Is this a trendy website?

Took a quick look, heres a few suggestions:

I would immediatly take out the pop-up messages when you click on a section button you are already in!!
Hop to it before any further damage is done!

I'd think about making smaller buttons on the side, they seem a little overbearing and out of place.

Perhaps widening the body width so that user will not have to scroll so much. People don't like reading and they don't like scrolling

What about a rounded corner on the top left of the black header? It looks a bit ackward being a simple square with the 3d curved buttons below.

-Tim Yarosh
Lucid Games

It looks all right. It could use some more work though.

- I think the buttons are a little overboard. Tone them down a bit somehow. They seem to stick out to much.

- Make yourself a logo. Something nice looking and creative.

- Make the top rounded and smoother.

That's about it. Maybe add some more color.

Make your content space wider. I don't know about the rest.

Is this a trendy website??? Um, no to be honest. Check out coolhomepaes.com for some "trendy" sites. If this was 1997, yours would be a very trendy website, but unfortunately for you this is the year 2000 and a sleeker look is usually preferred.

Now, the real problems with your site:

1. The 3D buttons are very poorly done and poorly optimized. The text is very fuzzy and hard to read.

2. You have no eye catching logo. You need to do something to fancy up that text. What's with that peach colour? Ugh.

3. The colour scheme hasn't been very well developed. Think about your colours and how they'll work together.

4. Most of the pages are too long. A lot of scrolling around isn't usually good. Cut stuff up into several pages or make an expanding layout rather than fixed width.

I've cut out all pop-ups. Rounded the corners and soon
going to reduce the buttons in size.

This is a great way of learning how to improve my site.

I'll let you know when I've made more changes.

Thank you.

Eh I am flummoxed at this bit

Quote: People don't like reading

I had to agree with what has already been said.

I want to get it right.... so I'll be posting changes in stages.

Thanks again.

Any feedback, good or bad is welcome.

Note, a small animation, at the top near the logo.

Thank you so much. You guys and gals have been a big help.

There's something missing on the upper left corner... could be a logo or some sort of graphics.

You should still make the page wider. I use a 1024 resolution and your page uses maybe half of the screen horizontally.

You should still make those buttons smaller. How about adding some sort of a rollover effect to them (change font color or something like that).

About the FAQ - I think you should reorganize the list and the bullets, maybe using a table. The text is better off aligned to the left with the bullets taking their place more to the left than any part of the text.

I like the colors.

Good Luck!

Anat.

Filled up my upper left corner.

Thanks for taking the time to review my site.

Is this wide enough?

Hi,

I looked again, this time in different resolutions.

You still have room on both sides even at 640*480, so I think you should make it at the very least 630 pixels wide.

That way even low-resolutions monitors will not have to scroll and you'll take advantage of more viewing space (which also means less vertical scrolling).

Personally, I usually design for 800*600, as I feel it doesn't hurt too many people (5-10%?) and more people can enjoy a better design.

Not everyone agrees. I started a thread about this isuue a few months ago and there was some controversy. Some people felt that you should still design for 640*480 or limit yourself to percentage-based tables that would fit any monitor. I really dislike that option, cause it looks terrible on my 1024 - The lines get ever so long and it's actually difficult to read.

Well, that's enough chatter for this morning...

Anat.

I'd have to agree with anat...

Quote:
Personally, I usually design for 800*600, as I feel it doesn't hurt too many people (5-10%?) and more people can enjoy a better design.

I design for 800 as well. I figure, if your still running at 640, you deserve to scoll sideways. lol

At home, I have a res of 1025 or 1152 (I toggle), and my dad's PC is running 1600 (I love it! 19in. monitor), so I get annoyed by skinny sites.

I just took a quick look at your source.. I think your table is only 531px wide. Add about 100px and you'll still be good to go with 640 res.

I made a typo..
1024 not 1025... hehe

So most people use 800*600. 80% is that right?
How many still use 640*480?
1024*768?

Others. More details please. I want to get it right.

Thanks for the feedback so far. I love it.

By the way, whoever replies with helpful feedback is
welcome to receive three months free hosting.

Just email me for details, and mention you provided
feedback in this post. "Is this a trendy website?".

I'll get right on to it.

Back to resolutions. What is the best one to design for?

Not that anyone cares cause I ain't no Pro! But I agree that 800x600 should be the minimum nowadays.
Anyone running at 640x480 are either at college, at school or work! And should not be using the PC to browse the internet IMHO.
Those PC's will eventually get upgraded anyway and the percentage of 640x480 users will decrease.

Anyone browsing the net seriously, uses 800x600 minimum I bet.

Think of all that extra space to work with luverly.

Me? 1024x768 at work and home.

well, this is a little off, but it'll give you an idea.
http://digitalart.org/
look at the results of the poll on the left.

Here is a res poll:
http://webreview.com/pub/1999/06/18/poll/results.html

I've made various changes including a more interesting logo.

How is my site looking now?
http://www.stephendunbar.com

Thank you

What I have learned is in the hosting industry, since it is so saturated, that most people will judge your company by its cover, your web site.

FYI:

This page is messed up: http://stephendunbar.com/faq.html See what I'm referring too?

Curtis Stevens
Simple Solutions
http://www.1simple.com

What is messed up with my faq page?

The left colum, where it stops, after all of the buttons, the black colum. The other pages are not like that. You also need some space around the text, too bunched in.

Curtis

Curtis is exactly right. I mean, compare your website to the one he posted a few threads down. Which one would you pick? There's no doubt in my mind...

I agree with you. The one thing I have leared is that. There are many people here, like JP and Chad from dids.com who have seen every design I have made, which I can't keep count any more. Every single one was what I built. The current is my best design. The one thing I lacked was that corporate feeling, interacting the company logo into the layout and some pictures, which gives it a more real feeling.

For example, go to webhosting.com or burlee.com When you first go to those sites, you just think wow, they must be a good service, it gives the cutomers a good feeling and believes that you are big and will be there for them.

I don't know what this new design is going to do, the one Megan is referring too, but I have a feeling it will help a lot. And no, I didn't build it, that is the only thing I lack, which is the hardest thing in designing web sites, is to get a layout together and create the imgaes. They both work together, but you have to be good at it, with creativity.

Curtis

I tried to edit my post, but it wont allow me to login, stupid scripting error, JP???

I suggest you hire yourself a designer and get him to build you a site like mine. I was the same way you were, I just tried to build a better one and thought it was good. Then I would go look at webhosting.com and just get down. Then I just told myself it isn't that big of a deal. But it is when there are customers that will buy from a particular host JUST becase they liked the web site. I don't have any real life expereince proof yet, but I will soon. People have told me that they sometimes do what I just said.

I highly recommend hiring a designer. Give him or her free hosting if you can if not, just pay them.

Curtis

It's not always that superficial either (well, not for me anyway). A nice looking website shows that you've taken that extra bit of effort that, in the hosting business anyway, isn't specifically necessary. It's like dressing up for a job interview. You're still the same person with the same skills no matter what you wear but you'll look a lot better to the company if you're dressed well.

If a hosting company makes that extra effort to put up a nice website, that tells me that they'll be willing to make an extra effort in other areas too. There's a lot of competition out there. You have to do everything you can to make yourself stand out from the crowd.