Web Design Site

DesigNes

DesigNes

New Member
I have a very artistic take on web-design, but I'm left feeling I'm only appealing to myself :(, anyone care to back-up that theory?

http://www.designes.ca

(Although I've thoroughly researched my direct competition and placed my prices a lot lower, I'm constantly under the impression I need to do some further cuts, but it's a matter of balancing my time & what it's worth)

Any criticism greatly appreciated, I'm a big girl I can take it ;).
 
T

TheLivingDead

New Member
hello!

Great art, and I dig the rounded corners!
a few suggestions:

- The HOME page has no bottom (all other pages have rounded corners on the bottom, accept HOME)
- Use a San-Serif font for the your body text.
- Consider a consistent navigation --it appears differently (length, color) depending on the page you're on.
- consider a lightbox, or js to view images, rather than opening a new browser window.

NOT BAD! :cool:
 
DesigNes

DesigNes

New Member
Thanks SO much :) great suggestions, going to re-do the nav tonight. I just noticed that too, I forgot to place the nav bar on a few pages >.<

The lightbox is a great idea, I did it on my first page (under portfolio) but didn't think to do it on my own :O!
 
smoovo

smoovo

New Member
Very nice background, very impressive. Maybe try to use fonts with different sizes (menu, body, etc...). The menu issue that TheLivingDead post is also something that you should fix.

But overall, excellent - :).

__________________
SMooVo Web Design
[email protected]
www.SMooVo.com
 
v2Media

v2Media

Member
Homepage: Content background for copy area needs a tad less alpha to make the text easier to read. Centre alignment? Try right aligning the text and use <br /> tags to break the lines at points that vaguely follow the line of the rider's leg/boot. A tad more white-space is needed around the top and right of the logo and nav menu. Move it all down and to the left a bit so that the nav bar is at the horse's eye level.

Rest of the site: Try and keep the layout consistent from page to page. It's a bit 'all over the place'. Just an idea, try opening all of your other webpages and saving as rates.bak.php, portfolio.bak.php, contact.back.php etc (back-ups). Then open your index.php homepage, and save it as rates.php, portfolio.php, contact.php etc until you've overwritten all of the other pages in the site. Then open each one and transfer the content and background images from the 'bak' files.

This way you'll get a consistent look and layout to the site. It's also a good adhoc templating work-flow to get your head around; take one page to full completion then save it as the rest of the pages in your site...
 
Last edited:
D

d a v e

New Member
er, "DesigNes" ? unless i'm missing some deeper significance that just sounds plain stupid

i don't think the horse picture works very well because the visual focus is the head, but the head is out of focus - and the rider has no head at all :)

although this is maybe literally more correct "You provide the content, I can provide the context. " how about "You provide the content, I provide the style" ?

from your portfolio page i don't see a way home (latest firefox on windows) only the black bar at the top

your table layouts looked dated (mostly because of the borders, scrollbars and lack of white space) and from a coding point of view not good to use tables for layout. you also have coding errors, no doctype, and missing alt attributes

your background images are too big (filesize)

not sure in Canadian English, but I haven't seen web designer written as "Web-designer" before, but that just might be peculiar to me :)

looking at the rates page it's like a sea of text, and i'm drowning not waving ;)
align all your text to the top of your cells and leave a bit more white space between each row.

your text indent on the first line of each paragraph looks a little out of place - usually you use the indent method when the paragraphs are a lot closer together to form blocks (and incidentally the first paragraph should not be indented in each section) i would strongly recommend removing the indent altogether

also on the rates page (why not indicate on the navbar where users are?) you have underlined registered but it's not a link. use bold instead. also when you have e.g. "contact me" or "logo design" then make that a link

your (own) horse logo is quite clever - why not use it on the site - or are you still designing? (or should i say designesing it :) )

it's good you've found a niche sector to work in that matches your interests but i think you need to polish up your web design skills a little more before you can confidently offer your services.
I hope you can take that in the spirit of professional constructive criticism in which it's intended, and i would be happy to offer more help, as i'm sure others on the forum would be too.
 
B

BigRed

New Member
Seems to me like you have done a ton of work on this site and I think you have some good ideas, for example the templates showing what can be done with some rates so folks can get an idea of what to expect and some idea of pricing, it's honest and up front.
The horse picture on the home page sets the theme, any visitor will know right away that the site is horse related, and being slightly out of focus can imply speed and action, BUT the headless rider (sounds like a movie) :) just does not look right, why not an action shot of a horse jumping at an event ?

The site is a tad heavy and slow, optimize your image sizes, lighten up on some of the graphics, try to get some page to page consistency in layout and navigation, consider breaking down pages into pages with less content, this will increase page load times and give the impression of a faster site.

I have been looking at some simple but effective web sites recently and it seems to me that given the target audience some of the simplest web sites work just fine as they strike a good balance of speed, relevance, easy admin, simple seo, and effectiveness :) Well done for the hard work so far.
 
DesigNes

DesigNes

New Member
Thanks guys I've definitely put some more work on my list! All the comments were SO helpful! :)

Dave - my name is vanessa, so it's design nes - does that make more sense? I'm always worried people are going to think I'm a totally idiot and just can't spell so I make sure very time I advertise I spell design as much as possible.

I didn't even thing of the head-less rider, it was just a stupid way to get around getting a model release. That's actually my horse but not me riding. I'll find some stock and switch it up, I had something using my logo before but it came out stark and uninteresting.

And I had my suspicions that rates page was too long, I'll change it up.
 
D

d a v e

New Member
it makes sense when you explain it but not by looking at the site ;)

can't you get someone to take a picture of you on your horse? that way there's no model release and it emphasises the personal slant to your interest in making horse sites.
 
DesigNes

DesigNes

New Member
That's great feedback, I will make it more obvious, somehow...
I've got a new idea for the font-page, I'll make the time to go take some more photos :)
 
DesigNes

DesigNes

New Member
That is a fantastic idea Dave! Thanks very much :).

I used to hit my creative stride around 1am, now I have kids and can't stay up so late any more :D.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top