself, and I've never been a bad designer, plus I understand what I'm doing. I believe inspiration is all around us, which fuels my creative talent.

First of all, could you sound more egotistical? I would try to be a little more low-key about this. Secondly, the "Inspiring" is an adjective. The previous two headings "Quality" and "Service" are used as nouns here. Since they're being used as a set they should have the same word type. (Service, Quality, Inspiration). I would also use Inspiration in a way that relates more to your work - something about how your designs will inspire visitors to move to the next step and take advantage of what the client is offering.

Now, lets move onto the problems with sentence structure and punctuation. It should read something like this:

Quote: "I am a truly inspired web designer with what I believe is a God given gift. I didn't always have this talent, but I found it within myself. In my opinion, design is all around us and this is what fuels my create talent."

Still not quite right but you get the idea I hope. Concentrate less on yourself and more on what you can offer the client; how you can work with their specific needs etc. Make them feel that they are in control.

Edit: Just read mairving's post. I disagree with him about the colours. I think what you have looks great - nice and bright and fresh looking.

Man, that was the first bad review I've received from a visitor. Everyone else (and I mean hundreds of comments) think it’s one of the coolest designs they have ever seen. Oh well, your entitled to your opinion and thanks for visiting my site.

Your graphics are very nice!

Put a little more white space in between your nav bar and the headers ("Welcome" and "What's New"). It looks a bit jammed up there.

For your secondary nav at the bottom, I'd do colorchange on mouseover instead of italics on mouseover. Also for the sales@ e mail link at the top. Just a personal preference.

You have a super neat looking site. Very good work!

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
Man, that was the first bad review I've received from a visitor. Everyone else (and I mean hundreds of comments) think it’s one of the coolest designs they have ever seen. Oh well, your entitled to your opinion and thanks for visiting my site.

He he. I wouldn't call that a bad review. I thought the design was great - it's the writing that's the problem. It is one of the cooler designs I've seen posted here. I was actually sitting here trying to figure out how you made those graphics!

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
Man, that was the first bad review I've received from a visitor. Everyone else (and I mean hundreds of comments) think it’s one of the coolest designs they have ever seen. Oh well, your entitled to your opinion and thanks for visiting my site.

That wasn't a bad review. I really just felt that the colors were not right, too many, too bright. The only problem with the design that I can see is that the bend of your curve tends to change as the browser window is resized. But as I said before I liked it. Megan and I often for some reason disagree on colors on a site. I think that it is just different styles. I often use blue and orange together but not as much. I also thought that the colored scrollbar detracts a little from the site.

The site obviously reflected some skill on your part to get a consistent look in all browsers.

Well now I am not sure. John, who gave you the bad review, Megan or myself. She thinks it was her. Anyway we review a lot of different sites here at WMF. Some are just plain ugly and painful to look at. Others like yours are quite nice. All, even the best, have either flaws or something that one person likes but another doesn't.

Thanks man. I'm just proud of the design. It seems like all the web design sites are dark and I just wanted a bright design. I designed the curve so it would expand in height if the page was too tall. Anyway thanks.

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
Thanks man. I'm just proud of the design. It seems like all the web design sites are dark and I just wanted a bright design. I designed the curve so it would expand in height if the page was too tall. Anyway thanks.

As well you should be proud of the design. Anyway take what we say to heart. By that I mean, consider them, not necessarily act upon them but consider them. Certainly somethings like colors are mostly personal preference. And really we don't try to hurt anyones feelings here but hey you asked didn't you?

Yup I understand and I'll take just about any advise I can get. I've been designing for 4 to 5 years but I'm new to the business. I'm starting to find out it's much harder than I thought. I know you guys are the real pro's and your advise and opinion is well appreciated. Don't get me wrong, I consider my self a pro at design but every one needs direction.

I improved my portfolio with thumbnails. Check it out.
nextfxdesigns.com/portfolio.

the blue is kind of bright, but I suppose it suits the other colors.

my only quam would be the jumpyness on loading and very slow loading in NS6 and some pages have horz scroll bar at 800x600

looks good

Yes, those look nice. Have you considered maybe putting two or three on each row (to spread them out a bit) and maybe putting the URL to each underneath?

