Website Review and Suggestions

**ritetek** · 05-08-2009, 03:23 AM

Hello, please review our new website http://ritetek.com.

Thanks in advance for the responses!

**asbf_oborden** · 05-08-2009, 09:59 PM

I think your site looks good and functions well. You have a good looking design portfolio and offer a lot of useful services. Looks professional and trustworthy, I think its good.

**markAtRitetek** · 05-12-2009, 01:31 AM

Well, it looks pretty good to me, but I'd say I'm a bit more than biased...

**EcommerceNoob** · 05-12-2009, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ritetek

Hello, please review our new website http://ritetek.com.

Thanks in advance for the responses!

nice site, i like it.

**ritetek** · 05-20-2009, 10:27 PM

Thanks for the posts! Any additional feedback would be appreciated (some criticism perhaps?)

Thanks again,
Erik

**Modern_Media** · 05-21-2009, 01:11 AM

Hey, first off - I'll say I like it quite a bit. Your code is VERY clean and your pages load in less than a second. VERY GOOD!

Now this part- take it with a grain of salt because they are MINOR details, in fact so minor that if ignored, nobody would lose sleep over it.

Drop-downs within a drop down...some people really hate drop downs within a drop down. It's a personal preference so once again - take it lightly.
Your team photo - I'd rather see the REAL team instead of a commonly used iStock photo that you have in your team page.
Your portfolio links - throw some title tags in along with your alt tags. Another minuscule tip that's not a "make or break" for you.

Other than that- nice look and feel. Clean and professional xHTML/CSS work! Thanks for sharing!

**carterdea** · 05-21-2009, 06:43 PM

you got some good work there. Very nice. The only advice I have is to make it a teensy bit more narrow. I'm viewing it on Firefox 3 on mac at 970px wide and I get horizontal scrollbars. It's really annoying to have to scroll sideways and it's considered a usability nightmare. The biggest you should make your site is 960px. That's what Yahoo, Facebook and a lot of designers are doing.

Good luck!

**Vexar** · 05-21-2009, 09:21 PM

Actually, I do think the drop downs are a large problem

Not to mention, your image quality.

If you use drop down menus, make sure they display instantly. The fade effect is pretty, the first time I use it. But, when I want to get somewhere fast, it is kind of annoying. Secondly, how do I know there are secondary drop downs? You don't have a » in there or separator. I have no way of seeing that "HEY! Hover me! I'll give you more content to explore." I have to physically mouse-over and wait for the fade effect to stop before I know what is there.

Remember, if it's usefulness vs pretty, usefulness should always win out.

Now, your image quality. Remember JP(e)G and GIF files are LOSSY! That means the image quality goes down when you optimize them for web. What is the solution? Save your image files as .PNG! Not only does it not lose quality (not lossy), it loads faster! This should be a must on your to-do list. It also allows for transparancy. I can really see the lack of quality in the images here, so as a client I'd be wondering if that would also happen to my own site.

That is a potential deal breaker for high-end clients.

I hope this really helps you out! I can't wait to see any improvements or changes you make. Over-all it is a great concept!

**davemies** · 05-22-2009, 12:26 AM

"Remember JP(e)G and GIF files are LOSSY! That means the image quality goes down when you optimize them for web. What is the solution? Save your image files as .PNG! Not only does it not lose quality (not lossy), it loads faster!"

simply not true: if you're talking about 24-bit pngs - they might look better because they're not lossy but they will be considerably larger in file size than a suitably optimised jpeg.

using 8-bit png instead of gif will save a few kbs, but not a huge amount over gif

**davemies** · 05-22-2009, 12:36 AM

[posted 2x, oops ; ]

**ritetek** · 05-22-2009, 09:24 AM

I agree I should up the quality of my images a bit... I think they are set to 35-45 under the "save for web and devices" option in Photoshop. I'll probably change them to 60 which should help.

As for the PNGs transparency is nice but as I'm sure you know everyone's favorite browser IE6 does not support the transparency so I'd need to add a JS fix that would be yet another http request slowing things down on an already slow and buggy browser.

I will add some arrows to show the additional level of drop-downs though, I appreciate that advice.

**ritetek** · 05-22-2009, 09:26 AM

I'd also like to note the menus are functional as they fade in, they don't need to be 100% visible before they link.

Thanks again for the responses!

