Too much to critique. - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

ScipioAfricanus · 08-13-2009, 07:58 PM

My web site, that is.

If you would please critique the crud out of this one. Did this myself and I would like to know if anyone has any trouble opening any links and what you think of the site over all.

I have ads on it so I am not making any money by others looking.

Thanks guys.

Andy.

DMDesigns · 08-13-2009, 08:23 PM

Hey Andy,

It looks good to me, in fact I think it looks great. Some of the text seems small on my monitor, but still very nicely laid out, I thought.

Dave

**ChrWright** · 08-13-2009, 08:58 PM

Andy,

The all caps font is a very hard to read, especially in italics. It makes it very hard to skim for what I might be looking for if I ended up on your page.

The paragraphs also have some strange line breaks on my screen (1440x900 viewed in Firefox).

The flash animation on your gallery page was a bit slow to load, and a little sluggish--for me anyway.

As a side note... Your work doesn't really look as dynamic as it could. What I mean by that, is the colors are a bit dull and lifeless. Please don't take offense to that. You've clearly done a ton of very detailed work, but it's not really presented in a way that makes a connection with the visitor.

Your section heads should be more benefit laden. The only benefits I see, on both the contractor and homeowner page, are "Save you money". Clearly your service does a lot more than that, and both should be fleshed out more.

Do you have any photos of your projects completed? I like the transition animations and I think transitioning to the finished project would really have a powerful visual impact.

SLSTech · 08-13-2009, 08:59 PM

Andy, The text is very hard to read

Sorry, the text is very hard to read. I know why you went with the font you did, but I would try a slightly larger font size first.
First page loaded very slow, you might want to see if you can compress the pics some, save as a jpg - hover over would be another jpg
When you click Home it goes to http://www.draftinginoc.com/index.html not www.draftinginoc.com - most SE will see that as two different pages
Your pages should not use caps (Yah I am bad about that to), especially all caps. Spaces in the name are also not good - try to use just one word
Title = http://www.draftinginoc.com/HOME%20OWNERS.html, whereas it should probably read "Homeowner Resources provided by Tardiff Drafting & Design, Orange County architect & engineer

Overall though, it is a very nice design targeted to your market

By the way - was their last name really Dang? That does look a little funny, Dang Residence - why me?

Framer53 · 08-13-2009, 09:09 PM

Loaded good for me, compared to most sites.
On the contractor page there is a sentance that is not complete.
I will echo the others, the font is a little hard to read.
Overall nice site!!!!

ScipioAfricanus · 08-13-2009, 10:08 PM

Thank you all very much.
Christopher I will definitely look into the dynamiscisit.....dynamstisisi..........dynanima... ...I'll look into what you said.

I think you are right!

Dave, thank you for getting me started in this stuff. I don't know whether to curse you or praise you.

Hmmm...praise...(for now)

Andy.

curiouscanuck · 08-14-2009, 12:58 AM

Your work looks great, but the web page doesn't.

As others said the font needs to go. Go with something basic and readable. If you want to jazz it up use a non-standard font for the headings.

You need to space things out. The headings run into the paragraphs and the paragraphs run into the pictures. I wouldn't lump all those plan pictures in all over the place, use your gallery to showcase your work.

Gallery didn't seem to have a logic or order to it. A gallery could feature full sets of drawings from your most impressive projects, or representive of your scope, with a picture of the finished work at the end. A short blurb personalizing each project might also be good.

Home page looks like all the others. Consider having your blurb about what kind of company you are (small, personal, etc...) front and center - tell the story of why you are the company of choice. All the specific bullet points you list at the top should be under the relevent link addressing home owners, contractors and designers. If your selling a small personal home design service then I would think your customers would want to get that feeling when they first click your home page. Even the color choice is cold and clinical. A phrase featured front and center as "great value for your dollar" paints a low quality image. Not saying that you shouldn't sell affordability, but my first question as a client is do you have a sense of style.

It also can only look so profesional without some kind of logo.

