Review my site please!

[sigmaseven]

This website is for my local computer buisness, not yet up and running. I am asking for some comments, opinions and reviews. Sorry if any ads come up, angelfire is the best I can do for right now. Here is the url:

http://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/sigmasevencompany/Sites/entertest.htm

Criticism Welcome!!!

[mairving]

The good:

Decent Logo. It is a common newbie mistake to not have a logo or just make some text and call it a logo. Your is fine.
It is clear without you even saying it what your site is about.


The bad:

Color scheme - although maybe this was well though out, it looks like a halloween site.
Frames - are very dated and have very little purpose in todays world. They also cause some problems with search engines, etc. Consider using php includes instead.
White text on a dark background can be harder to read for some people.
It is a very bad thing to do to tell people how they should view your site. If my monitor resolution is 800x600, I am not going to change it to 1024x768 just so I can best view your site. You need to have your page fit into a 750-760px width. You should accomodate your visitor rather than having them adjust to you.
A personal peeve that I have is 'why do I need to enter a site that I am already at?'. Lose the intro page and bring them the goods as soon as you can.


Overall not too awfully bad for a newbie but you did make some of the same mistakes I have seen several hundred times before.

[Jaggannath]

I'm with mairving on this one... change the colour scheme a bit, try not to have such a large expanse of plain white background, as many find it tiring to their eyes, as opposed to grays
Also, mairvings peeve is the same as mine... intro pages are frustrating, I don't want to click to enter, it seems amateurish

[sigmaseven]

Yeah, there is not going to be an intro page when it is completed, I only put it there to show the status of my work. Thanks, more criticism would be fine! Also, do you think I really have to change the color scheme? Does it cause a lot of problems? I know it might look a little haloweenisch, but...yeah.

[Metaphorically]

First the bad:
I don't believe in telling people that a site is under development. There are a few reasons for this. First, every site is either under development or just aging. I'd never change the status to say "this site is getting older all the time." Second, you (as the site developer) may never decide that it's perfect, so it will always show "under development" when it pretty much works. This is just one of my pet peeves. The only exception would be a site that requires somebody to actually pay money, then you don't want them to sign up until you can deliver. You don't actually have online payment and it looks like you do have the parts, so why turn away customers?

Next, I use FireFox mostly, and the text at the bottom of each ad ("Buy Now") overlaps other text. I'm guessing positioning doesn't add up (I'm at 1024x768). There are a few other layout problems on later pages as well. Definitely try out your site on multiple browsers and computers.

Now, I'll force myself out of my default cynical mode ;) :
Fonts are nice and clear.
Pages don't take too long to load
I've heard white on black is bad, but I think it can be done well. Your colour scheme isn't that bad, it could just use a little touch up.

The best way to learn is by doing, so congrats on a good start. :)

[sigmaseven]

thanks, I'll try to get rid of the intro page as soon as possible! Also, I learned from some other threads also to use other browsers, so I did about a week ago. I know about that firefox and mozilla problem, but I am not absolutely sure how to fix it. If anyone knows, please tell! For a quick link to bypass the intro page here:

http://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/sigmasevencompany/Sites/UntitledFrameset-12.htm

And yes I know, I am going to change the titles of these pages so they don't just say untitled at the top.....

[Jaggannath]

With the colours, I think just using the grey from your logo for the background would make it better, and with that colour you could definitely use white font
I use IE 6.0 and I find that the advertising and the big orange thing overlap each other, and I'm at 1024x768 pixels

[Urban Earth]

My advice would be to trim your file sizes on the pics. The first one of the tower is about 93Kb. That is more than a lot of sites. With about three seconds of fiddling with Fireworks that file size can be reduced to 2.25Kb (just a teeny difference!).
I still live in the world of dial-up and your site took a long time to load. You could eliminate a huge amount of time by optimizing your pics.
Also with your menu, the page you are on should not have an active link to itself. IE, when you are on the home page, the HOME menu button should not be active.
Have you tried changing all of the colour to the same one in your logo? It would still be orange but a little bit more muted.
Good start.

AJ

[m3talc0re]

If you want some help with it, contact me on msn messenger at m3talc0re_999@hotmail.com
I'll help you with it as well as give you advice and help you on your way.

[sigmaseven]

Optimized all images, they are all under 8 k now except for one that is 14 k

[Jaggannath]

Not a bad effort, impressive

How are you advertising for customers??

[kram 2.0]

Very nice webpage. A few criticisms/suggestions though:

-You migth benefit from shrinking the side frame a little - perhaps 3/4 that size. You want more viewable area, and less navigation.

-Shrink the right frame, so that you won't see any horizontle scroll bars. Those things can get annoying - I've done it and scared people away! :)

-Your font - maybe a little too bold?

-You might benefit from a title:<head><title>PUT A TITLE HERE</title>...</head>

Besides that, looks very nice - very nice job carving the images and stuff. Also very good use of tables. Overall, nice work!


Hope that helps,
kram

[sigmaseven]

hey, changed the site url to http://sigmaseven.net

Yeah, I plan on advertising with local pamphlets and word of mouth at the begining. I am also hoping that me and my friend can go to local small buisnesses and start selling computers to them. If you have any ideas, please tell me!!!

[MulderMan]

i quite like that design, the logo especially. as mairving said you might benefit more from php includes than horrible iframes, i presume your server supports php as you have cPanel. heres a link to a tutorial on how to make a header.php and footer.php and how to use the include function if your interested http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/8/0.php

[sigmaseven]

Do you think that the three examples (specials) of comps on the front is okay? Anyways... .REVIEW!

[kram 2.0]

Actually, now that I think of it, I might recommend changing the color scheme entirely. Orange is a little too hard on the eyes especially for a background. Try something like Blue, or Black, or even just plain white.

Hope that helps,
kram

[Jaggannath]

I like how it is now... you just really need to source the Dell prices for those systems, otherwise it's hard to appreciate as a customer what benefits they're getting
Leave the colours, I like them now

[RoyKelly]

It looks good and loads fast, but I do have one small problem. All of your links except "Gaming/High Performance" go to the same place - the home page. And what is with the Latin in the middle of the page?

I don't know if this is an error on my side (Windows XP Pro SP2) or by design, but when I am looking for a budget pc or a server, I would like to see examples, not the same page.

Either way, I have bookmarked it to look at in the future.