Website Review and Suggestions

**keggy46** · 03-08-2007, 02:09 PM

Hi,

Could i get some constructive/destructive feedback please for following:

http://www.splashplay.co.uk/SplashPlay_v2/home.htm

i'm interested in the following :

1. First impressions
2. Load times. Lot of imagery and wonder how long your browsers take to load pages?
3. Do images sit in tables correctly on your browser?
4. I get loads of non-compliance with w3 validator. Any help to negate these errors will be much appreciated.
5. Do you want one

Thanks in advance, your comments will be very much welcomed.

**vangogh** · 03-08-2007, 04:33 PM

1. First impression is the site looks really good. Very interesting visuals and I really can't find fault with them.

2. The home page took about 11 1/2 seconds to download for me. Not the best time in the world, but far from bad. The images look to be pretty large in file size and I bet you could optimize them more and reduce the kb on each.

Here's a speed report for your site with some info about how to make the site load faster. This report is saying the home page will load in 61s for a 56k connection which is too slow. A good goal is 8s.

I only checked the speed on the home page. The other pages of the site appear to take longer to load so I would definitely work on improving speed. I think the main culprit is the images and running optimizing them should be your first step and possibly enough.

3. I'm using FF 2.0 and everything thing loaded correctly. It works fine for me in IE6 too.

4. Here's what I get for validation. That's not a lot of errors. Most are pretty self explanatory. You're using attributes that have been deprecated and if you want to validate as 4.01 transitional you can't use them

I think the first couple of errors are caused by forgetting the closing / in one of your <link> elements.

5. It's been awhile since I played guitar and I may be past the point where I would want the product, but year it looks pretty cool and I think if I was starting out on learning the SplashPod would make it to my wish list. It looks really cool.

Hope that helps.

**LadynRed** · 03-08-2007, 06:43 PM

HTML 4.01 Transitional doesn't require the closing / on all tags. That DOCTYPE is very loosey-goosey. I'd go with at LEAST HTML 4.01 STRICT.

**keggy46** · 03-08-2007, 07:27 PM

thanks vangogh, your comments are really helpful.

i was trying to sexify the images by saving them @ max in photoshop, i'll need to re-save them all @ medium to reduce them 60-70% in size

regarding the validation, well i'm clueless how to get rid of the errors as the whole sight is based on tables. i notice that LadynRed despises tables so would ask how i can implement a css. perhaps i could post a competition for someone to re-write code in php/asp so i can at a later date implement a database of sorts for the music file downloads. i'll also need a forum so people can upload their own song compilations. Being as you are both moderators, could you recommend a price for the competition please.

thanks again, i'll resize images over next few days.

**vangogh** · 03-09-2007, 02:26 AM

LNR, you're absolutely right about the HTML 4.01 not needing the closing tags. I'm not sure why I was thinking that.

Keith I think it would be better to hire someone than have a contest for something like this. I don't want to knock contests, but I think if you want an all css layout you'll get a better site hiring someone who build sites all the time.

I think with a contest you might get an all css site, but it might come with a few hacks that don't necessarily improve on the table. I might be wrong, but I get the feeling a contest isn't the best approach for this.

In Photoshop I usually go with 30 quality on jpgs. I think
above that it doesn't really improve what you see on a monitor. I'd use much higher quality if I were printing, but online 30 has generally worked well and reduces the file size of the images a lot.

With the validation about half the errors are just missing an alt attribute on the images. Add alt-"" and those errors will go away. With validation I find it's always best to first clear up the easy ones and then narrow done the last few.

Now that I'm looking at it I think the one closing slash you do have on the link element just before the closing head tag is actually what's causing most of the other errors. Try removing it and see if many of the errors go away.

Also while I personally like to validate everything you don't need to get hung up on it. Most web pages don't validate and it won't mean people will stay away from your site if it's not validating 100%.

**webmastertalk** · 03-09-2007, 03:22 AM

I have 100Mb speed net connection and your website images takes 5 sec to load. it is good but still for those who have low net speed may have to wait for a minute or so to view the images. I may suggest to split the image in to more squares say for every link on the top (home, products, etc) may carry an individual (split) image so that it can load fast on low net speed pc's also. and in the bottom you may add buttons or like for the links. Otherwise your site looks very good

**Angelosanto** · 03-09-2007, 07:32 AM

Well most of the things have already been mentioned so I'm just gonna make one little suggestion - why not have the navigation buttons rollover? A little interactivity goes a long way

Good comments vangogh - I'm adding to your talkupation

**keggy46** · 03-09-2007, 04:51 PM

Thanks for all your comments, i really, really appreciate the help.