I only noticed the horiz. scroll on the portfolio page. Probably due to the screen shots taking up so much horiz space. Don't think it was there earlier.

Your links at the bottom and the sales email link don't jump around now.

hey John - as Megan noted, she wasn't ragging on the design, just the writing - it does need work

Quote: Whether you're looking to just get your feet wet with a web site, check out are low cost hosting plans.

whether ... what?

Quote: If you're interested in my work

in N6, I get a white bar over the "curve" when I mouseover the arrows associated with yer main links - in N4, I lose everything but the top banner onresize - resizing again produces an illegal operation

yer colors are gonna be noticed, for sure - no right or wrong, as others have said - I might try to modify the orange a little; something less red/more yellow? - ffb000 or at least ffa000?

I fixed the NS6 problem. I've tried many times to fix the NS4 problem but no luck yet. I try my hardest to design for NS4 too but when it all comes down to it, NS4 sucks big time.

Still. I've never taken so much criticism about my grammar. Don’t you guys think you’re pushing it? I have my wife go over everything I write and I run it through MS Words spell/grammar checker.

I like the site and although the colours are very bright it is nice to see something different. Some of us are better at writing than others and the things pointed out are meant to help rather than critisise. Anything said is meant to help and we don't aim to hurt or upset anyone, as the text is as much of the site as the design but if you don't want any help with that then just say and we wont comment on that part.

Does your wife have a background in writing or english langauge or something like that? I don't think I'm pushing it at all - to me your writing sounds like it was done by a 12 year old and really degrades the professional image of your site.

Using a program to check splling/grammar will not help to improve the basic structure of your writing. Actually, in my experience Word's grammar checker does not do a very good job. You generally have a poor use of language here - bad sentence structure, bad choice of words, a lot of punctuation errors, run-on sentences, too many clichés, and so on. I would recommend that you hire someone to rewrite this for you.

What really bothers me about writing on the web is that people don't seem to think it's important. Many seem to think that it's okay to have bad writing. At the same time, though, most would agree that it is not okay to have bad programming, or bad design, or bad usability. If content is the most important part of a website, and the point of having a site is to get a message across to the user, shouldn't effective communication be an important part of the site? But then, most reviewers here don't seem to comment on writing very much, so maybe others just don't notice it as much as I do.

"your writing sounds like it was done by a 12 year old"
That hurt. Man, that hurt.

I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that. It's not really *that* bad. I'm kind of fixated on writing lately since I wrote that article..

Well I just finished reading Jakob Nielsons Designing Web Usability and he says that people hate to read large amounts of text on a computer monitor and writig should be simple and to the point. I'm just trying to go by those tips. I admit, I never went to collage and I should take a grammar course but my grammar isn't that bad I hope. Well because of all this I'll go over my site and correct whatever I can. No I cannot pay anyone to do this for me. I'm broke.

Caught one more on the main page:
"check out are low cost hosting plans"

Regarding criticism:

Nothing said here is meant to be mean or hurtful. The folks here do their best to be frank, thorough, and honest - sometimes to the point of nitpicking

Personally, that's why I post here for reviews myself. To catch the little things, get different points of view, etc. I'm actually a little disappointed if my review request gets nothing but a string of "looks good to me" messages (rare, I know )

You don't always have to act on these opinions. Be selective. Some may be valid points, others merely valid points of view - ymmv. But please don't be offended or surprised when you ask for criticism and get it.

On to the site...

I seem to have a personal problem with yellow (my POV ). The blues/oranges work for me but I dislike the yellow influences. Perhaps I should force myself to do a site in yellow to get over this.

Is the Flash navigation really necessary? What contingencies have you made for the "flash-challenged"?

On your "about" page, the text navigation at page bottom wraps at 800x600

I have two problems with the forums page:
1/ site navigation disappears
2/ you've had one post in 9 months - I'd reconsider whether this is doing you any good or not.

