Hello Everyone, I just made http://www.movingonauto.com please check it out and tell me what you think, I used all royalty free images and plan on switching them out as I take more on the job. This is my first website but I would like a harsh critique. Thank You.
I made this website for my Dad,
I used Intuit Website Maker, Stock Photos, A I converted a Video from 1904 for the Home Page.
Total Amount Spent=0$ until I get Billed for Hosting.
One thing that's got to be said, the converted video loses it's attraction after the first minute. You should consider a slider instead for the frames in it, put some content in each of them, describing the business, and make a slower slideshow out of it.
You're doing a good job of keeping things clear and pointing out the important ones. On some, a better finish is required, like it's the case for the logo part.
It should not show a muck up car, as it may convey something related to other fields, like children play.
The logo text (and menu text) should be more clear and clean, and the direction for moving on should be to the right, as forward, not to the left, as backwards, as showed by the two blue and red arrows. The message is very important on this one.
Also, you should be like "Learn more about our services" instead of "Interested?". Sales 1on1: no question marks, affirmative sentences only.
Thank you so much, put a new logo up just an hour or so ago, yeah great idea with the images, Im working on getting images together once my dad starts working he did auto repair for 26 years but never really took pictures(hes oldschool) and if he did they werent digital lol. The one picture in his about me is just about the only one I have.
I changed it to "Call now to learn more about my services." thank you good eye on that one.
My logo is seeming to take a while to load the old one keeps showing up, guess the servers are kinda slow.NEWLOGO.jpg is what i made now.
Well I think the site looks quite good. I guess you need to make an autodetection what users use laptop or mobile. And insert a welcome text instead of this two tables. I also agree that you need to change the logo which shows that you repair cars.
And the last thing - I would delete one phone number, which is on the top ... I would delete the second in the footer!
Good luck,
Fokebox
Your 'home page' / 'landing page' is not a 'home page' / 'landing page', it's a spash page... there is little useful information on said page, and it falls apart when images are disabled because you don't have actual TEXT on the page for your heading, or a fallback background-color behind your background images. Splash pages went the way of the dodo for a reason -- they're just another page users have to click through before getting to anything resembling actual CONTENT on the page.
The bold menu text is blurry and hard to read, the fixed width is useless on my netbook and too small for my desktop...
At 362k it is more than twice the size I'd allow for a template on a site, and it's not just the massive images that are to blame... you've got jquery and a bunch of other scripts in there for christmas only knows what (11 separate files?!?) that are delaying the page load -- when I'm not seeing the page do anything that warrants the use of ANY scripting.
The MASSIVE text on subpages looks like you are trying to cover up for a lack of content, text is blowing out of the containers everywhere, the inconsistent paddings on the services or contact pages looks more like a rendering error than by intent...
Peeking under the hood, I see we have the HTML 5 for nothing bloat, while at the same time being so knee deep in presentational markup, inlined style (to the point of making me ask why even have an external stylesheet), tables for layout, tags that have no business even being used in constructing a website after 1998 like FONT... the only thing I can think of is some crappy sitebuilder was used to make this instead of building the page properly since it seems to be written in HTML 3.2 -- though as I've said a few times HTML 5, setting coding practices BACK a decade or more.
Oh, I see... It's that Intuit nonsense. That would explain the completely non-semantic markup that really seems to be decades out of date and completely inaccessible... and why screen readers and styling off it comes across as one giant run-on sentence.
There's a reason I say those types of tools "trick people into THINKING they can build a website"... Sorry to say it, but pitch it and start over.
For a first website, congratulations! Now to the rough stuff, since you've asked for it! For a business it looks like it was done by an amateur (font size is huge, color scheme is not so great, looks like a website from the 90's). I don't think this will attract any business for you at all but there always is a solution.
It seems like you have a basic grasp of HTML and making a website, what I would do is search for a wordpress template to your liking, and install wordpress for webhosting. (This can be done on most hosts as a 1 click install process). Working in wordpress is really easy for the beginner and you can create pretty attractive, well structured sites using the template that suits you and your business.
Good luck with the rest of development, its a start!
- Normally on pages that look like that, you'd have a link saying 'Enter Website'
- It's Unattractive due to colour scheme.
- Poor image quality yes but with them being 'free' you can't bargain at that right now.
- Poor font choice and size, I.E. the nav links for a real start.
- It badly needs more content information.
Take the logo idea you have been given above, that's clever. Make the header height bigger. Cut that main image below a half and add a white content box below it.
At 1024x768, the bottom bar with the phone number is below the fold. Up to you whether you like that or not but it's not great Usability to make people scroll down to find something that you consider important.
Also, it fails to validate with 60 errors. That might cause cross browser compatibility / display issues.
Well, it's not terrible, but could be greatly improved. It really depends on how much content you want to have up, but it doesn't look like you will be having that much
The Good
- I like the images. They are not as good as ones you pay for but they are a great price for starting out
- Great to see the picture on the About Me page. Makes the site look more personal.
- You have a contact phone number on most if not all the pages
The Bad
- The font size is way too big, especially on the About Me page.