I don't know jack about web design so take my comments with a grain of salt. But IMHO you need a really top notch web page if you're selling design. If you were an electrical sub or something that would be one thing, but you are selling your design aesthetic if you are selling design services.

Check out some sites of companies with a similar product and do what has worked for them. No need to reinvent the wheel.

http://www.mjdrafting.ca/

http://www.lyallsdrafting.com/

http://www.copperstatedesign.com/index.htm

Best of luck,

Matt

ScipioAfricanus · 08-14-2009, 02:15 AM

Nice Matt, some very good points, I really appreciate the input. I made some changes to the site already like the font, sizing etc. and will now be looking at your points.

Andy.

curiouscanuck · 08-14-2009, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScipioAfricanus

Nice Matt, some very good points, I really appreciate the input. I made some changes to the site already like the font, sizing etc. and will now be looking at your points.

Andy.

Andy,

I think it already looks much better!

I'll be making my own page in the next couple months and I'll post it here for people to give me the once over

.

Matt

ScipioAfricanus · 08-14-2009, 03:31 PM

Thanks Matt.

I can't wait to see it...Mmwwaaahahahaha! Rubbing my hands ready to pounce.

Andy.

That is supposed to be a sinister laugh.

Those are some nice sites BTW. They look geared more toward interior designing and such though and I want to appeal more to "nuts & bolts" exterior architecture, con. docs. engineering and such. I don't know if I am just missing the mark or what though.

mics_54 · 08-14-2009, 05:11 PM

Over all, Andy I like the layout and I really like the mouse over rendering. The line drawings look more professional to me but I'm not a big fan of rendering unless its superb. I think you could work a little more on the grammatical intricacies.

The gallery page is huge and a tad slow loading for me. Not bad though. The images seem as though you eliminated a lot of detail to help the download time.

I'm not an expert...just my opinion.

mics_54 · 08-14-2009, 09:29 PM

After reading my own post...I guess that was too much critique. Anyway...It's alot better than MINE.

cbscreative · 08-15-2009, 02:48 PM

I got an error while loading the page for a MS add-on. It appears to be only a partial load. Those issues are never good. I'm using IE7 on XP if you want to try to simulate the error. One reason I use this browser is because it is so commonly used (Probably #1 right now, but stats can vary). If a site doesn't pass the IE test, it shouldn't go live. Also, the ALL CAPS is bad practice. I would avoid that.

I can't say too much more because like other users that get an error, I leave rather than take risks. If you have access to multiple computers, you should use them. You'd be surprised what you can learn. The worst one still commonly used is IE6 (I hate it because what works in 7 or 8 blows up in 6 and vice versa). It's a pain, but browser testing is very important.

ModernStyle · 08-21-2009, 11:30 PM

+ YouTube Video

ScipioAfricanus · 08-22-2009, 12:58 AM

nEighter · 08-22-2009, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ModernStyle

+ YouTube Video

I have looked high and low for that darn video!! Saved link now

Will check out the site and get back to this thread once I do

flashheatingand · 09-06-2009, 08:56 PM

I don't anybody mentioned that under the designer page, you need a space between to & increase. You typed...toincrease...

ScipioAfricanus · 09-06-2009, 11:15 PM

Ooh, nice catch, I will fix that tonight.

Thanks flash.

Andy.

andres · 09-08-2009, 12:48 AM

Andy,

If one of the goals of your website is to attract new customers via search engines, then I recommend:

Have all paragraphs be actual text. Right now you have images with the text written on them - those are INVISIBLE to search engines. Try search a phrase you used in your homepage to see if Google can find your page...
ALL CAPS is not considered a best practice, especially for titles or meta-descriptions. I would write a unique meta-description containing your contact info.
Use H1 tags for headings. Right now (e.g. on homepage) you are using blue color with underscore which is regularly used to show links - so for example I was tempted to click on "YOU HAVE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE" in the homepage thinking it was a link (it's not).

The nice thing is that you have some very good content right there. My suggestion is to make it accessible to the search engines.

Once/if you have implemented the above, I have second-order suggestions which may help a bit more.

Best - Andres