Thread: Any and all feedback is welcome

I just finished my first web site, or should I say I'm to the point I'd love to receive some feedback from everyone.

I have two pages that I'm still waiting on some information from others in my organization so they are currently basically blank. I should have this info soon and then will re-publish those pages.

But, I thought I would put it out there and begin seeing what everyone thought.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

www.howtobelean.com

centering pages on this forum has been mentioned once or twice on this forum so that might be a start. also though your pages look well laid out and link in nicely there is one thing that is kicking the hole thing and that is the contact us info in the banner, it looks like it has been stuck on the banner with double sided sticky tape, it brings the hole image of your site down one or two notches. and if you want to portray a professional web site ( and i think you do ) these some attentions to detail are vital

Hi,

I agree with what Aliens said. The email should also be clickable. I looked at the menu and the products listing made me scroll down and I almost lost the part of the menu I wanted to click on. Is there a way to catagorize them to a shorter secondary list in your menu?

yes i suggest splitting your Products/Services menu in to Products and one for Services. The menu drop down went down off my page it was so long.

At the bottom of the home page I have a blue bubble covering up all the content under 4) Deploy the Learning. I guess it's your footer covering up some content.

All of your pages have the same Title. They are all titled "Crowley Consulting Home Page". You will want to give each page a UNIQUE Title so that search engines can index your pages properly and so that viewers know what your pages are about.

On quite a few pages you have unnecessary blank space between the last bit of your text and the bottom of the page. If you are planning on inserting text here then ignore this one. If you are not going to insert more text, it's not a HUGE deal, just no one will see the contact information in your footer. I dont know if you want it to be seen or not.

It looks like you've got the hang of it though. The colors work well for you. Keep pluggin along

Agree with the above, here is the info on how to centre your pages http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/blu...our-pages.html

You have obviously put a lot of work into your site, but I do think there is some things that you can do, to have a TOP NOTCH professional looking site. There are a lot of people who will come here and help you with ideas, such as has already been given above. Acknowledge the suggestions that are given and ask any questions if you are unsure. More people will come and participate if you do to. Just my observation of past experience. This is your thread to get the help you need, so my suggestion is to use it to your benefit. Here are a few of my suggestions:
1. To start with you header is choppy around the edges. I think it is vital that you have a nice clean logo and header. I like your logo, but it just needs to be of higher resolution and quality.
2. I would choose a different font. One that is more professional looking and yet one that is web friendly. You can find various threads on this forum that talk about the use of web friendly fonts.
3. You have a lot of bolding going on and I really think that distracts from your content. I would re-think that a bit.
4. At first glance your alignment of your paragraphs, seems out of whack to me, but I think it is just the various sizes of fonts and bolding that you have going on.
5. Your photos on your team page look fine, except for yours. I would fix that. We don't want the president to look distorted do we? lol
6. This is a personal preference....your scroll bar. I personally prefer to have the part of the scroll bar that moves a lighter color than the background part. I kept wanting to scroll with the gray bar.
7. Under your Educational Material, I would have all those links open up in their own browser. You do that by selecting target "blank" in your hyperlink.
8. Not all of your links work under your Products and Services. You will want to check those.

Well, that's all I have for now. After you have made some changes, I will look again. You have done a GOOD JOB!! Just a little tweaking to do. Most of all have fun and enjoy the experience of building your website!

I really like your site, good layout, nice menu, and very appealing.
Congrats!

Hello.
Interesting site.
I agree with many of the previous comments - need a crisper logo, your particular photo needing to be adjusting so it isn't squishy looking, the color of the scroll bar..

I also want to comment on the font, as Cindy did. It is particularly difficult when bolded, and not very easy under any circumstances. I would choose a 'sans' type of font, that is, one with no little perpendicular lines at the ends of each letter part. Arial, for instance, is a clean font with no extra little lines, and is web friendly and very professional looking.

On your home button you have a drop down that gives a brief description of TPS. I would put that in the 'About Us' section, and reserve the home button for the more traditional usage of a central return point with a general info. Your home page could be more of a bulleted list of the things you offer, rather than a complete explanation. That way it might be more 'catchy'or curiosity invoking rather than so much in depth. Just a thought.

I don't know jsut how to phrase my next comment to make clear what I want to say, but here it is anyway: There is so much industry language you use in your descriptions of what you do that it is pretty awkward reading. You have either bolded or used quotations surrounding these terms, but to me, they just come off as jargon, rather than useful meaningful terms. In general, your descriptions aren't exactly clear to those who have not had experience in those particular arenas, even though you have gone to great lengths to try to explain - there seems an excess of language and terms specific to your methods. Perhaps a more generic explanation of what you do would be more clear, rather than explanations using industry or method-specific terms which are not so meaningful to those who don't have the whole picture. Remember, although you use these terms everyday, they might as well be Greek to those with no familiarity..

I hope you do not take offense at these comments - I mean to give you an outsiders view, and could be way off..
Regards,

I want everyone to know that I greatly appreciate the feedback and some of the things you guys/gals pointed out where concerns I had to begin with. However, there are several suggestions that I didn't even think about. I'll take your input and go back and make some changes soon and then ask for more feedback.

Thanks again, and I look forward to learning from everyone to make my site a professional looking site.

I think the basic layout is good. However I do agree with the banner issue. Also the log needs a PRO look and you can do that with this free program. Just design your logo and then do a screen capture, take it into paint, do a cut and paste and voila.

