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I've decided to become a freelance web-designer along with a couple of friends. We've put a simple site together for people to get in touch.
I'd appreciate opinions on how to improve it, constructive ones ideally!
Thanks.
http://www.webdesign-99.com/
First of all, your website's front page is a bit too long and one has to do a lot of scrolling to get down to the bottom of the page. You can fix this by making separate pages for the services which you provide and then putting a link to that page on your home page. I currently have to press the 'page down' button 5 times to get down to the bottom of the page; you should reduce the amount of content on the homepage so as that people can get to the bottom of the page by pressing the 'page down' button like 2 or 3 times only. Secondly. you should put buttons to go 'next' and 'previous' in the image slider. Though, I really like the image transition effect which you've used. I have also noticed a '12' which is constantly being displayed at the top left corner of the image slider. You might also want to populate the footer area with different content; You should try fixing this. Lastly, when the 'Contact' page opens up, the 'FAQ' and the 'Buy' button disappears from the menu. There might be some glitch which is causing this. You can make different pages such as 'Services', 'Request a Quote' etc. and put the links in the menu. Its a good website overall, the logo looks great. Best of luck with the changes.
man what can I say.... if you want get clients u need to look professional. Check other portfolios on google and see what and how they aiming to get clients. Trust me when client go to your website we would me "what the hell" your website is not presentable at all. check my portfolio nice and clean <snip> very simple and no other **** on it, if person need website he will ring me but you look like setting up your business website or freelance what ever you need better design.
Last edited by TechnoBear; May 3, 2012 at 10:58. Reason: Self-promotion is not allowed on the forums
Portray your web templates in the middle of the web page with pricing, instead of doing it in the right hand side.. For a web designing kind of site templates and layouts speaks rather than content.. I don't say ask you to remove the content but place it at the apt position...
Hope this doesn't offend you but I thought it looked a bit boring. The background colour is awful, the site logo looks amateurish (is that an ice-cream cone?), there should be a capital E for e-commerce to fit in with everything else, the right-hand side of the site is dead space as is the red rectangle at the bottom.
All in all it needs to look sharp and professional if you want to attract customers
Clean and simple, but the font sizes vary way too wildly across the page and the inconsistent margins and paddings make it feel more like it's got rendering errors than intentional design. The larger sizes are nice and clear, but lands sake pick a face and stick with it! The serif fonts with the sans headings just feel... wrong. Especially with said headings at a massive 200%.
Your dynamic widths could use a bit of elastic or semi-fluid help since everything seems to burst out of their containers on my netbook. On my desktop the lack of a max width is making the side column look ridiculously wide for it's content --- there's are reason % widths for columns usually doesn't work out very well.
The alignment issues in the menu and footer really make it feel slapped together instead of planned -- particularly the massive and empty footer area. That 'fancybox' banner thing (something I'd NEVER put on a website in the first place!) also seems either broken, or just poorly implemented.
Under the hood, it starts out with HTML 5 doccy so I'm probably going to hate the code... but you seem to not actually be using HTML5 so maybe we're alright. (NOT that there is any legitimate reason to use that idiocy unless you're trying to sell a new book on the subject)... I'm seeing the "single quotes because I don't know how to write PHP", non-semantic markup, presentational images in the markup, endless pointless wrapping div, etc, etc... not surprising you ended up with 11.3k of markup to deliver 12 content images and 2.7k of plaintext... probably about 30% more HTML than you actually need.
... and then to top it off Meyer's idiotic reset that does more harm than good.
You've got a decent concept, but your implementation leaves a bit to be desired. Axe the stupid image rotator, get the fonts under control, work on getting all your paddings/margins even between elements instead of the 'randomness' you seem to have now, lose the massive reset for something a bit more conservative and weed down your markup and CSS to what's actually needed, instead of the "multiple div around elements that don't need them and classes on everything" approach.
some examples of good design
http://designm.ag/inspiration/portfolio-sites/
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you need to create some stunning websites of different categories to get attention
then display them appropriately (meaning they will load fast)
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http://flash.dvd-photo-slideshow.com...ol_effects.php
look at this for display ideas
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hope this helps
falcon
Many good Free Tutorials at:
http://freetutorials.name
Hi,
I'm not a professional site designer, just a frequent web surfer, but I'll offer my thoughts as a potential customer.
When I first look at your site, I notice the pictures of the pie and the wine glasses, so I have the feeling I've wandered on to a restaurant site. Your logo has an ice cream cone that reinforces that idea. There are clues that it is a website company, like the photo text that says "websites for bars," but I think those belong with sample sites and not at the top of your page.