I'll redo all images at 30%, take out the erroneous tag(s) and put in the alt for each flagged error .

Regarding your comment Angelosanto, i was thinking of making the buttons have a ripple effect using flash when they are clicked, that should really add visual impact. I've seen a few free templates on the net so need to get my head around flash again.

Vangoghs comment, I'm interested that you don't recommend a contest. i think incorporating style sheets will tidy everything up but you say there's not much difference between css and tables, contrary to LNR's signature

What price would be best if i were to just ask for someone to code me mini-forum so prospective visitors can start adding comments and feedback via this public forum?

Again thanks for the feedback.

**james2002** · 03-09-2007, 04:56 PM

Brilliant layout. Well done.

**keggy46** · 03-09-2007, 05:17 PM

thanks james, much appreciated. Do you want one?

**5ways** · 03-09-2007, 07:05 PM

That top image took some time to load. But it was worth the wait.

**vangogh** · 03-09-2007, 11:28 PM

Keith sorry if I led you to believe that tables are just as good as css. I don't think that at all. I'm in 100% agreement with LadynRed about tables. I'd like to see all sites move away from tables and adopt an all css layout.

My thought though in regards to a contest is that you wouldn't be offering a lot of money for the work in a contest. That's just how contests work. There's nothing wrong with that, but you do get what you pay for.

Both LadynRed and myself and many other members here could develop your design with an all css layout. I don't think any of us would enter a contest though to do the work. We'd probably be losing money by entering the contest.

I think the people who would enter a contest might not give you the best css code. Just because something is coded in css doesn't automatically mean it will be coded better than a site that uses tables. If you took a well coded css site and compared it to a well coded table site I think the css site will always have the better overall code. But if you compare a well coded table site against a poorly coded css site then the situation is different.

My guess is if you went the contest route you'd sooner get the poorly coded css site. In that case it doesn't make sense to me to pay even a little money. If you do want to have the site developed with an all css layout I think it would be better to hire someone that develops in css regularly. It'll cost more than a contest, but you'll get a lot more value out of it.

**ADAM Web Design** · 09:08 AM

My first thought on the whole thing is "MAC". Personally, I find that to be a bit of a turnoff as someone who can't stand the whole MAC vs. PC thing that keeps going on (particularly those smug commercials with the misleading informatoin that have been going on for over a year now.) I realize that you're not trying to sell anything even remotely related to MAC, but that's how it feels (maybe because of the aqua colour? I don't know.)

I like the look and feel of it other than that. It's easy enough to navigate, I can find the information, I can figure out what the product is, and I can easily determine if it's something I'd want or not; I don't, but that's only because I've never played the guitar before (left-handed so it's hard to find a guitar for me in the first place. Nothing you did wrong.)

Most of my issues are minor nitpicky-type issues. I'm not going to rehash the code issues...that's been covered. I'm going to try and come up with a few new ones, mostly ones that may turn off users.

First off, your font size. Try to set it as something adjustable in all browsers (either percentages or ems...I personally prefer percentages because they're more precise, but either is acceptable.) In order to counter any stretching that you may see, you'll want to put in something like:

Code:

<td style="height:  400px;  overflow:  auto;">

This will create a scrollbar within the cell itself that will allow users to scroll up and down to read the rest of the message if it doesn't fit (note: you should use a div here. Yeah, I lied about the code. So shoot me.)

Two of your pages (Product and About Us) are "Untitled Documents". They could use an appropriate title tag. A meta description on all pages would help you as well, if only to provide a pretty piece of text for some users to see if/when your site appears in SERPs.

As far as your CSS goes: I noticed that it's embedded on all the pages, rather than externalized in its own CSS file. Putting the text in its own CSS file would help with the load time (as the CSS info would cache after the first page load, and not as much code is generated on the HTML page) and would be easier to maintain (as one change to a CSS file would be implemented across the board. Easy.)

Still on the About page: I noticed that the "about us" section seems to load in the right section just before the white box with all the logos in it pushes it back to the left. I'm thinking it's because you set the About Us table cell in terms of a percentage, and the width of the white box is greater than the remaining percentage that the page has to work with. I'd adjust the left cell to a fixed width to get it all to fit.

