Site check: Zoopedup.com

I thought something was missing from your homepage there with just the white text on black background. Is this just a temporary thing while the forums are down? Wouldn't it be just as easy to put a note on the home page?

Now that I'm into the site the first thing I notice is that the design and colour scheme are very pleasing to the eye The second thing i notice is that scribbly thing where they logo should be. Wait - is that supposed to be text? Definitely change the font or fix the styling on there to make that more clear.

I'm not too keen on the navbar - I'm thinking that you could surely do something more interesting than boring old text.

Your sig says that this is "South Africa's Car info site.." and yet that bit isn't made clear on the home page at all. I am of the opinion that people should know what they're getting into when they arrive at a site.

I'm getting horizontal scrolling at 1152 with taskbar on the right side in Opera 7 (beta). Too lazy to check if that's happening in other browsers.

Must you have a hot chick picture on there? How sexist.

I cliked on a couple of links and on all of the other pages I've looked at I'm seeing a problem with the header area - half of it seems to be jumping onto another line. I think I will check this in some other browsers... it's happening in Mozilla as well. I'm not getting the scrollbar on other pages though, so these two issues might be related in some way. Check the code

Otherwise I think the site looks very good - great choice of colours, very nice logo header (except for that readibility issue). I do think the text is a little on the small side but that might be just me.

One more thing - it would be good if you could find a car picture for the header area that's pointing the other way. NOtice how this one is creating a diagonal line downards and off the edge of the page. It would be better to have one that faces the opposite direction, so the line points down and into the page, towards the content.

What is the front page of your site, the forum or the page you come from the black page? I'd make the main page your first page and like Megan said, add a note on there.

the header, v2.0 is very hard to make out, the tacho's are just as hard and the word next to them, pectup ?
There is a very big horz scroll bar at 800x600, the importstrip banner doesnt help but isnt the main problem

Someof your other pages are messed up in mozilla, the banner is doubled up which is making the add email go over the text of the box above it as well as the nav links all over the place (and unclickable)

Things like babe of the week and ride of the week don't need to be on every page, you also need page headers to let people know where they are.

You also have a few typos you might want to fix, one is under DIY "No pint in haveing a expensive ice instalement but it doesnt BOOM!"

I noticed in your scroll up message you have "howzit gents" Not sure where your basing your info on but women make up a large number of car lovers, from the rally screen, drag car, power boats, open wheelers, even beleieve there are some in nascar and f1, also in the motorbikes, motorx, down to your everyday girl racer ... so don't rule them out, they can do the same as we can, and sometimes better

Maybe you could put a background image of some car on the home page and enlarge the font sizes a bit (especially the font size of the link you click on to enter).

The car picture in the upper left of the 2nd page might be better level instead of slanted . . . it sort of leads the eye away from the site out to the left of the screen somewhere. Actually, to prevent this effect, you could even consider having 2 cars at the top, one on each side and both with the front ends facing towards the middle. However, just one level car facing the middle in the upper left might be sufficient.

Nice looking site, though . . . and with relevant information (including the babe of the month pics).

I agree with what's been said before so I wont go over it again, but will add that at larger resolution/screen size it looks a bit lopsided as the top part goes 3/4 across the screen while the main section stays squashed to the left. Either have it all to fit 800*600 and stay that size at larger res, either left or center aligned, or have the whole thing stretch to fit the whole screen. I see your top table for the banners is 1002 wide, this is never gonna fit 800*600 is it! The Importstrip banner looks so out of place where it is, does it have to go there? Can it not be made to fit between the red lines at the top so it looks like it fits in a bit more? My only other suggestion is a differnt colour background as the grey is just a bit too bland and everything just kind of mingles in together. I would have expected to see zoopedup as the logo though.

Good start

IMO, that importstrip.com banner distracts from your site logo. That was the first thing that my eyes were drawn to. Could you place that futher down maybe?

I am getting a horizontal scroll. (800X600)

I think you should have more content closer to the top (in the body) that describes what your site is about instead of the poll and that newsticker thing. It is sorta hard to tell what the site is about just glancing over it. Maybe put a brief paragraph from your about page on the home page as an inductory paragraph.

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
My only other suggestion is a differnt colour background as the grey is just a bit too bland and everything just kind of mingles in together.

I disagree about this one. I think that the grey background is what really brings this design together. The overall look is more sleek and sophisticated - a bit muted rather than high contrast as we normally see with white backgrounds. Since this isn't a particularly text heavy site, he can get away with using something other than white for the background colour, and I think that in this case the grey works very well.

(of course, now I can't get into the site to check it again, so this is all from memory )

I don't want to be too repetetive here so I'll just through out a few observations:

It took me a lot of staring at your logo to figure out what it was. That would be the first thing I'd fix.

Your pages could use some sort of identification - page titles of some sort to help a user navigate. I had trouble keeping track of where I was.

Your Feedback link in the "site" navigation is an email link - man I hate that! (pet peeve )

ok i will work on those points! thanx guys!

BUT

the site was designed when i only tested it in ie! so if u go back to the site and view it in IE most of the prtoblems would be gone! the logo says zoopedup with the two O's as car racing dials..rev counters...maby its un clear...when i updated the top table must of switched from autostreth to fixed...will fix that

so go have a look in IE tell me what u think....

that site was going to be old news a few weeks ago when i launched the new version but then my server went donw (hackers) and i lost it so i need to re upload...etc

but before i plug my site here again i need to give feedback on other sites.....(:

I was looking at your site in IE6 and it still has a massive horizontal scrollbar at 800*600. Have you looked at the site in NS4? I just have this time and it's a bit of a mess!

...it's quite intersting layout, although it does look a bit cluttered IMHO :S