Portfolio:
We all have to start somewhere and initializing a decent portfolio can be tough. If I look at your site through the eyes of a prospective client I see that, although you discuss your "experience" rather extensively throughout the site your portfolio only contains 2 clients that aren't yourself or family. Honesty is a wonderful thing but I don't think that it is particularly deceptive to omit the fact that your Dad is your client Do your best to pick up some additional "portfolio pieces" - pro bono if you have to. Prospective clients ARE looking for quantity as well as quality.

I'm working with two clients from San Francisco right now so that will make my portfolio bigger, and there not related to me. Man you guys are tough, everyone at other forum love my design and didn't complain about my grammar one bit. The Flash navigation is necessary because I was using a mouse over script and allot of people complained that it was too slow even with it preloading the images first. And I'm going to replace my forum whenever my host supports PHP so I can get this forum. That should be about a month.

Whats wrong with this?
"check out are low cost hosting plans"
How would you write that?

You don't know the difference between "are" and "our"????? Oh man, that is a problem. Someone else here the other day had "right" instead of "write"! You should say "check out our hosting plans."

Edit: Don't take this too personally - a lot of people have problems with writing these days and I think it's mainly because for a long time school boards in North America, and probably elsewhere, did not do a very good job of teaching students how to write well. They had this whole "learn to read by writing" philosophy that did not work (as recent test scores are proving). It should be the other way around - learn to write by reading!

I do find that our critiquing style here at TWF is generally a lot harsher than what you'll find at other forums. However, the point of a critique is to fully analyse a site site; to point out problems and recommend improvements. Saying only good things is not going to help the designer.

hey John - yeah, these creeps ripped mmy site apart but good - still, I figure what the hell d' they know??

your source is correct, I'd say, about not overwhelming visitors with text - and, yes, writing style should be fairly simple and straightforward if possible - but you just don't want to make "mistakes" - it distracts the reader from yer message and suggests a lack of professionalism

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
I fixed the NS6 problem. I've tried many times to fix the NS4 problem but no luck yet. I try my hardest to design for NS4 too but when it all comes down to it, NS4 sucks big time.

for the record, NS4.x is actually easier to code for, NS6 has some major bugs. If you code for Opera (as Opera) and/or NS4.x you usually find the others fall into place.

My post before, I reread it and I saw i missed a bit out, the scroll bar was only on Opera6 (as Opera6), never had one in NS4.7, NS6 or IE5.

I never read your text as I am in the same boat as you, suck at grammer, but take these wise peoples opinions as it will do you and your site good.
If you look at the top ten or five things that make a site work, you'll find spelling and grammer right up there. If I find a professional site selling something, teaching something and notice bad spelling and grammer I'm outta there as I know they havent put in the effort to proof read their content and probably havent checked things work.

spell checkers (programs) are good for a rough check but should be checked by a human, example "wear is there cat" would check as ok, but it should be something like "where is their cat".
Your lucky its only grammer, I have to improve my spelling and grammer lol, but is harder for me as I have to switch between english and american - color = colour, tire = tyre, humor = humour .... and as Americans are probably the widest target range I cant use english as I know it, example "the other day we threw the chilly bin in the back of the ute and headed towards the bach" which is all good but wouldnt be understood by many, translates to "the other day we threw the cooler in the back of the pickup and headed towards the beach house"

I love the design. Very simple layout. Great color scheme.

There are some grammar mistakes on your site. I would also use we and not me. Let visitors think you are a good size business with several employees (even if it's a one man show). You can get away with it your design will allow it. Potential clients feel more comfortable dealing with a "real business" and not a "fly by night web designer".

Forums. I did think about using a forum to provide tech support when I started my web design business but I never liked using them myself so opted for a support@ email instead. Keep it simple one email for everything. I believe that support starts right at the enquiry stage. Basically get rid of the forum. You’re using up valuable space on the server. A FAQ section would be great.

I always try to price in units and display that info on my web site. Visitors can get the pricing info ASAP. They might not email you at all. Why waste their time? Your prices may be too high. Let them know up front if possible how much you charge. Got any packages?