Contact page: should "House" be capitalized? I'm thinking it should because it's a proper name, but once in a blue moon someone intentionally spells a proper noun in lower case (e.g. k.d. lang....I can't BELIEVE I just used her as a reference to something.)

Finally, and this is a huge issue in my mind (quite honestly, I'm surprised no one else has pointed this one out to you):

I'm a guitar player looking at your site.
I think it's a wonderful product.
I want to go out and buy one right now.

How the heck do I order or buy the thing?

There's no dealer list.
There's no online shopping mechanism.
There's no "sold in these fine stores" that I could see.
I can't even figure out how much the thing is supposed to cost!

So how is anyone supposed to buy the thing?

If I were you, I'd solve that issue even before the coding stuff. My suggestion would be to at least have some form of online payment (WorldPay would be the only one I can think of that would work for the UK, but there may be others...and no, PayPal is not an optioin because PayPal sucks.) Yours is a luxury product, and as such would tend to be more prone to impulse purchase/buying. Take advantage of the guy sitting there with his credit card in his hand (or the girl too...I didn't forget about the ladies.) Grab that person's money before (s)he gets away!

**knowledgedot** · 03-10-2007, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keggy46

Hi,

Could i get some constructive/destructive feedback please for following:

http://www.splashplay.co.uk/SplashPlay_v2/home.htm

i'm interested in the following :

1. First impressions
2. Load times. Lot of imagery and wonder how long your browsers take to load pages?
3. Do images sit in tables correctly on your browser?
4. I get loads of non-compliance with w3 validator. Any help to negate these errors will be much appreciated.
5. Do you want one

Thanks in advance, your comments will be very much welcomed.

1. The theme fits perfectly with the product. It just screams "Buy our software!"

2. Loaded pretty fast on 5mbps cable. Images, slower than everything else of course, but they were completely done before I could read any of the content, which is good.

3. Yessiree Bob

4. Usually the validator will tell you what you did wrong: you can work on fixing those errors.

5. It has no personal use to me, but you ended up charging for it, I'm sure i'd be able to sell it quickly if I had a free copy ;P

**keggy46** · 03-10-2007, 11:59 AM

Again, thanks for your comments, you guys are amazingly helpful

I'll respond to each comment as follows :

Vangogh:

I appreciate what you're saying about contests, but it sounds like you're underestimating the expertise of the designers on this forum. There must be someone who could transpose the site to a css layout that wouldn't end up been botched together. As it stands, there only needs to be two templates, one for the home page and one for the others as the only difference is a few bckgrd images and the text of course. I could stretch to $100 to get this done, but it would have to be 'professionally' coded. I want to get rid of the tables as they just don't translate well enough across different browsers, or am i been too picky??

Bottom line however is that the site seems fine at the moment when people view it, except for the download times. I'll upload optimised images over next few days. So the css issue can be put on the back burner for the moment.

ADAM Web Design:

I can't even believe you condone windows against mac, shame on you

From the beginning, i did want a mac-style site as a picture paints a thousand words. Also means that someone in Ethiopia for example, can understand product without reading reams of text, that is if they have a pc and the electricity to power the pc!!

You mentioned you're left-handed. For the guitar, you just rewire the strings back to front and bish, bash, bosh, you have a left handed guitar. I could sell you a left handed screwdriver instead, if you want.

Regarding the text, excellent advice. I'll look into playing around with percentages to get scroll bars; sounds sexy.

I need to do an external css as you spotted, but can just about spell css. I'll try to externalise it using dreamweaver, as suggested.

The 'About Us' page i balls up big time and the tables decided to have a life of their own. I'll need to redo this page totally.

You know you're getting excellent advice when people pick up on capitalisation, thanks and well spotted and there's nothing wrong with mentioning kD lang.

Finally, your last comment, well picked up. This site is a beta site to generate a buzz so i can post threads in music forums to gauge feedback. I need to setup a merchant account so i can implement an eCommerce solution. This will be done, but at a later date. At present we are just finalising the design for a demonstrable prototype so we can start market testing in earnest. It's such a painful process designing this product as i'm having to use university engineers which has delayed the build considerably. It also uses the latest technology, namely BlueTooth, OLED's, Li-Polymer battery and electro-luminescent material which has delayed development.

