VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Living Culture · Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:43 pm Post subject: first timers website

I just uploaded my site last week, and have been making changes to it as people criticise it... This was my first attempt at designing an entire site, so is full of little (and not so little) bugs.

Take a look at http://lcmsmedia.com

Any comments, suggestions, critique or single malt scotch would be appreciated.

Thanks

ps: Is anybody having trouble with the samples page? No one here has mentioned it, but my friends and family have said some don't work on their browsers. They all work on my Firefox, but take a while to load. I am looking at using java player, but I want to be sure that will fix the problem before I start rewriting the code.

Pierce · Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 1:25 pm Post subject:

I'm just jumping into the world of Dreamweaver design with my own site... I know this stuff can be tricky.

The first thing that stands out is the constant repetition of the side navigation's animation... becomes pretty fatiguing. It's cool, but a little distracting, ya know?

More to come!
_________________
Chadd Pierce
PierceVoice.com
studio@piercevoice.com

louzucaro · Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 2:45 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Yeah, I agree that the animated graphics of the level indicators are annoying. Also, that background is pretty busy and headache-inducing if you ask me.

Overall, to be honest, it comes across much more as "hobbyist" than "professional" and if I went to a site that looks that way wondering if I should be giving them money, I would immediately think "No"

I think the Services page has too much text overall, and some of your section headers are inconsistently styled.

Also, your textnav at the bottom is missing a link for F.A.Q. as it appears at left in the main nav, so you may want to add that.

On the home page, your main content area doesn't line up with the width of your header graphic, whereas it does (or is at least only a couple pixels off) on some of the other pages, so that would probably be a place to get a bit more consistency.

Watch your resampling of logos and other images...make sure you're doing this as pre-processing and not on the fly by changing image dimensions, since you can't scale bitmapped graphics that way and have them look good. And if you did pre-process them to size, do it again with a program that works Smile

I think you might also benefit from going through all your text and either eliminating a lot of it, or finding other ways to present it that aren't so "messy" looking. Pages like the Rates page, with all the tables with their default borders, etc., are really difficult to read.

The link to your Contact page seems to be broken (I was on the F.A.Q. page and clicked Contact and it went to a non-existent page...looks like the link is pointing to a file on your computer).

Finally, and this is very nit-picky, but your company name is Living Culture Media Solutions, but your URL is lcmsmedia.com, which might lead some people to believe that your company is actually Living Culture Media Solutions Media (kinda like TCBY Yogurt).

Good luck!
_________________
Lou Zucaro
http://www.voicehero.com

"Well, yeah, there's my favorite leaf!"

Living Culture · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:54 am Post subject:

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into some of these. Unfortunately my lack of coding ability makes some fixes a no no.

bransom · DC Joined: 06 Nov 2008 Posts: 650 Location: St. Louis, MO

Quick notes without getting too in-depth:

As a rule, think clean, simple and consistent.

Hope this helps.

Living Culture · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:25 am Post subject:

Thanks, I was working on some of your points as I read your message. I am busy uploading slightly modified version now.

I was trying to use gradient fill over background, but have not achieved the desired effect yet. The rollover I am still trying to understand.

Mike Cooper · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:30 am Post subject:

Don't hate me, but my first impression is that it looks dated (I'm running away as I type…)

I think it's a combination of what others have said above about the colours and the fonts.

Ten years ago it was quite cool to design a site with lots of colours, animations, repeating backgrounds and so on. Nowadays we tend to be a bit less "busy" with design. Less is more… More white space. Let the content speak, etc.
_________________
MIKE COOPER VOICEOVER |
The guy next door. Only better. And British.
web: www.MikeCooperVoiceover.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/MikeCooper

Living Culture · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:51 am Post subject:

bransom · DC Joined: 06 Nov 2008 Posts: 650 Location: St. Louis, MO

If a user doesn't have Garamond loaded, the page will default to their serif default font. In a practical sense on Windows machines, that means Times.

I agree with Mike: Overall, the site looks dated. I suggest browsing [url]faveup.com[/url] and looking at the CSS sites for an overview on current look/feel trends.

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:02 pm Post subject:

louzucaro · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:25 pm Post subject:

[quote="Living Culture"]

Living Culture · Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:08 am Post subject:

Thanks again for the valuable advice.

I made the gif animation slower to be less distracting. At least until I can get the Java coding right. CSS....I don't know anything about, except that it exists.

Also, I managed to change some of the "unchangeable" fonts using Cpanels editor, which seems to be a lot more user friendly than I originally thought.

The background I am working on toning down. Using same theme, but with a solid layer over it and either blurring or feathering it. Only thing now is, then it would need to be one bmp for background. I'm not sure what size that should be. My original size (about 1024 pixels) people were complaining about having to scroll vertically and with my current size (800pixels) seems too small for some monitors.

I did get the flash player right, which makes me happy. The embedded files were very inconsistent.

louzucaro · Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:40 pm Post subject:

Living Culture · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:18 am Post subject:

Living Culture · Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 7:40 am Post subject:

OK...after a few more days more of hair pulling and swearing a lot, I learnt a bit of CSS. My upgraded site is now up. Still a lot of tweaking to be done as I don't know all the ins and outs of CSS yet. But please take a lot and give me your opinion.

Thanks for valuable insight so far.

Some things I have changed completely, like the font family and general positioning. Some of the other things I have just toned down, like the background and gifs. (I blame soundgun for my infatuation with the gifs, since I saw the animated XLR's on his site.) Inoccent