web site

[pvapour]

Just after some feed back on my companys web site that has just been produced by a local company, any constructive critisism appreciated, I know some of you on here web design for a living so any feedback would be good.

www.rtstudios.co.uk/clients/timeless/


Cheers Nik

[barry sheene]

Having a non-shocked version might be nice as I don't have Shockwave on this machine (cos it's at work) and therefore can't actually see the site.......

[Alex]

Not that keen on fancy animations. Content is king. Put as much anal detail as possible about your products on the site.

[Alex]

"Please fill the above form in, choose print from your browser and post or fax this form to place your order with Timeless Designs"

N O !!!!

I fking hate websites like that! What is the point! If I'm online I want to order online! You WILL lose sales if you don't implement proper online ordering.

[rpguk]

Agree with the point regarding the printing of the order form. If you are going to do that you have to at least to it on a page with a blank background. No one will want to print off a page with all that colour.

While it isn't too hard to add 'proper' online ordering, even if it is just a quick form > email script though for your business I wouldn't have thought it'd get used much. Might be a case of just for the sake of it.

Design is ok though, not too sure on all flash though.

[davidd]

They want an order without stating how much the doors are.

As otheres have said, printing an order is a bit crap, it is not hard to integrate with a bank, that way the customer knows the order has been placed properly etc.

Lasty, how do you spell expiry?

Can I ask how much they are charging for this ?

D.

[aprisa]

I may be dim but I couldn't find a price? how would I order without knowing cost?

Cottage door is made from 44mm Lardwood!

Cheers Nick

[gopher]

Would echo the points made about the prices being shown , and if possible I really would allow on-line purchasing. Personally I would drop the "opening Door" on the front page and as has been said before an html version would be usefull. (I did not see anything on there which could not have been been done in html anyways).

HTH

Paul

[richmartin]

Another thing to note, is that customers are unlikely to enter their credit card details on anything other than a secure server.

I can't really see the benefits of the site being designed in Flash, a standard HTML site would be far better and more importantly, cheaper!

Rich

[pvapour]

thanks for all your comments, the web site is not a final draft hence it being hosted on by another web site, the order form side of things is not really that important at this stage as people will visit the showroom to actually order, the site is intended primarily to give people an idea of what we do via yell.com before they visit the showroom, hence the need for the interaction of changing colour/door/furniture/glass etc, nobody will want to spend £1500 on a new front door without seeing it in the flesh, it really is a support for the showroom rather than a stand alone selling off the web type site, although one day secure online ordering will be available.

I was told by the design company though that these animations were not possible in HTML, is this not the case then?

cheers again, Nik

[simpo two]

Pretend you're a prospect. Look at it on a PC with dial-up connection (not broadband) and see if you think you'd be able to find out whatever you need to find out, or whether you'd say 'arse' and go to the next listing on Google!

[KormaChameleon]

"I was told by the design company though that these animations were not possible in HTML, is this not the case then?"

It is possible to do this using HTML - and in some cases better. You can use mouseovers with animated GIFs for instance to achive the same effect.

I always use Flash in my websites but only as an animation, never the entire website for the reasons mentioned above. In anycase, you must, for a public facing site, be expected to degrade gracefully to a pure HTML format when you detect the client browser does not support the appropriate plugin.

[elms]

They've spelt 'expiry' wrong.

[polar_ben]

None of the search engines can 'read' a Flash site, so it will never do very well in their rankings.

Clicking 'Home' takes you back to the splash page/door animation, which gets quite irritating after you've seen it once.

If it were my company, I'd ask for a nice standards compliant CSS/XHTML site - Snowdonia Windows is a nice example of such a site (in a similar market sector) - www.snowdoniawindows.co.uk

[pvapour]

polar_ben said:

None of the search engines can 'read' a Flash site, so it will never do very well in their rankings.

Thanks Polar Ben (and evryone else), this would be a major issue in the future and unfortunately I was never told this, I was also under the impression that most PCs would be able to view this site at a reasonable speed, and the lack of speed at the moment is due to it being hosted by another web site.

Having read everyones input and with concerns already (hence the post in the first place) I do now feel it would be a good idea to transfer this project to someone with a little more experience, so if anyone feels they could do a better job of this site for a reasonable fee, then could you please contact me, I can supply all images on CD so no photo work and there is no urgency on time scales (end March live).

If a jobs worth doing......

Cheers for any help, Nick

[_DJ_]

polar_ben said:

None of the search engines can 'read' a Flash site, so it will never do very well in their rankings. Clicking 'Home' takes you back to the splash page/door animation, which gets quite irritating after you've seen it once. If it were my company, I'd ask for a nice standards compliant CSS/XHTML site - Snowdonia Windows is a nice example of such a site (in a similar market sector) - www.snowdoniawindows.co.uk

That's horrible!!! Surely there's a better example that that! Dark green buttons? Yuk!

[arcturus]

I'm one of those without broadband and if it hadn't been for the fact that I was reviewing this for a fellow PHer, I would have moved on to the next site pretty sharpish. It just takes too long to load the pages about the individual doors - even over ISDN.

And it's nothing to do with the server it's hosted on, it's all to do with the thin pipe from the exchange to our offices and the amount of data I need to download to view the page!! To put it politely, you have been misinformed.

As regards an all Flash site - don't do it, that is one of the main reasons boo.com failed a few years ago; their site took too long to load and people got fed up and went elsewhere.

[schueymcfee]

pvapour said:

polar_ben said: None of the search engines can 'read' a Flash site, so it will never do very well in their rankings. Thanks Polar Ben (and evryone else), this would be a major issue in the future and unfortunately I was never told this, I was also under the impression that most PCs would be able to view this site at a reasonable speed, and the lack of speed at the moment is due to it being hosted by another web site. Having read everyones input and with concerns already (hence the post in the first place) I do now feel it would be a good idea to transfer this project to someone with a little more experience, so if anyone feels they could do a better job of this site for a reasonable fee, then could you please contact me, I can supply all images on CD so no photo work and there is no urgency on time scales (end March live). If a jobs worth doing...... Cheers for any help, Nick

Mmmm, not as professional as the designers own site me thinks.

I'll be moving into freelance web design soon and I was wondering what attracted you to them considering their portfolio and other work is not available to view? Where they cheap, local or did you like their own web site?

[furby]

PVA I have sent you an email regarding your web site.

Dave

[simpo two]

arcturus said:

As regards an all Flash site - don't do it, that is one of the main reasons boo.com failed a few years ago; their site took too long to load and people got fed up and went elsewhere.

Well said. I've just moved to broadband from about 5 years on dial-up, and you can always tell when something's been designed without dial-up in mind. By all means have an option for Flash so that people can decide whether to look at the shiny animations, but you have to (IMHO) have a way that people with slow connections can find out what they want to in a reasonable time. It's amazing how many sites are effectively no-go areas for dial-up folk, or ego trips for the designers anxious to impress with extra toys but forgetting what the fundamental task of a website is!