REVIEW REQUEST:Planetnetwork.com

They have: 6 posts

Joined: Aug 2003

Hi everyone we are about to launch a new site in September! Please have a look and tell us what you think. Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.
Planetnetwork.com

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

It's quite nice looking but there's just something about it that makes it feel a bit boring/dull. I think that the logo needs work, the font is boring and just seems to float there. Also I expected the navigation to rollover to a colour or something. Home should be a link on the main navigation, as it looks odd where you have it as an underlined text link stuck at the top on the other pages.

I would expect to see some text about the site & services on the first page, not a flash login/chat thingy with text that is is too small on and hard to read. For some reason the flash chat part doesn't fit with the rest of the page or the rest of the site IMO.

On the other pages really need to laid out the same - the about us page has a blue background and the bottom orangey bit looks like an afterthought, whereas the other pages have white backgrounds. The email animation is annoying and doesn't look very professional and I personally wouldn't have the Bablefish banner on every page as it spoils the look with it being so big. I've just seen that the support & partners pages are like the about us - make them all the same.

I personally don't like sites that tell me what resolution is best to view it at, I think this is unprofessional plus many businesses don't like installing things like flash!

Good start but it needs some tweeking Smiling

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

disaster-master's picture

She has: 2,154 posts

Joined: May 2001

IMO, I don't think you should have flash as your main content on the front page. You need some text there.

jammin's picture

They have: 222 posts

Joined: Sep 2002

the site seems to lack a description. if someone stumbles in there how do they know what kind of services you offer? it isnt obvious. a description on the main page would be a good idea. i also suggest you drop the flash.

the title of the page "webcam video, text and voice chat e-commerce" should be changed to a short statement that describes the site. not just keywords. something like "planetnetwork.com - offering webcam, voice, and text chat services for e-commerce" there it sounds more professional and contains all the keywords you had in it before.

that orange banner at the bottom clashes with the blue, you could make the banner fade from orange to blue if you really wanted to keep it. but i suggest losing it if you are going to keep the blue layout.

the examples dont fit in well, some of them seem more like a shopping cart interface than a chat interface. do you offer shopping cart programs? or just the chat. the descriptions of the examples are boring and longwinded. shorten them and try to make them a litle more descriptive.

more simples changes would be things like moving the home link to the nav bar. the .gif you use for e-mail links is an eyesore.
maybe you should get rid of the babelfish links and just have that on the main page, or better yet simply get someone who knows those languages to translate those pages for you since babelfish is inacurate.(it shouldnt be hard to find some of the languages like french or spanish. you might even know some people who know them, and i would gladly translate the page into japanese for you but i dont have the free time to do so) then just allow them to choose a language on the main page.

well i think that just about covers it. im not even going to open the site up in other browsers because i think this post is large enough.

anyone can do any amount of work provided it isnt the work they are supposed to be doing.

They have: 6 posts

Joined: Aug 2003

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great feedback please keep it coming it really helps!

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Overall I think this design looks rather unsophisticated. As Julia mentioned, the fonts are simplistic and the graphic design techniques are rather primitive. If you must use a globe for your logo, try to find a unique, stylized version rather than a boring piece of clip-art. Logo text and graphic should also relate to each other visually in some way rather than just being slapped together.

Your colour scheme should also be more sophisticated. Shades of blue are dull to start with, and yours don't share the same hue which leads to an unprofessional appearance. As mentioned, nav buttons should have a hover effect and should generally be stylized to make it obvious that they are links and not just words. The row along the bottom is particularly ambiguous that way.

The rest of the pages do look better. I find the gradient on the bottom to be particularly odd looking. Try doing a straight fade rather than putting it on a diagonal (because dark areas recede and light areas come forward, it gives a weird effect).

Each page should have a header so I know where I am. On the products page it looks really weird to have that woman's face cut off like that. Same with the support page (and if you're going to use photos like this they should be used consistently on each page)

They have: 38 posts

Joined: Aug 2003

My first prob was it took 15 sec to load. It has very good content, I like the navigation but the about us doesnt give the personal feeling that gives a site a feeling that can be trusted. It will be great for b2b sites but on a personal level i think it will suffer. very good site.

Webmaster of www.truly-organic.com
Love to play chess.

They have: 62 posts

Joined: Jan 2002

Well, I hate to say it, but there's quite a few things you can do to liven up your site.

Pretty roll overs (either gif images or css embellished text) could do a lot for your front page.

You must be reworking your nav bar, because when I was looking at your site there wasn't any nav bar at all... just a small link to the home page. That's something completely unacceptable, but I'm sure you're fixing it right now.

One other thing...
None of your elements lined up on your home page when I looked at it in Mozilla and Explorer.

This was actually what I saw

I don't think this was the look you were after.

Best of luck with your site and company!
I'm sure it will all come together for you.

The purpose of education is to
get more jokes.

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