- The front page has no real info
- The navigation menu on the services page does not line up with the graphic; the text is outside the box behind it (may be only on my computer)
Action Items
- Consider going with the WordPress framework. It's free and with all the free themes, you can easily customize the site as well as hire someone to do it for you. WordPress is very simple to use, but there is a learning curve so don't expect to be an expert overnight.
- Reduce the size of the images for the page to load faster, especially on slower connections
- Get the logo into a PNG or higher quality JPG format. It is a little blurry
-Your font, especially on the About page, is wayy too big. Tone it down a bit.
-On the top horizontal dropdown menu, give a hover state. I hate menus without them and it just really makes it better
-Your footer is really bland...Perhaps spice that up a bit.
-Your services page looks...weird. Things hanging out of their containers (deathshadow posted so I do hope he gave you a good whooping on your code. It could definitely use a recode)
The huge font is really a turnoff for me, it just makes the site seem less professional, and when you are offering products or services on the web, I personally will never buy something from a site that isn't professsional looking. Makes it seem dodgy.
Twitter-@Ryan_Reese09 http://www.ryanreese.us -Always looking for web design/development work
As I have to always say, don't trust my opinion, I'm totally new to this... Just giving my impressions. I'm probably repeating what others have said too.
Well done, for a first website it's good. The home page picture and slogan looks great.
Looks like you've made changes since the original post, so just to mention that I'm looking at it on the 9th march:
It feels like there needs to be some space between the navigation menu in the header and the rest of the content, so maybe try having the top navigation menu at the top of the header rather than at the bottom of the header? You should probably make a more clear 'active page' effect to show the user which page they're currently on. Right now it's just a faint underline and slight change of colour. Plus a hover effect for each navigation page would be a nice touch.
The text is a bit too large on the 'about me' page. I have a 1920x1080 resolution so I think for many people using lower resolutions it might seem even bigger... so I'd make the text size a bit smaller. When I tried raising the text sizes (as some people still do) in the browser the text was overlapping and didn't fit the containers so you might need to work on making the site more 'fluid' so that the containers will expand if the text size expands. The site I'm working on has the same problem.
I was thinking that it might be best to put more content on the home page - under the splash picture+slogan. A summary of services or something.
I remember reading somewhere that it's best to avoid 'click here' links and instead use descriptive text on links. I think search engines prefer that too.
On the services page, it took me a while to realise that each service could be clicked on and had its own page. Don't know if there's much you can do about that. I don't know how to make a drop down menu appear when you hover on the 'Services' navigation link but in an ideal world that would be a great option.
The 'makes and models...' link should be styled and positioned rather than left as a bland text link.
I think the logo is too confusing. There are the angled brackets on the left, the name in the middle, and the road going to the horizon on the left. It should definitely be more simple. I think the text alone is good enough. It would be nice if you could integrated some of those shapes into the text.
Another quick suggestion would be to change the navigation bar's bg colour to white and remove the rounded corners— I feel it would look much better that way.
There are a few things that can be done to improve the site...
The most alarming is the amount of contrasting colours used... Try to stick to a colour scheme, pick two colours that you want to use as your uniform theme colours... I suggest that these shouldn't clash with the logo.
One of the earlier response to this was a very good response about your logo with a very clever suggestion that your logo should change and they gave you a great alternative where the two o's made the wheels of a car, use this!!
Steering away from design, there are several SEO elements that can be improved.. Cut your - page title tag, insert a keywords meta tag, and your missing img alt tags.
the major thing i would do it consider finding a better, more clearer font.
i know it's about auto repairs but, i dont exactly know what the website is about.
add more content, content make a website stand apart from others especially when it gets indexed in google.
What everyone else said. That said, the header needs work. As with other area-specific service sites, you're assuming that people know where you are. You're also assuming that people know what you do.
Don't assume.
You should move the nav down below the header, and the make the site name and motto state those things quickly and clearly.
Moving On
Personal on-location auto repair serving the XXX area
Hello everyone! I am new here I think you need to make your homepage more engaging for the visitor. I agree with some of the posters, it looks more like a splash page than a homepage. You may also want to change the font size to make the site more professional-looking.
- redesign logo to something modern and flashy
- change navigation menu style
- change your navigation menu fonts to: font-family:14px;
- the image you having on your home page is to big and takes alot of screen space, no one interesting in your stirring wheel image, customers interesting in your service, you can have this image but crop it smaller so you would able to move your contact details up with text like you got it now, and remember when people accessing first time to your website they dont like scrolling up and down as soon they entered your home page they want to see whats your page is about not a huge image...
when you designing website you need always focus on your logo colours and use it on your website.
^^ Loving "websiker"'s redesign hehe. Why? It's CLEAN, simple, rich and elegant looking. Easy to navigate. Make yours more this way. And ditch that Intuit crap you're using.
I think you need to make your homepage more engaging for the visitor. I agree with some of the posters, it looks more like a splash page than a homepage. You may also want to change the font size to make the site more professional-looking.
as soon they entered your home page they want to see whats your page is about not a huge image...
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