Comments on my new website?

[Chris Wool]

hi rodney
very tastefull web site but to be honist may require a bit more artistic zing but it gets over whot you do and how good you are at it.
whish i could find the time to revamp mine its so dated now

thank you for the tip given to a versa chap that is just about the only profile i have not tried because i am having a load of trouble with reds on uncoated material with my soljet now converted to EX its banding but its not a mechanical band more of a ink yellow & mag not blending together sort of band jusing metamark digital at the moment any ideas.
roland told me thats as good as it gets but i know it can do better
on the roland eco vinyl it prints perfect at respecable speeds but its also ment to do that on uncoated vinyl.

chris

[Bill Dewison]

I’d agree with whats been said.

Humble opinion, the site has a great deal of content (cool stuff btw) and the nav bars all over the place make it difficult to pick what you want to see. I think I know where you’re coming from using a top, side and footer nav system, but because there is no real division between them, thats where the confusion comes in. This may be a bizarre suggestion, and if its daft 😳 😳 , but could you not use a frame system, a small header frame with your logo and a simple navbar, then the base frame with your content and then a set of text links like….

home :: products :: contact us

and so on and so forth. This would simplify things and it wouldn’t take much coding to do it.

Arty-wise the only thing that tickles my nostrils are the buttons, the text doesn’t seem to sit quite right in them somehow. Maybe a simpler non-serif font would sort this? Again, minor thing, easy to change if you decide to do so 😀

Anyway, all constructive, as I say, excellent content and in your business, Content Is King!!! 😀 Great to see what you do over there as well, you do a wide range of stuff!

Cheers, Dewi

[Hilliard&Winn]

Ok In my spare time I like to do a little webdesign but to be honest your doing it right…Content.

You’ve got the good content and you can move on from this, try to have a little more structure and something that is easy on the eye and complimentary to each other.

Good start though…:) Welldone

[Robert Lambie]

i cant say much more than what has already been said rodney.. but i do love some of your products mate.. great stuff 😉

i didnt realise you did so much promotional stuff also 🙄

thanks for sharing with us 😛

[Andy Gorman]

I do like the good quality, larger views of your products. Many sites use such lo-res images that they don’t show the quality of the products in question. It may seem a minor point but the more you can show people the more ideas it will give them. As mentioned before, the navigation structure can make a website. Personally, I like to be able to get FROM any page TO any page, easily.

[Lee Attewell]

I like it Rodney.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is that the license that’s used in the picture for tax disc holders should be blurred so we can’t see the personal details of the lady who owns the license.

Lee

[Liam Caulfield]

How much stuff??? wow.

Anyway here is my 2 pence worth, petty but there you go:

On the home page the Promotional Items button is missing an ‘a’.

On the T’s & C’s page, the second paragraph just make the ‘f’ a ‘F’ and on the 3rd paragraph check the spelling of ‘acomodated’

like I said not much, and I probably missed something myself but these details can leave a bad impression. I do exactly the same I get so caught up in the bigger picture I forget about ‘typos’ and stuff, cos thats all these are.
Almost finished my site so you can dig at that in revenge!! 😀

[Rodney Gold]

Thanks guys for the comments , I have taken most into consideration and have refined the site somewhat , sort of jujzzed it up and reduced the size of some graphics.
Im a little bit of a cretin when it comes to web design and Im using front page 2000 which is a little limiting. Basically I wanted a sort of online catalogue or at least to show what I do or can do.
To Mr Sticker You should be able to do decent reds on the versacam , download the pantone colour charts from the pantone site in EPS format and print em , then you can colour match easily.
http://www.pantone.com/support/support. … latform=PC

[Clive Martinez]

I liked the web site and its new changes – I was on it for ages, and enjoyed every minute of it.
My views are similar to whats already been said, so I can’t add much more to that.
Just out of curiosity, I would have liked to have seen a photo of the workshop where all that amazing stuff is made…

Clive

[Rodney Gold]