Just my opinion.
.::Gavin

Ok ok ok. I see how I made a mistake when I said "check out are low cost hosting". That was just a matter of missing it though. I have a bad habit of typing faster than I think and when I went over my site I simply missed that. It's all fixed. I'm sorry I'm not Canadian and perfect at grammar.

Me or Us. In my old design I said us or our. But I felt like I was being dishonest, that’s my problem; I'm way to honest. So I went with me and I.

mmi. I'll just go over my bad grammar again. Listen, I know how important good grammar is but I'm just not a good creative writer, I'm creative in design.

gavin681. Thanks for the nice comment. I'll take your advise about the forum and replace it with a FAQ or something. Peace man.

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
I'm sorry I'm not Canadian and perfect at grammar.

Johnboat, being Canadian doesn't make you good at grammar. At least, I don't think it does, however given that I'm Canadian and have generally good grammar, perhaps it does.

Copywriters and/or Editors

Regardless, I recommend to all my customers, whether it's a mom and pop store, my dad, or one of the big ones, get a good editor. A copywriter if you can afford one, yes, but you can not afford to not have an editor catch those grammatical problems.

I find boards that offer more thorough critiques are good for this. Find yourself a grumpy person who hates grammatical errors and you have yourself a reasonably good editor -- if for nothing else, at least the glaring errors.

Plain Language and Writing for the Web

The other thing I wanted to mention was that writing in plain language (easy to understand, clearly broken down, lots of headings and "eyeholds") is not dumbing down the content, but rather making it so the user can gather the most meaning, with the most ease, from complex content.

S

No, Megan is from Canada and she was going on about how America's education system stinks or something. I think she's just in love with her grammar skills and tries to cram it down everyone’s throats if something is not perfect.

Any who, I'm going to PM you later ok Suzanne. I have a couple questions for you. BTW... you're site is very nice.

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
Edit: Don't take this too personally - a lot of people have problems with writing these days and I think it's mainly because for a long time school boards in North America, and probably elsewhere, did not do a very good job of teaching students how to write well.

I said "North America" - meaning Canada too. I went to University (in Canada) with a lot of people who never learned to write properly either. I just happened to pick it up by reading a lot. The Ontario government recently introduced standardized tests and were quite surprised to find out that most students weren't reading at anywhere near the level they should be (didn't surprise me at all). I am *guessing* that the problem is similar in the US as we're probably using similar educational rationale. I just meant to say that this isn't entirely your fault - it's a much larger systempic problem that is affecting a whole generation.

Look, I am just trying to help. If you don't want to believe that your writing style is a problem then that's fine with me. I am sorry that you were not expecting to encounter negative comments here but this is what we do - pointing out the problems to help you make your site as good as it can be.

I do agree that I am harping on writing style a little much lately, but I do think that a lot of people are not taking it as seriously as they should be. I'm on a mission to elimiate bad writing from the 'net . If you read some of the other critiques here you'll find similar comments in other threads.

Well I’ll just say this. I know your trying to help and I appreciate it. But when I was in school I never cared, I never tried to do the best and get good grades. In fact I dropped out of high school and got a job. Well when I turned 20 I got a job at a large office furniture manufacture and I loved that job. Until I discovered computers and web designing. Then I realized that I needed to get my GED and possibly go to collage. Well over the past 5 years I've become a (in my opinion) pro at Photoshop and very good at Dreamweaver. I never thought much about how important grammar was because I was doing a small gaming site and grammar wasn't to big of a deal. But now I know I have to improve my grammar. It can't be that bad, when I took my grammar test to get my GED I aced it. I know that test is not a big deal. I'm still pondering about whether I want to go to college or not, I know it can only help me but I have a wife, 2 kids, clients slowly creeping in, and soon I'll have a full time job back in the ol factories because I'm not getting enough clients. I'd apply at a web design firm here in Michigan but... well lets just say I fear rejection, and I want to keep this running so I can build a stronger client base when I'm working.

So Megan, I understand that you get fed up with bad grammar but, good grief, you can change the world here. I never touched a book until I got into web design, now I have half a library of web design books and I read them all the time. So yes, my grammar is bad, it's more like I'm not paying enough attention. But I'll go through my site page by page and I'll let you guys check it out.