I can see you've made an effort to separate different things you offer with bullet points, but I think this list should be closer together. You have icons mixed in for Google and J Query and it's a very long list that's hard to follow. I think you'd rather build a case to answer the question "why hire me?" If you did a smaller font with bullet points about the most important strengths of your business, I think it would serve your purpose better. If you need to offer more detailed information, you could link to a separate page with more details about those specific points. Some of the things you list under bullets on the home page might work better in the FAQ section, especially since it only has three questions.
The Buy Now button is confusing to me, because I associate that with the purchase of a concrete object, rather than a service. I'm guessing you meant that to be a bright call to action, but the color makes it look like it doesn't belong to your site, and the text would be better if it said something like "contact us to get started today," or some message that fits better with a service.
I like the top layer of colors where your text is on the home page, but the background rust color would work better in white or cream or light gray, imo.
From the contact page, there is no link/tab to the FAQ--you might want that to be consistent from page to page.
Hope this helps!
Hi, great site overall, I like it.
I like the following things about it. The image near the top of the page has great eye appeal. When I first opened the site I did not know what the site was about but that drew me to the page to read on. Also, the way you list out each thing a customer gets if they purchase from you is a good idea. It is organized well and presents your product in a formidable way to capture people's attention.
Things I would suggest are as follows. The design is too simple, it doesn't look like you are selling your sample sites as well with it. The sample sites look better than your home page and if I were the customer I would wonder why couldn't I build the site myself if this design is so simple and if it isn't something that will make me stand out? Also, customer testimonials and/or examples of results would also help. If I were buying I would want to know why your SEO is going to give me an edge, and/or why I should pay you something more than my regular hosting and domain fees to do those things for me assuming I already know how to do them.
Baseball cardshttp://www.mybaseballcardspace.info
Football Cards http://www.footballcard.info
Free Movie Trailers http://www.moviehandbook.com
Take a look at: http://newark1.com/portfolio/index.html
This is an example
There are some things that I don't like but it is a good example
notice to the left they have several examples
it should give you some good ideas
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hope this helps
falcon
Many good Free Tutorials at:
http://freetutorials.name
Good example of what? Inaccessible poorly designed rubbish the developer should be embarrassed to admit they were even involved with? If that page is typical of their work, I truly pity anyone who got suckered into using them.Originally Posted by navyfalcon
LITERALLY a perfect example of 'how not to build a website' from the decade out of date markup, inaccessible font sizes, illegible color contrasts, useless crappy fixed width so when you're pretty much forced to zoom to read anything it's too big for even the largest display, that's also uselessly large without zooming on things like netbooks, broken heading orders, nothing remotely resembling semantic markup with the massive run-on of links -- user overload from too many links on a page, and a load of javascript chewing on the CPU in the background for christmas only knows what since I'm not seeing a blasted thing on the page that warrants the very presence of all that static scripting inlined in the markup.
Though if you meant it in the same way Metallica used Stryper for inspiration, you may be on to something -- it's a great example of what NOT to do.
First, I think it is a good idea to become a freelance web designer which is a promising vocation nowdays. About your web site, there are something to be improved as the others said. May be it is not ripe experience enough, and i only a webmaster jackeroo.
deathshadow60
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Why don't you give him some ideas or examples on how to do it
He knows he has problems or he wouldn't be on the forum
He needs some help and direction, which you should be able to give
You have a lot of knowledge, don't keep it to yourself
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hope this helps
falcon
Many good Free Tutorials at:
http://freetutorials.name
Hey there,
I must say in all honesty I'm not too impressed by the site. Aside from the background colour which I suppose comes down to personal prefence, there are a few things that I noticed right away:
- The logo is strangely pixelated, as if it's been wrongly cropped or resized.
- The main page content is presented in a way that I don't really find "fluent" - It looks like it's all just been copied on there, with a few paragraphs and an occasional image
- The footer seems abnormally large considering it's holding 2 small images
- I use a 24" monitor, and since your website has dynamic width (which is not bad), the image slider that you have does not expand, meaning that you get a very wide banner, followed by a strangely centered "small" imageslider, followed by a wide content area.
I hope that you're not offended by this, again these are just my observations. I do think that you will need to work a bit more on that site to make it appealing to the public at large.
Best of luck,
I see you're targetting the cheap end of town with your pricing structure. That being the case, is your site really an example of what folks can expect for $157?
