Website Review and Suggestions

**keggy46** · 05:03 PM

This site offers excellent feedback and i welcome any comments about my first commercial site build, here: www.ideallawns.biz

Thanks in advance

**Nathand** · 10-08-2007, 06:56 PM

I get "Error 404: Page Not Found" when I click on your link.

**keggy46** · 10-08-2007, 07:06 PM

sorry about that nathand, i uploaded it to server as index file after i'd posted the thread, so shame on me

. Here it is again: www.ideallawns.biz

**Nathand** · 07:38 PM

It looks like it has a pretty good theme, considering it's all about grass

You've got a lot of images on there though. It took me 1min 29sec to load the page on dialup.

Looks pretty good though, keep up the good work and get the menu's in and stuff...

**keggy46** · 10-08-2007, 07:46 PM

thanks nathand.

hope you were joking about dial-up as i think people who still use a yoghurt pot and a piece of string as an internet connection shouldn't really be looking on the web. just stick to text file web sites or go to the library.

it's bad enough trying to do sites so they look the same in evil IE and then lovely FF and then you've got screen res, so dial-up users are the least of my concern.

hope this doesn't sound too facetious Nathand, just that Japan are on 100Mb fiber optic broadband !!!!! Well ahead of the rest. Companies are trying to suppress this bandwidth because they know torrents will kill sooooo many businesses.

anyway, thanks for comment(s) and i might optimise the images to 6% for your dial up, just means it will be very pixelated and to me, a picture paints a thousand words.

**Littlej** · 10-09-2007, 06:45 AM

The site looks fairly nice, but about the load time just a question:

Since I havn't looked at the coding properly I don't know but are you using images in big blocks? If you have somthing that is 200px x 800px, as long as the image is the same all the way along (like a gradient) you can select a single 1px high row and using repeat-y to tile the image so the user only needs to load one 200x1 image rather that 200x800. The load time is one of the most important things on a website so I wouldn't be so quick to neglect it, even for people on fast connections taking the speed up to 1 second from say 3-4 seconds would make a lot of difference. So if you havn't tiled the images like I suggested it would be a good idea to do that wherever you can.

Also, being a site about lawn I'd take down the valid XHTML / CSS images (don't know if you were planning on keeping it there).

It looks like a good site though, of course I've only mentioned the things I'd change so my review probably sounds a bit negative

**keggy46** · 10-09-2007, 09:05 AM

thanks for the comments josh, much appreciated.

i guess i do need to optimise the images although they were exported from photoshop as spliced gif's but perhaps need to save them as 30% jpegs, just means the images won't be as clean.

There is only one image i could repeat as a 1pixel gif and that's the main box background, all the rest have to be blocks of images and i don't know how else to optimise.

Your point about the w3c is valid but i want to include these buttons so i can command more money for 'proper' sites where the code is clean for spider bots. i've always wanted to build a valid site as before i was just using tables with background images which is never true mark-up.

may i ask what connection you have, hopefully you're not another modem user as people on the internet using modems can no way experience the rich content like YouTube without a decent connection.

Thanks again for the helpful comment(s).

**HighVoltage123** · 10-09-2007, 09:13 AM

the links in the menu are not working at all

**Littlej** · 10-09-2007, 09:16 AM

I live in Australia and have about the average broadband connection here which is 1024kbps.

**katwright** · 09:28 AM

It looks good, nice green color but it took a while to load. I have Cable connection so that is not the problem.

**MattCoops** · 10-09-2007, 10:48 AM

I don't think the lime green background does justice. I think it would be better in another green or even a light sky blue.

The logo has a blend problem. The green on left on "ideal" is too light you can't see it during header image transitions. The green on "lawns" side is just right. I would use a darker green on "ideal" or even a black.

**keggy46** · 10-09-2007, 07:56 PM

thanks for all your comments, i sincerely appreciate the feedback.

It looks like I will have to optimise the pics to 30% so that load times aren't an issue and with regards to the logo then that's just a client requisite, i could darken the white banner though to make it more legible.

If there is anyone who wants to PM me on how to invent something then please contact me, i'm more than happy to help. My real baby in life is splashplay.co.uk and i'm hoping to get it onto YouTube and your mobile phone as a natural extension, but that's another can of worms altogether. If you are in the UK i can get you £120k of free money so anyone needing help is more than welcome to pick my brain

thanks again for your comments.

**kex.uni.cc** · 10-11-2007, 01:33 AM

not bad, I like the theme color a lil bright though but very attractive.

**theSeekerr** · 10-11-2007, 03:16 AM

Hmm. First thing that strikes me about such a graphically oriented site is the image quality, and that here is your biggest problem. Compression artifacts can be hidden in photographs, but it graphics design they show, and here they are nastily evident in the shadows, particularly around the bottom corners.

The photography is also quite poor in the image of the van, and I would advise recreating that scene and rephotographing.

The sideways logo adds very little and is a distracting element.

I like the banner, but there's no need for it to be flash just for that sake of a one time animation. The greens of the text need to stand out more, perhaps an outline or drop shadow is necessary.

I dislike the fixed width layoud, liquid layouts are harder to do but are less annoying to widescreen users who otherwise feel rather ripped off.

The white in the footer text is hard to see, and the blue clashes with the rest of the scheme.

Nevermind that this review is phrased critically, I do like this design, and would rate is a solid 7.5.

**bluebunneh** · 10-12-2007, 03:51 PM

I like the changing banner, but the site's load time is very slow and there is way too much green, you should use another color with the green, maybe a brown or darker green.

**keggy46** · 10-13-2007, 11:24 AM

Thanks for all your comments, some of which are most fascinating. theseeker made an excellent point about widescreen and i feel that doing web dev is impossible to cater for all people especially when they use a 32'' widescreen monitor 'cause the site is very pictorial. i'd have to mess about with image repeats and overlay backgrounds to get a liquid format and to be brutally honest it's too much effort just so posh people with widescreen get there bang for their buck

, i'd rather gear towards 19'' tft which i reckon are 70% of the market right now.

it is very green based as it tries to strengthen the identity of lawns et al.

However, i will redo whole site from what people have said, with 60% optimised jpegs instead of exported gif's that photoshop throws out, so the shadows atleast dont pixelate.

thanks again for the feedback

**Ronan** · 10-14-2007, 06:50 AM

Nice site, but its still taking a while to download the images. maybe its a slow server your on?

**daddy2five** · 10-14-2007, 12:24 PM

Nice site about lawns. I like the layout and colors. Loaded fine for me. Good work.

**maxi629** · 10-15-2007, 02:32 PM

site looks great. from a navigation standpoint, the lack of a defined "homepage" left me a little puzzled as to where i started. i had to click on the "franchise" button and look at the browser to see that the url was your homepage. in other words, users who dig deeper into your site don't seem to have a clear way to find their way back to the beginning.

i also am assuming that you have the "franchise" as your starting point because your client wants to sell franchises. starting with a "welcoming" homepage with a complete overview, or starting with "our services" so you aren't being sold a franchise right off the bat is another option. but i'm sure you took that into consideration.

anyway, just my two cents. site's looking good.

max

p.s. one last thing, i might suggest that you put your "secondary" nav that's at the base of each of the body-text above it. that nav down there doesn't grab your eye they way it would if it were above the heading of that page.

**TrailerTech** · 10-15-2007, 11:10 PM

I like it alot...that is your first commercial? great job...I have been retooling my first commercial job for 6 months now...