Review Request : sayers-design.co.uk

Don't forget to review other people's sites.

It seems a little bland. Nothing really stands out. Nothing catches your eyes until you move your mouse over the links. Needs more color, content, and more links. You need a contact page, a services page, and a "get a quote" page. If I was a customer I would have no way of contacting you. Oh, wait there is a contact link at the VERY bottom of the page, hint hint.

Agreed, people don't know right away what the site is about. You need stuff to stand out that catches the customer. The links for ongoing projects aren't real noticable. You also need way more links which is accesible (sp) without scrolling.

Please review some of the others sites first as per the Posting Agreement

I think you have quite a good idea but if you really want to be taken as a designer seriously you need to think about things like easy navigation, getting the site to work in more than just IE and also not having a huge horizontal scrollbar at 800*600!

The site does seem very, very washed out and I personally don't like the way you have things laid out. People really expect to see certain things on a web designers site - what services you can offer, a portfolio with screen shots, a form to complete for a quote/contact, something about the company/designer.

Think about the little things, like on the first page why make people scroll to the bottom when it could all fit in the screen at once and then at the bottom you have almost a hidden navigation - expecially the about as you can't see it when it's grey against the coil thing and then all it does it takes you back to the top of the page!!

Everything on this site is way too spaced out, it appears that things have just been thrown at the page and left where they landed. Plus having your logo (which is quite nice but drab because of the lack of colour) stuck in the middle of the screen is just bad planning IMO as when you scroll the page looks even messier as bits obsure your 'design feature'.

Good start but I think you need to 'think' about things a bit more

Hi, thank you for your comments.
I'm a little confused though, you guys seem to be the only people in the world who use 800*600 screen res. The site fits perfectly into 1024*768 without any scrolling whatsoever, i understand that we should design for all types of computer configuration, but the 800*600 screen res limitation was really for much older PC's with low end graphics cards. We are in 2004 and most people have a reasonably good graphics card which is able to display 1024*768. I have evidence to back up the fact that most people use a larger screen res than 800*600 as i wrote a ActiveX control which sends back to the server the screen res of the client, and this showed that nearly 90% of users used a higher screen res than 800*600. With regards to content, on the site i failed to mention that this site is less than a week old and im only just developing it so many things will not be there, although there is a portfolio page where you can view my other projects. I did not feel i needed screen shots as the site is live so you can just visit the other sites themselves!?
Looking back now the site works perfectly well in most browsers, IE, NN, Mozila Firebird (@1024*768). The only browser which has trouble is Opera, as it does not display the background, but i cant help this, that is purely shody programming and not obeying CSS2.

Thanks for your comments again
Gary

My screen resolution is 1280x960. However, I view sites at 800x900 or so because I'm doing other things and there are many one in a thousand websites that need to be larger than that. A few ARE larger than that, like yours, but don't need to be.

Optimized for IE == amateur, generally, and this is no exception. There is poor navigation (the back button is not navigation), this page is erroring out, and the design is all over the place and I have to roll over titles to get information (not usable or accessible).

While you use CSS, your pages do not use valid markup (not HTML 3.2, 4.01, nor XHTML 1.0 of any flavour) nor valid CSS.

The celtic knot is very pretty, though.

Have you reviewed anyone else's site?

What is the point in reviewing any of the sites when the moderators seem to have it in hand. I only came to this site on the off chance to get a idea of what people think of the start of my web site. But all i have had is bad unfair comments which are not constructive. If suzzane carred to read my second post, the site has been designed with IE but has been tested in other browsers, calling people amatuer is insulting i'm sure in retrospect suzzane would agree!
IE is the most widely used browser out there so why not design for the masses?

Thanks I will not be using your forum again
Goodbye

BTW teammatt3 your url is a bad as it returns a dns error.
Also there seems to be a canadian theme running here, well im not supprised at the comments
again goodbye

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwebmaster-forums.net%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D24130

There are larger items you're missing, however since you've removed yourself from getting actual feedback, I'll just wish you well. In the event you want to learn why it's amateurish to "optimize" for IE, do come back. Otherwise, I'll stand by my opinion on the matter.

Inaccurate cultural slurs (I'm the only Canadian who's responded on this thread) don't really help your cause, and the validity or lack thereof of the forums themselves has nothing to do with your own site not being valid or poorly designed.

Jeees what's going on this week? everyones getting all uppity about a bit of constructive critisism.

According to thecounter.com who collect stats from hundreds of millions of sites 37% of people are still using 800x600. Now 37% isn't huge, but the fact of the matter is you should design sites that work well in ALL resolutions. If they don't fit in smaller resolutions then you are potentially driving away visitors.

Where does it say on this site that it's xhtml compliant?

... dammit. People who don't know how to take criticism piss me off...sheesh!

Ok i may have become a bit annoyed but the tone of the thread and posts were not sweetness and light. Quote "Where does it say on this site that it's xhtml compliant?" i got stick for not being compliant that was the point although i never said i was!! now i have added code and another style sheet for 800*600 could you please coment now? (we are encouraged to use style sheets but there are still many browsers which dont suppoert css!) keep i mind that this site is still under construction. I dont dislike canadians either i just got upset sorry!

