Company website, any comments welcome

[Pantryman]

Hi,

I'm wrapping up work on our new company website, have already had excellent help from the css forum section.
Welcome any comments on this one.
I realize I only have 1 review in this thread, will work on that.

Thanks a lot in advance!!

http://sobegeeks.com

[Corey J]

looks nice except way to compact and a little boring. I think it would be better if it was a bit bigger. Other then that looks pretty good to me.

[mbm]

I guess the design has been made for 1280x1024 display settings.
It is almoust okay on 1024x768, but completely not suitable for 800x600 display resolution.
The animated text next to the logo is annoying.
To many images in the footer. I would remove some of them and use the empty space for text or banner.

[Geoserv]

Perhaps a rolover for your navigation links as well.

Geoserv.

[Ezkimo_Pie]

You have some grammatical errors and sentences with questionable style. You should probably spell the name of the computers you are offering to fix correctly, too.

As a graphics design major, I find it irritating that it's hard to tell whether you want the background of the content to sunken or raised. That could just be me being picky, though.

Why limit yourself to the little squares for content when you could make a stretching layout?

As far as I can tell you don't develop universal software, so why the logo?

It would be nice to be able to tell which section you are currently viewing.

[Tischnoetentoet]

Use <p> as it's supposed to. Put a line between paragraphs.

Keep headers consistent. At the left, there is a title (welcome) in normal style. At the right, there is a title (what we do) in monotype. Why is there a difference?

I hate scrollbars inside a website. Maybe you can work on that.

Maybe you can give your main menu items some kind of button style. So everybody sees the buttons immediately.

[Pantryman]

Thanks for all the replies..

in order it was received :)

mbm
Resolution - You're right, and the 800/600 penalty was worth it for us as it's a resolution that is becoming obsolete. But I'll reconsider that.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Marquis - We actually polled quite a lot of people on the marquis, and it was well received. I will probably keep that in, but again will reconsider.
Logo's - I'm going to strip the universal part of the Apple logo. Shouldn't be there, thanks for pointing that out
I'm going to think about cleaning the footer up or perhaps splitting it, to free up room for more info. Thanks.

Geoserv
The navigation links gave me trouble. I tried to CSS my way into highlighting but failed miserably every time. I just couldn't find out how to do it, so that is going to be my first priority now, in the CSS threads.

Ezkimo_Pie
Thanks for pointing out the sunken background. I agree. I would like to make it sunken, and shadowing inwards. But I need to figure out how; using Fireworks 8.
Spelling: I crosschecked, you're right... Xbox... duh!
The squares.... yea, that should be stretching now that I consider it. Esthetically, we want everything to be centered without scrolling. But as we are going to integrate online payment and invoice viewing, we need the width so why not do it all wide. Will do, thanks.

Tischnoetentoet
<p>'s, I was limiting myself there. They were not resulting in paragraphs, due to the height limitation. Good point, will clean that up.
For the buttons, it's hard to find a solution that looks clean and elegant. I would love a thin black menu style, with rollover and index. Going to work on that, thanks.

Overall, I'm very glad that I asked for advice. I pumped this out in a few days and am going to go back and refine.

Oh, and about the language.. I'm Dutch, hence the perhaps weird grammar. Although, I didn't find any grammar errors. Where did you find them Ezkimo?

Thanks again.

Marinus.

[Pantryman]

Ok,

I have applied a lot of the suggestions, thanks again.

Marinus.

[muschino]

I think you have tried to compact it alot, which makes it hard to look at, and as pointed out earlier, boring. There is too much text everywhere! A bit of graphics here and there can help make it more visualy "comfortable".

Also, from experience, inline frames are a BAD idea! Search engines the pages, but when it comes up on google, for example, and someone click on the result, only the text in the inline frame will come up, nothing more.

Try and space it out a bit. Its worth making the page longer to fit more content than cramming it in.

Miro

[Pantryman]

Hi Miro,

we're going to space it out about 10%, primarily in the width and forget about 800x600. It's a lot of work, will take a few days.

The inline frames are actually # { overflow: scroll } 's. No searchengine problems but indeed not the best solution. We're going to reconstruct with a top/bottom content layout, so it's easier on the eye. And you're right, more graphics. Actually, we're waiting for release from various companies for logo use including MySpace etc..

Marinus.

[vinbeak]

By default there is a horziontal and vertical scroll bar on the right hand column, it would be good if you could get rid of this when there isn't any scrolling happening on the page.

A rollover state for the top nav options would be cool, also I don't know if you need the contact option to be bold.

Instead of using <br/> you should be closing the <p> and creating a new <p> tag whenever you want a new line. I think you should use <em> instead of <i> but this might just be for strict doctypes.

[mbm]

You might ned to re-reconsider both, the design and the implementation.
I just checked your site again using Firefox. My screen resolution is 1280x1024 and although the site looks nice, I used the FF feature "Text Size > Increase" just because it is easy to read bigger text.
Half or so of your text disapear when I used this command twice.
I believe, many people use this or similar functions in Opera and in IE7, so my suggestion is to create your layout flexible, not fixed.

[camp185]

Does seem a little squished. You might want to change your email link. Instead of 'send us an email at this address' make it 'send us an email', and just hyperlink the word email.

[credico]

A little boring, the logo sucks, and I don't like your 'rounded rectangle'. The links need rollovers as well. Other than that, I guess it isn't bad. But be aware, if I was looking for computer repairs (and whatever else you do) I wouldn't buy from you. Just my opinion...

Good luck!

[Pantryman]

Hi Credico,

thanks for the comments.
The logo will be improved. We would like to hire a pro, but they're not cheap. Something that is in the planning though.
Could you expand on the statement why you would not buy? We don't sell things, we only repair basically everything from PC's to iPod's. The only thing we sell are servers and related backup/security technology, but I'm still open for the reason of your statement so I can take that into consideration.

Camp, we did this on purpose as a lot of people use webmail only. That is what we find when we analyze our inbox. Hence this solution.

MBM:

I'll try to come up with a flexible centered/framed solution.

Thanks for pointing this out, good point.

[waffles]

Or you could make the address a mailto link. That way I can see what it is, and click it if I want to.

[camp185]

Yes, this

email me (mailto:info@adomain.com)

Is the same as this:

info@adomain.com (mailto:info@adomain.com)

[credico]

"iPod battery replacement (starting at $55)"

I'm guessing you sell the actual battery. I wouldn't buy from that site, simply because it doesn't look professional, not even close in to professional. You also said you want to hire a professional, and yet you're selling your web design services....I don't understand that.

[Pantryman]

Hi Credico,

we don't sell items through our website.
We have a established reputation for our repair services; the $55 is the total cost a customer pays when we replace a iPod battery, specifically the $55 is the total invoice for a G2/3 replacement. Replacement costs for G4's and Video's are slightly higher.

From the context, it should be obvious that I was referring to the hiring of a professional to design a company logo that would also be included in invoices, apparel and packaging. Something that will happen, soon. In the meantime, we probably should replace the logo.

The website is a work in progress. I invite you to check back in a month!

Marinus.

[credico]

Okay. I'll check back in a month!

[Pantryman]

Okay, all.

Think this is much clearer and more consistent now.
The only thing remaining (for now at least) is a solution for the resizing.. will work on that.
It's not perfect, but at least - credico - I also did something about the logo :)

http://sobegeeks.com