The website is inconstant - for example the links on top change order as you click on different pages.
You have a footer at the bottom of the page but with no information on it?
As mentioned earlier the vertical length is too big. Try creating more pages or links to fix this.
The brown on brown colour is quite hard to look i think
Eeek, I don't like it.
If I was looking for a designer I'd be looking to make sure their own website was top notch and this clearly isn't.
If I were you I'd google as if you're looking for a designer to design your site for you. Have a look at what some of the great designers are doing and how awesome their sites are. Your's looks like it's been put together by someone who is only starting out.
The scrolling image at the top seems superfluous too. So you do websites for bars, restaurants etc... I'd expect you to! I don't need to be told. If you need to have a scrolling image why not put some of your own work in there? And why is there a 12 in the topright of the image?
The font and font sizes don't look right either. I really think you need to start again from scratch. Like I suggested, go and look at some other designers websites and see what they do.
Everything is too big and unprofessional. You need lots of work on your website.
Sorry maybe I'll be a bit rude but I would like to give an advice to new web designers to learn something about basics of design and all that, what a composition is, what colours match each other, etc. Everybody wants to make money at once. First thing we see at websites is that "we will create a website for nothing!" I guess, it would be much better to take a pencil and a ruler and make some mockup to get a general idea. You need to learn a lot to become a professional and charge money for your work.
It has a friendly feel, and it's good that you incorporated a changing photo feature. Try tightening up the visual consistency. For example, the heights of the burgundy bars used in the top navigation, the 'Websites from..", "Optional Extras" and "Sample Sites" are different. Another example, the left margin of text is irregular and does not support easy reading. Try moving the descriptive text that belongs to a bullet to the right so that it looks like it belongs to that bullet.
Hi DavidJ. I looked at your site, and I can tell you right off that the font and banners are too big. They make it difficult to navigate because I have to scroll so far down the page just to see the rest. I understand from the top that you are offering to create websites, but as I scroll down, I kindof lose what's going on...it seems to defer from your original offer. That may or may not be true, but I think the size and the length of the page are somewhat of a distraction. The FAQ page is ok and easy to read, but I would make the form on the Contact page smaller or put the map to the right so that the consumer sees your location.Have a great day!
Hello David!
I can see border links from your images. How is that?
The content arrangement is simple, for me its one of the great
principle:Keep it simple. The color combination is peculiar.
I believe you still have great ideas stuck in there!
Thanks for sharing your site.
Onward o
I have to agree with what other people have said in this thread. The site does need a fair amount of work done to improve the appearance. The color scheme has to change imho. I don`t think the background color is complementing the other colors. There is also lots of unused space between elements on the page. On a plus note the homepage banner looks sweet especially with that transition effect between images. Also the use of rounded CSS corners helps to make the overall appearance that little bit better. I wish you all the best on this site and keep up the good work.
Hi David
I'm by no means a pro at site design, but i can certainly give you my honest and objective opinion as a customer.
Having just recently got my own site up and running, I can tell you that one of the main things I looked from a hosting/design point of view was professionalism and security. While you have listed the services you provide clearly, the design of your site, specifically the logo does not look particularly professional.
I'm not too sure that the copy/paste company logo layout is a particularly good idea either - it just doesn't look professional. The site is also very long, as in it takes a lot of effort to scroll to the bottom. You may find that potential customers might lose interest before getting to the bottom.
Your Buy Now button at the bottom of your page seems to be quite badly sized and placed - there's an awful lot of empty space down there that could be used to better effect. I don't really see a call to action in any form, just a list of services and a Buy Now button placed randomly at the foot of the page.
As I said i'm no expert, I can just call it as I see it - in my opinion your page could really benefit from some extensive design work. the services you provide do seem pretty good though and i'm sure with better design your business will do well!
1.) I like your color scheme
2.) I like your use of rounded corners
3.) The bullet points annoy me.
Make then left-aligned and any text below them should be indented.
4.) When I look at this on my laptop, very little communicates to me what the website is about.
Website for 99 Pounds is almost below the fold, and the Slideshow is distracting.
What should make people want to read more is all of the stuff you have BELOW the fold.
I think you need to re-prioritize the content, and try to summarize everything below the fold so it fits above the fold, with a way to "drill-down" more into the details.
5.) Buy Now? Buy what now? See #4.
6.) Site looks good, but I think you need really re-think What you are communicating, and the Order in which it is presented.
Good luck!
Debbie
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