Regarding the cost, well i'm keeping that under my hat for the moment and would instead reverse the question by asking "how much would you pay?". Also, how much would you pay for music downloads, eg, your KD Lang song? This song will just be an extrapolated MIDI file packaged up into a DRM. Evil as it is, but i do need to encrypt the files somehow to maximise revenue, otherwise everyone will just torrent all our songs and we'll still have to pay copyright costs. It's all uncertain technology at the moment, as i think DRM is a dead dinosaur. Music should be free but with an advert of sorts attached to the file, exactly the way YouTube will go once Google gets their developers working on the site.

As a side note, just to stress that this product will be for many instruments, not just the guitar. You'll be able to use the pod on a piano, drums, banjo, violin, etc. For the immediate future though, we'll concentrate on the acoustic guitar as it is the most difficult to cater for because of the way the light panel fits on the fretboard.

I like your last comment. Perhaps i could get you on-board as my marketing director

My next steps are to finalise hardware, secure funding from VC's/Biz Angels, ramp up for production and then the fun bit...sell the bloody thing.

Knowledgedot:

Thanks for your comments. I'll pencil you in as a possible distributor

**LadynRed** · 03-10-2007, 01:03 PM

Quote:

i was thinking of making the buttons have a ripple effect using flash when they are clicked, that should really add visual impact.

I'll stick my 2 cents back in here and say you should not do that.. but if you DO, make sure you also provide a TEXT ONLY navigation on your pages. Search engine spiders can't follow links embedded in Flash so your site wouldn't suffer for SEO.

In addition, Flash navigation is going to be totally inaccessible to people using assistive technology.

I also have to agree with VanGogh and Adam - including Adam's sentiments on the Mac vs. PC war. I also cannot stand those misleading Apple commercials !!

As for the contest idea, I wouldn't. As VanGogh stated, you get what you pay for and $100 isn't much for a professionally coded site. While there are some talented people here, you're more likely to wind up with someone who is still a neophyte in CSS if they're doing contests.

**travelagent** · 03-10-2007, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LadynRed

I'll stick my 2 cents back in here and say you should not do that.. but if you DO, make sure you also provide a TEXT ONLY navigation on your pages. Search engine spiders can't follow links embedded in Flash so your site wouldn't suffer for SEO.

In addition, Flash navigation is going to be totally inaccessible to people using assistive technology.

I also have to agree with VanGogh and Adam - including Adam's sentiments on the Mac vs. PC war. I also cannot stand those misleading Apple commercials !!

As for the contest idea, I wouldn't. As VanGogh stated, you get what you pay for and $100 isn't much for a professionally coded site. While there are some talented people here, you're more likely to wind up with someone who is still a neophyte in CSS if they're doing contests.

Absolutely agree with everything that's been stated!

Another CSS neophyte - (had to read that carefully!)

**vangogh** · 01:12 PM

Keith I'm not underestimating the people here at all. I think there are some extremely talented and knowledgeable people here many of whom could give you a great css site.

But you have to understand that work comes at a price. I certainly can't speak for everyone, but I think most of those talented people aren't going to code the template of a site for you for $100. In this thread there are at least 4 people who I know could develop your site very well. LadynRed, Adam, travelagent, and myself. (My apologies to everyone else in the thread. I'm just not familiar with you enough to know)

I feel confident in telling you none of the four of us will enter a contest. Why? Because we all likely get a lot more than $100 to code the template for a site. I can think of many other people on this forum who would also be very capable of developing your site and I think the situation would be the same.

I'm not saying you won't find someone to code your design for $100. I'm sure you will. And I'm not saying the person who does it for $100 will do a poor job. They'll probably give you a decent page at the least. But for $100 you're going to get the bare minimum most likely.

I just think what you'll get for $100 isn't going to be such an improvement over what you have to make it worth spending the money.

It's not by any means a disparagement of the people on this forum. Like I said there are some talented people here. That doesn't mean those talented people will be entering a contest.

**travelagent** · 03-10-2007, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

I feel confident in telling you none of the four of us will enter a contest. Why? Because we all likely get a lot more than $100 to code the template for a site. I can think of many other people on this forum who would also be very capable of developing your site and I think the situation would be the same.

Absolutely correct; we won't enter into a contest, but will be happy to pass on our knowledge to help others.

**keggy46** · 03-10-2007, 01:25 PM

Perhaps LadynRed, Adam, travelagent & Vangogh could recommend a css price, to be able to post a contest.

Also, i'll need a forum page, only simple but will give an online community for people to leave feedback. Been looking at templates and they are the $20 range. Are these templates worth purchasing?

Thanks in advance.