Hiya
I can take some pics of the workshops for you , but those are the “hidden” sections of my business and Im not 100% sure that that would inspire the confidence of my customers – kinda like watching the guy installing the sunroof of your car cutting the hole with a chisel:)
I have about 1000 sq meters of workshop space , 300 m sq of which is currently unused and is meant for further expansion (Im planning a high quality screenprint , pad printing and hot foiling dept , but don’t want to set it up myself , more looking for a co-operative venture with someone technical) and have various rooms and sections for various processes , I will take some pics tommorow and post em for interest sake for the ppl here. I must warn you , the workshops are “messy” and a lot of our equipment is built by us and is more functional than pretty.
For example we biult our own 1m x 800 mm spray etching machines , which cost us about GBP 1000 each , we used irrigation components and huge polyprop tanks , commercial hosing and magnetic drivien acid pumps etc , they look ugly but do the same job , if not better than machinery costing 10x+ that.

[Clive Martinez]

I wait anxiously to see the ‘Hidden’ section of your business….

Clive

[Robert Lambie]

i know what you mean by the web creation software. i am a dreamweaver man myself and i find it hard to achiev what i have in mind & its very easy to use 😕
a suggestion would be to even break the background colour up to quickly help navigation. something like the panton page you linked to above.
the top section in white seperates the navigation from info and is easy found again as its in white… just a thought.. 🙄 maybe not a good one 😆 😆

[Hilliard&Winn]

Ever thought of employing a webdesigner? Theres kids all over the web that are brilliant with this kind of stuff and will design it for cheap as chips!

I was once one of them for gods sake, or maybe try and learn raw html and play around with adobe?

[Rodney Gold]

Instead of asking me to reinvent the wheel (raw html) , it would be nice to get constructive criticism. Obviously by the tone of your post , it sucks , so what do I do to improve it?
A web designer would drive me dilly , I dont have the time or the inclination to be asked a million question or what and how to photograph it and most certianly dont want to redesign the web in some other program or format.

[Robert Lambie]

gotta agree with rodney on this one mate.
we allow only one type of critisism, (constructive) anyone can slag anything off, its not hard. we are here to discuss, help & share. nothing else!
saying something is bad is fair enough, but we insist that this type of reply is backed up with good constructive suggestions on how it should/can be improved.
if it cant be backed then please refrain from posting in this manner.

sorry to be so blunt mate, but thats kinda how your post reads to others 🙄

[Hilliard&Winn]

I’m sure earlier I did give constructive critisism, sorry if I came across as a arsehole but I thought you had seen my earlier post.

[edit: Also the trying raw html and adobe was more directed to robert, who said he found it hard trying to create what he had in mind] 🙁

[Robert Lambie]

i gave up after about 6 months mate. wasnt that i couldnt make things work as a site. just, well i am very fussy about things looking right. (not my spelling :lol:) the look & feel of my site was never right. in the end i had to turn to a pro.

“to me” rodneys site works well and does what he wants it to..
the main thing is it is full of good content/pictures & has all the neccessary functions.
any points made are on navagation & feel to the site. not so much coding, software used or the like.

something you must consider when posting is how it reads to others. (not how it reads to you) i am more than guilty of this myself. its not always easy. please consider this though when posting. 🙂

thanks for understanding mate 😉

hope to read more from you soon 😀

[Mike Grant]

Rodney, I think the site is very good, easy to navigate and full product listing, can’t fault it. In a world of one offs, one can not always get over to the customer what you can do and sometimes too many pics can be confusing, but I found the site to be very “User friendly”

Aaah! Voortrekker Rd…….memories are starting to flood back. Is the Post office on your map the “new” sorting office, well it was just being built in 1993 when I left S.A. 🙄 I think I know where you are hiding!

[Ray]

Hi Rodney,

You asked for some constructive criticism, I will do my best.

1. Change your background to white or very light. Grey is a no-no – older people especially find it hard to

read black on grey. Don’t alienate customers – any of them 🙂

2. Make sure you have a page title in place – the bit that comes up on the top bar of the browser – this is

vitally important to Google – I will cover that later.

3. Your logo graphic is much too big. There is no good reason for it to take up so much page real estate when

you have so much more to get in.

