sterlingsign.com

Splash page:
-Matrix music on the splash page was kind of cool. =)
-There needs to be a way to skip the intro and proceed directly to the main page.

The main page... hmmm... here are a few things, off the top of my head:
-The blue bar stretches across the page, while the grey one does not. Looks funny.
-Whitespace is good, but I can't help thinking it could be used better in this case.
-There is a dead image in the rotation on the main page.

And on the sub pages:
-The bolded text looks a little odd.
-On the installation page, maybe try putting some of the images at the bottom into the text, aligned left and right.

Those are just a few suggestions, off the top of my head. It's looking nice, now it just needs some polish.

Splash page = "Untitled Document", no meta tags, no text or anything to get indexed by a search engine whatsoever. You've buried the "skip intro" link below 11 break tags so that it's not even on the screen at 800x600. I desperately wanted to stop it but couldn't even see the "skip intro" link.

I was going to comment that 127K was too much to wait for just to see your flash file.

Then I got to the next page and watched the status bar say 249K, then 263K, then 1020K... so I stopped it. Went outside and smoked a cigarette, came back in and... it didn't stop. It's still going and going and going. It's been 15 minutes and it's still loading!!!!!! 407K, 181K, 283K, 156K!!!! Even the Energizer Bunny woulda fizzled out by now.

What kind of connection do you have? I'm on a 33.6 dialup and this page has to set the record for the longest load time I've ever encountered. Ever! Is this the eternal slide show that won't stop? I can't get the page to stop or finish loading.

So I check out the source and try to figure out what those images are at the bottom that still haven't loaded yet. isa.gif is 335x125, yet you are squishing it via html to 99x47. You can save some bandwidth by making your images the correct size in a graphics program.

Okay, your shockwave file for surveys, design, etc... are those supposed to be links? Because they don't work for me (NS 4.6).

That grey bar is about three inches too wide for 800x600.

On to the "About Us" page. That title is so jagged! Check source and see it's not a graphic. You've chosen the font Mistral and I've got Adobe Type Mgr turned off at the moment because it has conflicts with AOL Instant Messenger on a Mac. BTW, Mistral is not a standard system font so if you want it to display on systems that don't have it installed, you should make it into a graphic. "Perpetua", "Eurostile"? These are not fonts the average user has installed either. And please, oh please, don't make all the text on every page bold.

Installation - Oh, no! 287K, 406K, 370K! Again, you're squishing the images via your html. The one I checked was 640x480 yet you're sizing it to 280x211. A little quick math shows you would shrink the file size to only 20% of the original if you sized it correctly.

And what's with the non-breaking spaces between just about every word on the maintenance page? The alignment looks totally whacked.

I can't believe I just spent an hour going through your site and writing this when I could have just been beating my head with a hammer instead.

thanks for the advice
i'm doing what you said

i need help on that slideshow of signs on the homepage

i don't like but can't think of anything better in a small space

any thoughts?

Intro, well, not too bad but I don't really fell that it's necessary.

My first impression when I reach the home page is who's nation are you talking about when you say "nationwide?" Just a pet peeve of mine. I'm finding the flash animation on the left to be very annoying and rather tacky looking.

You've also got a font problem going on here - you're using two different serif fonts on the same page (the one in the mai logo, which is too big BTW, and another one for your text links, which are too small, and the flash animation). Change your body font to a sans-serif like helvetica or verdana.

THe photos on the front page are too overlayed with each other - it makes it hard to see them. I would just use plain photos - no special effects, and then tile them in a grid. That might look good. THen add some information text about the company.

As for the rest of the pages, they're quite simple, not bad, but you should really have a better nav bar to appear on every page as well as the full company logo.

I thought the intro was kind of cool. Except when the main page loaded, it didn't compare. It just didn't seem to flow well. They didn't seem to hhave the same projection if that makes any sense.

The flash image on the left of the homepage is too long as in time and size. It takes like 30 seconds to watch the whole thing. Or at least at the end when it all reveals the different tasks that the company does, make those links to other areas in the site.

The collage of images on the homepage could be done better. Maybe fading out the edges of them and then overlapping. I just don't like the way they fit with eachother. You should also center the home and e-mail links in the grey bar.

What about making the little logos for the other organizations links to those actual organizations? An idea to improve the consistency of the site. How about make the other pages of the site have the same navigation bar as the top page does. Also, the other pages on the site seem kind of boring. Try adding some type of divider to separate the title of the other pages with the content of the other pages.

Also, the warrany page has the text aligned with respect to the other pages. The others are all left justified. The font and style is not consistent throughout the site.

Hope this helps.

Meta,

Are you aware that the email address on the home page is camouflaged by the color (blue on blue)? It becomes readable only on mouseover.

On that page the MSA button at the base has no link.

I think the navigation bar at the top would look better if the table boxes were more evenly spaced - the warranty cell looks rather too narrow.

The line spacing between the page headings and the navigation bar is not consistent so when I move from page to page the bar shifts disconcertingly up and down. The problem does not occur with 'management' and 'maintenance', and moving between these pages is smoother as a result.

Also I would try for a consistent look and feel whereby the colouring of the home page matches that of the inner pages.

Hope that helps

Stephen

To add on to what citron says:
I would make the navigation links different colors when you mouseover them. They white is kind of hard to read. Also, the sterling sign systems image at the top looks too separate from the rest of the page. Try designing that image with the same color as the background or make the image transparant. Also, SERVING AMERICA, NATIONWIDE isn't centered underneath that image. Big improvement over before.

Hope this helps.

Another thing, you should be using META tags and choose a descriptive name for your title instead of just SSS. This will help your site be found by search engines.

~Chris

This does not look like the same site reviewed below. You must have been working on it. I can only comment on what I now see before me:

Dramatic Flash intro (melodramatic actually - this is a sign company, not a film studio) followed by... well, not much.

The site pages are so plain that the whole thing kind of cries out:

"We blew our budget on the Flash intro and had nothing left to spend on the rest of the site"

Oh, and the subpages have no link back home - hyperlink the logo perhaps?

Just looking at your latest efforts. I liked the flash intro.

I don't like the links to the other sites at the bottom of the main page. They're very jarring on the eyes. Try different colour schemes. I think you'll quickly find one you prefer.

The grey bar is pretty dull. As a sign company, I'd expect something a bit nicer. Why not make the navigation bar look like a sign of some sort?

I counted a total of four pictures on the site. It needs more. Get more pictures of signs and it'll liven the site up no end.