I'm glad you came back -- it's tough putting your baby up for people to poke at it. But developing the ability to take the poking and make your baby better for it is worth it.

The stylesheet isn't going to solve things for people who have higher resolutions but don't view their browsers full-screen. If your content was smashingly compelling, it'd be worth resizing, but when I have the browser larger, the content appears too spaced out and so the site lacks cohesion and visual integrity.

If you're going to get into the site design business, you're going to have to develop a thicker skin. And also the ability to design for all resolutions and as many different browsers as possible. You won't know if your client's clients are mac folks (like myself) or PC folks, or old mac folks, or old PC folks, or cutting edge both. You won't be able to guarantee that they are using a particular version of any browser at all.

I have a client right now who is using Windows 95, and has a 13" monitor. THIRTEEN INCH. The site has to work for him or he's not going to be a happy client.

While you can say, well, 86% of users use IE5.5 or higher, IN GENERAL, you cannot state that any particular site gets that percentage. One of my client's sites gets only 50% IE (all variants), and the rest of the hits are Opera, Mozilla and Netscape and K and Safari, et cetera. 65% of the viewers are PC users, 35% are Mac users... That's the audience for that site, so the site needs to work accordingly.

So now that you're back and realize we're not trying to do anything but give you the feedback you need to grow, how about revisiting some of the comments in a different frame of mind.

I'll repeat my main one that got rather buried:

You have no navigation. It's really crucial not to leave people stranded in sites -- give them navigation. Wherever possible, watch someone actually try to use your site. It's very very illuminating. Without navigation, you really just have a pile of unconnected pages, even if you have a "back to home" button. I don't want to go back and forth from the home page when I can move sideways through the site instead. (*I* in this case is as a user -- a potential client, perhaps, or someone looking for a colleague to work with).

I have done quite a bit of thinking and re arrangeing http://www.sayers-design.co.uk/default.aspx bit i dont quite know what to do with the text on the about part of the main page. It just seems too ugly to be there could you have a look and supply some ideas, plus any comments about the rest of it. Please not i now have navigation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You need to preload the mouseover navigation images as they dont load with the page.

You also might want to think about an html version, not everyone has flash installed (or wants it) and to them there isn't much to look at.

Any chance you'd like to review some other sites?

... navigation that you can't tell is navigation isn't navigation. *sigh*

Look, do you want people to be able to find out about you and hire you? Well don't make it so hard for them! Lead them to where you want them to be. Take your bag of tricks and set up demo pages and sites. Would you use hidden navigation on the sites you'd build for me, Ms. Customer? If so, I'm not going to hire you because I was reading in Wired that hidden navigation is Evil (or whatever publication I might have read on the topic).

Content and how to access it is really important. Get someone to use the site in front of you and see how they react to it. I guarantee you if you can sit on your hands and not help them you'll get an eye-opening understanding of why navigation makes it possible to view your content and keep people on your site.

That now looks more like something you'd print! Well the top part anyway. The site no longer has a design to it. Have a look at what others are doing (a good chance to review some of the others sites!) and notice all the common factors.

errr OK how about this then [url]http://yrag.kicks-***.org/sayers-design-v_2/working.aspx[/url] i think its better hope you do to! BTW i will review some site honestly!!!

ok scratch that its here http://www.sayers-design.co.uk/new/working.aspx

omg, that's leaps ahead of the last version... have you been holding out on us!?

the lines around the cells should go, but this actually looks on purpose!

What the hell happened there, are we talking to the same person? Either you've learned a lot in a very short space of time, or you have indeed been holding out on us

That's a lot better, my only comment is: Why tell me you are logging my IP? I personally don't care, but this could scare a potential customer, and there really is no need to do it

That's more like it! At 800*600 I get a very small horizontal scrollbar which you really need to sort out and I'm sure it is something to do with your table set up.

I think that the text & circles for the links are too big. Give them some room between the grey bars and I think smaller bolder text would be better.

Why are you putting the date - I know what the date is and also my PC tells me! That and the IP thingy just really says to me 'fillers' because you couldn't think of anything else to put there

I personally wouldn't make a big point of saying you are a one man company!

I like the colours of the celtic knots but feel that they shoudl be incorporated into the header/logo as they are overpowering that right now.

Keep at it, add some content and post again.

Good work

yrag, we're not trying to insult you. It's just that many people here regularly visit/review sites that are valid XHTML and CSS, pretty, and work in any scenario. I don't think we (including me) are used to seeing a site that, no offense, isn't valid code, or doesn't work in any scenario. I understand that you built that site to offer a service... Heck, even google doesn't validate (no doctype), but that's another issue.

But I beg you, please add some color... somewhere (on all the pages). Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

EDIT: [Upon seeing the new version:]Holy beep, that's great! Ok, I think you've got it now....