4. I would drop the Frontpage buttons, they do not fit with any design criteria I can see – they are bland

and too big and lots of sites already have them. Again this is important to Google.

5. You have a list of unlinked products at the top of the page – link them and put them at the bottom.

6. Create a text menu at the side of the page that does not vary or change with the page you are on. Put

everything in it that you need in it – your pages are already longish so the menu will just help to fill that

out. It is a great idea to put this in alphabetical order too except for things like Home and Contact at the

top. The logic of this is that no matter what page a customer is viewing, they can get to wherever they want

with one click. You have lots of graphics (use Photoshop or similar to increase their compression to improve

download time) so people are not going to wait for ages to go back thru several pages to find what they want.

The average attention span on the the web is less than a minute – don’t push your luck or they will click

away to a competitior. An example of this is http://lochnessguide.com

7. KISS – Keep it simple – you have lots of intermingled tables when one or two is sufficient.

8. About Google. Currently on the web you are dead without Google. Google works on relevance to keywords, it

is a bit complicated but you must decide what your keywords are say the five or six most likely a person will

search on and make sure that if possible they are: 1. in your page title 2, used several times on the front

page, 3. in your menu if possible (which must be a text menu – search engines cannot read graphics) and 4.

make sure your company name is written in text a few times too – the logo is no good if it is only a graphic

can’t be seen by the engines. And if you can’t be found on the web, why bother to have a website?

9. Get everyone you know and his brother to put a link on their site to yours to improve Google relevance.

You have meta keywords which is fine except that Google ignores meta keywords.

10. I have put a rough mock up of your site at:
http://ipw.com/test where you can see some of this stuff in action. This is just a mock up remember – not

exactly how it should be but just to illustrate the principles.

11. Someone here mentioned using frames – DON’T – the search engines cannot easily pass the frameset without

a lot of trickery. I have created dozens of websites – not one is framed – most are very high on Google –

some get 20 million hits a year – others over a thousand page impressions a day.

12. Never forget all you learned about white space.

There is a ton more but that will probably do for now….. 🙂

All the best

Ray

[Rodney Gold]

Wow , you sure have gone to a lot of trouble here and it is most appreciated.
I have only done one web in my whole life , mine and sort of got stuck with frontpage , so thats why I use it.
I really like your mock up and will change my site to be nearer to that and will simplify the buttons as well as putting stuff on a lighter background (tho I’m not that keen on plain white) and reduce the logo.
I tried to add keywords to get the site higher in the rankings , but am a little confused as to what to do to really get it up there , having said that , being high in google is not a major priorrity to me as I have relatively targeted markets and am much more active locally than international (tho we do a fair bit of international trade).
I actually advertise my web in printed media , trade journals , radio , promo flyers etc so it is vital that it be slick and professional and it’s a marvellous tool as a sort of online catalogue. When we see clients , running thru our services etc is very confusing to them , they forget what we do quick , thus the websitethat essentially says it all.
I’ll do a little research on the web as how to best optimise my site for search engines , albeit I said it wasnt that important , it certainly wont hurt!!
I like your top and bottom and side linked products and was considering it , will work out how to do it in frontpage:)
Ill try simplify the table structure too , a lot of it is legacy stuff.
In terms of the larger graphics , I want to balance resolution and detail vs DL time , Im spoiled as I have ADSL but a lot of my bigger clients also have fast lines. Initially a lot of the pics are 6 mpix , I do all the stuff like unsharp masks etc in PS7 and then use irfanview to batch process them using medium jpeg compression etc and try limit widths to 600 pixels , perhaps I should resample to 480 pixels for the bigger stuff , but I still want the customers to be able to see the detail tho.
I don’t know how to do frames , Im a little bit of a cretin in terms of web site stuff , so that’s out anyway.
I must really thank you for the time and effort you have put into your reply and the very relevant hints and tips , visit the site in a day or 2 and tell me what you think:)

[Bill Dewison]

Blimey 😮 😮 😮 Someone who writes longer messages than you Rodney! Good job Robert got the extra bandwidth 😉 😉 😆 😆

Cheers, Dewi