I would also like to add that I am taking this all in. Anything I can take in to improve my style and skills is great. Contrary to what you may think, I am smart, not a brainiac but I am smart. I'm also stressed out and some what depressed so I have allot of trouble concentrating sometimes. Hey... you try going from making $65,000 a year to $20,000. That will screw anyone up.

I respect you guys and I'll take everything into consideration to improve my site.

your life story sounds a lot like mine, didnt listen, didnt read ... I went to eat lunch and meet girls *I dropped out at 15*

not long ago I posted one of my personal sites and had similar feed back - bad grammar, even thou I have a diploma as a freelance photo journalist I always break the rules taught to me (read, edit, edit, reread, get a second pair of eyes on it...) It comes down to old/bad habits. One piece of advice I think Megan gave me (might not even of been my post) was to read to improve my spelling and grammar, at first I thought, yeah but I read tutorials on the web all the time, why isnt that enough. I also skim over the newspaper, but reading books (still havent finished one yet) does show you how words describe things, detail things and include things. the web is filled with bad grammer as most of its free advice or whatever, books are very rarely badly written as its the authors bread and butter.

Your not alone in this, its never to late to start, read books to your kids, read to your wife. try this, grab a book or magazine and try read it out aloud, i bet you stumble on words and are slow, I was shocked to find I was when I remember I used to be a great at reading out aloud. Its because we dont do it, we forget how.
advice from a dummy (me) read a book (not web related) its well worth it and like anything, the more you do the better you'll get.

Quote: I know how important good grammar is but I'm just not a good creative writer, I'm creative in design.

oh, I'd say these are two separate things (writing and editing) - if you can think creatively (as it seems you can), you can write creatively - of course, it may not be easy - it can be a great struggle, in fact, to come up with "a good way" to precisely (like "in black and white") communicate some thought - but as you know, life's a struggle - I sometimes use the metaphor of a "bleeding forehead" to describe a particularly obstinate authorial experience

as Busy mentioned, and as you seem to be accepting, "read, edit, edit, reread, get a second pair of eyes on it..."

Quote: Find yourself a grumpy person who hates grammatical errors and you have yourself a reasonably good editor

yer lucky you live on the West Coast, Suzanne, or I'd show ya "grummpy" :cartman: - but seriously, I'm really only restating her second point here

Quote: plain language (easy to understand, clearly broken down, lots of headings and "eyeholds")

I'd say that's an important part of creative writing in this context - doesn't fall out of the sky, at least not in mmy neighborhood

to conclude, when I read over this wonderful contribution to Western civilization, I find one obvious error - it's not the experience that's obstinate - if this were a doc to be published on mmy site, I'd need to rewrite that

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
So Megan, I understand that you get fed up with bad grammar but, good grief, you can change the world here.

I was mainly kidding about that.

So, you can admit that you have bad grammar. That's good. Now, is is that okay? Think about it. Why would a client hire you? Because they don't know how to design webpages and you do. They realize that it is a better business plan to hire someone else to do a good job rather than doing a bad job on their own. This is just good business - if you can't do it well yourself, hire somebody who can. I understand that you're financially pressed right now, so if you can't find someone to do it within your price range maybe this is something you can think about once you get some paying clients.

Well as far as web design and graphic design, I do a good job. I'm working with a client right now that loves the work I'm doing for him. I can improve my grammar.

Quote: I'm working with a client right now that loves the work I'm doing for him. I can improve my grammar.

If the client is happy then that is what counts. And we could all stand to be corrected on our grammar and spelling from time to time. Even Me!

Feeling unwanted on Mar. 13, 2002 at 05:50 PM
Why: nobody wants to buy mmy high-quality services, and I'm reduced to gettin' the bum's rush out of the hotel lobby from security

HUH?

just kidding

Quote: Originally posted by Johnboat
Any who, I'm going to PM you later ok Suzanne. I have a couple questions for you. BTW... you're site is very nice.

You're welcome to PM me, or you can email me (see the link above). Thanks for the compliments! Always welcome, even when they aren't warranted.

I will. I've been busy. Look for it tomorrow.

I'm Busy