Review request of a site NOT by me!
I work for a small non-profit organisation and, as posted elsewhere on these forums, am slowly moving into overseeing and redesigning their web site.
The current site was designed at great expense (well, considering we are a non-profit...) by an external web design company. Personally I hate it, but I would really like to know what other people think of it - what they recognise as the good and bad aspects of it. I realise the content needs a lot of work, but mostly I'm interested in points about design, navigation, use of frames (I'd like to get rid of them asap, but if you think the opposite, let me know), deleting it and starting again, etc..
Thanks for anyone who has the time to have a look.
Sparklebug
taff posted this at 13:08 — 4th October 2001.
They have: 956 posts
Joined: Jun 2001
I like it actually. Visually, the only immediate criticism I can come up with is that the branding is a little feeble. Perhaps a larger "St James Ethics Centre" graphic along the top would help.
Technically, you are right - the frames are pointless. Also, some of the graphics (I suspect added later) are huge. I noticed a 195K book cover somewhere in there.
I find the site a little slow. I'm on cable and the code looks clean enough, so I suspect that this is a server issue.
.....
Suchey posted this at 20:15 — 4th October 2001.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: Sep 2001
Taff is right...the HUGE file size of the graphics really slows down load times...the animated flipping pages are over 42000 bytes alone. Thats bigger than the entire combined file sizes of some web pages. The page does have a nice look to it. If it were my project, I would probably try to make the menu fit into the curvature of the design a bit more...as it stands it sort of looks like the menu was glued on after the site was done. Although frames arent a huge problem anymore when it comes to browser compatability, its probably best to get rid of them if you can. However, they may be necessary to keep the drop down menu from colapsing with each sub page load.
Megan posted this at 01:58 — 5th October 2001.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
IN mozilla 0.94 the left navbar isn't showing up right - I'm only seeing the first option. It's fine in IE6 but it won't let me view source to see what the problem is because all of that is a picture (that's annoying! Can't get view source on right click if you're on a graphic.) I also don't see the news scroller thing at the top.
Those graphics must not be compressed at all! I'm just now getting the mouseovers to come up and I've had the rest of the page up for a few minutes already.
The design looks pretty good at 800x600, although I'm not too keen on the colour scheme. It just seems.... expensive. I agree with the others that the branding is poorly done. The logo text needs to be much bigger - this is probably something that works well in print and signage and things like that but on the web it's just not cutting it. I do like the menu though.
Now, at higher resolutions there are bigger problems. There's a big hunk of empty space on the right side even though the background colour and top curve thingy keep going. All that blank space makes the bottom frame with the four links at the bottom not very noticeable. It's just lost down there stuck at the bottom of the browser window. I would bet that this was designed by a graphic designer type person with few real web skills using a program like Drewamweaver (okay so I was close!).
Megan
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Sparklebug posted this at 08:33 — 5th October 2001.
They have: 54 posts
Joined: Oct 2001
Thank you for all of this. I can see the graphics are huge - and, correct, they were added by a staff member at the Centre (not me) after the site was finished. I'm going to make that my starting point re fixing it up. As for who designed it and what skills they have ... well, I just have no idea - wasn't around when that was done. I just think they didn't really do a very good job, personally - especially for the money. Although it seems other people don't mind it as much as I do!
And, unfortunately, I have minimal web skills but reasonable graphic design skills myself and am likely to be using Dreamweaver to redesign along with some basic hand coding ... hope that doesn't sound too scary! But the organisation is very poor and they employ me already so I'm cheap to do the work needed ...
Any further comments would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again.
mbdw6708 posted this at 06:47 — 7th October 2001.
They have: 19 posts
Joined: Apr 2001
I like the colors and the layout but nothing stands out on what the site is about. I like going to a site and I immediately know what it is about. Maybe it is just me but I know most people on the net have short attention spans and you have to catch their eye immediately.
dave waters
http://www.supplychaintoday.com
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