Here is the link, give it a try: http://www.aaa-logo.com/

Well Done,

Dean

Hi, Ditto with the above. The top banner wants to be a lot smaller (bit like the one,s below) it will save a lot of scrolling for visitors.
The other problem you may have is visitors using firefox. It tends to lengthen the text on a page & you can end up with a view like the bottom image. Don’t think there is any way around this except spacing things apart a bit more & testing in a few browsers.

Thanks again everyone for the feedback.

I had a couple of questions:
1) Regarding my contact info at the beginning of the page, how do I not have the white background show up? I used a text block to put in the info and the white background doesn't show up until I view or publish the pages. I've tried everything I know to get rid of it, but nothing is working.

2)For Collectors-info, how did you create the logos you put in your reply? I like this format but don't have a clue how to do this. My current art work was created as a pdf file by the company that created my business cards, but when I crop and paste in Paint, I get the choppy edges several of you have pointed out. And, regardless of what size (I agree the current one is too large) I can't smooth out the edges.

I'm sure I'll have other questions, but these are the two I'm currently trying to fix.

Thanks,
rdcrowley

I told you I'd have more questions. After reviewing the comments again, aconstas1 had a comment about the blank space beneath the text and the last bit of text "contact info" on several pages. The reason I did this is that everything I read said to keep every page template the same to maximize load speed and since my home page is long to try and quickly set my company aside from all the other consulting companies in my field I didn't know how else to approach this issue.

Will the load speed be slowed done that much if I move this info up to directly beneath where the text ends of each page?

Please advise.

Thanks again,
rdcrowley

I have another question. ace5548 suggested to make my email "clickable". How do I do that?

Hi again,

The site is linked properly and all, but the logo and some of the cut and paste looks need improvement in my honest opinion. I recall giving you a link for a FREE logo maker prorgram. I think this would improve your site immensly. The link again is http://www.aaa-logo.com IF you need help cutting nas pasting it, look me up. Check me out at: www.lasvegasBS.com

Dean

Hi, I quite often use this software on a lot of things like logos. http://www.thelogocreator.com/
The text part you can do in BV, just create your text in blue, then cut & paste that text onto the same page & change the colour to grey & place behind the original text, slightly offset.
If you can post your original image that you have your cards printed from on the forum, I am sure one of use can reduce the size without the fuzzy bits. It won’t work very well if it has to be enlarged.

Thanks again for the input and recommendations on a couple of logo making sites. I'll check them out and play with some things with my logo.

I would post the original image from my business card maker, but I'm not sure how. If you can tell me how, I'd love to post it on the forum. It's much smaller than what I've placed on my site. I enlarged it for the purpose of my site, but I totally agree that I made it way too big for the site.

Thanks,
rdcrowley

Blue Voda 9 now has a logo maker within the program, you can make a real nice one too, I would suggest this ...

I think I'd like to see some kind of framework or border on your site, and would agree with centering the pages, your content appears to me, to be kind of floating around the page, loose, needs to be tighter looking, if you know what I mean. Perhaps a shape behind your text and content and apply borders on it keeping the content and your new logo within the framework .. personally, I am not a fan of text with a colored background, I think someone else mentioned a cut and paste look, that is where I notice the cut & paste, a smaller tighter font, like a verdana in a 10 or 12 would look nice. I might make either the pictures, or your business name, be your logo/header, (of course after you make a new logo with the BV9) as both are kind of taking up too much of the page, and perhaps reduce the size of the font on your drop menu, that might be better too ...

Hi rdcrowley;
Your question on your contact info, to make it not look like it was pasted in, either use the text buttom next to the arrow in the top menu bar, or if you use a text block, go into the properties of the block and you can make the back ground transparent. Looks like you ar getting there, good luck!!

I did insert the contact text with a text block but when I go into the properties of the text block, there's isn't an option to make the back ground transparent. I couldn't find the option in the custom color section either. In view mode, it still shows up white directly behind the text, but the rest of the block is fine.

What to do? What to do?

I'm thinking about moving it to the header area, but I'd really like to keep it where it's at if I can get rid of the white.

Not yet ready to go online, but I've been building and fine-tuning up to 7 pages. Only viewing them in my owm brownser till date.
I'm appaled by the BVoda guys and gals but might need some more time, maybe also help to get my site online.
Now I'm going to attack the linking pages togethers stage. Not sure if I will be able to view the linking in my browser?

Sorry for the long delay in my communication. I've been extremely busy with other things as well as working on most of the suggested changes. I've got most of them completed and have re-published my site for review. However, I do have a question. How do I make my email address "clickable"?

Sorry, I've been out of pocket for a while, but I have some questions regarding my web site. I've made a lot of changes that have been suggested, but I have some issues/questions:
1) I've got several pdf files linked on my "Educational Information" page but they're not working when I publish that page. How do I publish the pdf files so the links will work?
2) I've entered a form for people to enter their information if they would like more information, but when I submit a test it doesn't work. Any idea how to make this work?

That's it for now but I'm sure I'll have others. I finally have a couple of weeks at home so I wanted to get this site working during this period.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I figured out what was wrong with my "form" and I have it fixed to were the information entered is emailed to me, but I'm still having problems with my pdf files that are linked to one of my pages.

How do I publish pdf files so the links will work? Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, if it helps, these files are in Adobe Reader format.

Any suggestions from anyone??

Please help!!

I figured it out and I've made several changes per the suggestions on this forum as well as other colleagues. Please take a look and let me know what you think.
PS. I chose to keep the technical jargon because anyone looking on this type of site would be familiar with the terms and if not I've included a glossary of terms for novice to "lean manufacturing".

www.howtobelean.com

NOne of your links seem to be working?