**ritetek** · 05-22-2009, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carterdea

you got some good work there. Very nice. The only advice I have is to make it a teensy bit more narrow. I'm viewing it on Firefox 3 on mac at 970px wide and I get horizontal scrollbars. It's really annoying to have to scroll sideways and it's considered a usability nightmare. The biggest you should make your site is 960px. That's what Yahoo, Facebook and a lot of designers are doing.

Good luck!

Yeah, I'm considering changing the width... I just haven't yet since it will take HOURS.

Thanks!

**VirtuosiMedia** · 08:06 PM

Overall, it looks like a great site. You guys will do well. Kudos.

A few quick items, hopefully they'll be helpful:

Does the header need to be that tall? You could display a lot more above the fold if you shorten it. Also, your header and your banner seem to have a lot of the same function. Do you need both?
Clearer calls to action and place them above the fold. Make it mind-numbingly obvious what you want your visitors to do. Your secondary calls to action should complement your primary call, but represent less of a commitment.
On your contact form, perhaps customize a different quote form for each of your different services. That way, you could probably qualify them a little better by asking specific questions related to each service. Also, you may want to look at getting rid of the sidebar on the contact page since that's your money page and you want to minimize distractions to your potential leads.
Your client showcase cycles through just a little too quickly for me. Perhaps slow it down just another half second or second.
I'm getting a tiny flicker on your orange headings when I first load the page, though I'm not quite sure why.
Your breadcrumb might be more useful on the left. I missed it at first. Also, you could probably get rid of the "You are here" text.
Make your banners and current promotions clickable. You're probably missing out on a few conversions because people will want to find out more information. It's a great opportunity for another landing page.

**fghaegele** · 05-22-2009, 08:34 PM

Nice work..

Do you sell templates?

**ritetek** · 05-23-2009, 06:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

Overall, it looks like a great site. You guys will do well. Kudos.

A few quick items, hopefully they'll be helpful:

Does the header need to be that tall? You could display a lot more above the fold if you shorten it. Also, your header and your banner seem to have a lot of the same function. Do you need both?
Clearer calls to action and place them above the fold. Make it mind-numbingly obvious what you want your visitors to do. Your secondary calls to action should complement your primary call, but represent less of a commitment.
On your contact form, perhaps customize a different quote form for each of your different services. That way, you could probably qualify them a little better by asking specific questions related to each service. Also, you may want to look at getting rid of the sidebar on the contact page since that's your money page and you want to minimize distractions to your potential leads.
Your client showcase cycles through just a little too quickly for me. Perhaps slow it down just another half second or second.
I'm getting a tiny flicker on your orange headings when I first load the page, though I'm not quite sure why.
Your breadcrumb might be more useful on the left. I missed it at first. Also, you could probably get rid of the "You are here" text.
Make your banners and current promotions clickable. You're probably missing out on a few conversions because people will want to find out more information. It's a great opportunity for another landing page.

Thanks for the fantastic suggestions, I plan to implement them all. Regarding the orange headings I'm pretty sure the flicker is being caused by sIFR.

**ritetek** · 05-23-2009, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fghaegele

Nice work..

Do you sell templates?

Thanks for the complement!

Regarding the templates we don't sell any right now. Currently we're sticking to custom web design and web app development.

**fwnow** · 05-23-2009, 02:17 PM

Excellent work. I love the design of your website and the use of web 2.0. It looks very modern and the use of color is excellent. One thing you can change is the web hosting services. You must provide information on how to register or obtain hosting on the same page where you have details of the hosting. For example, the Dedicated Hosting at http://ritetek.com/dedicated-servers.php does not a call to action like Sign up Now or click here to sign up, etc.

**ritetek** · 05-23-2009, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fwnow

Excellent work. I love the design of your website and the use of web 2.0. It looks very modern and the use of color is excellent. One thing you can change is the web hosting services. You must provide information on how to register or obtain hosting on the same page where you have details of the hosting. For example, the Dedicated Hosting at http://ritetek.com/dedicated-servers.php does not a call to action like Sign up Now or click here to sign up, etc.

I'm currently in the process of setting up my hosted e-mail reseller account and WHMCS for my server so I can get shared hosting clients. I'm just going to set up my dedicated servers page to refer to LiquidWeb (they are the best dedicated server company I've had - just as good as Rackspace at half the cost).

**VirtuosiMedia** · 05-25-2009, 11:57 AM

Just curious, what CMS are you guys using?