Web Creativity Unleashed - Check out SmartWebby.com

[smartwebby]

Hi Everyone,

This is our first post to this forum and we are here to stay :-)

Do check out our site at www.smartwebby.com and tell us what you feel about it. Do check out our cross-browser compatible advanced features Shopping Cart that works with our Dreamweaver Templates section. Since it is just 2 day old - you feedback on the cart and its features would be invaluable!

Your suggestions and comments are always welcome!

Thanks & warmest regards,

[echoSwe]

Quite hard to navigate and I couldn't find that shopping cart even if I tried (expected to find it under the menu web products). It uses a templated html structure, created by dreamweaver, with no doctype, as well as tables used for design.

Furthermore the menu on the site is created only for IE6 - or at least the users of other browsers don't get the hand-pointer that's normal to use when clicking on links = confusing.

It seems like an all-american (USA) marketing website for templates and "cheap" web design, in the sense that it costs little. (not that it does)

The "Unique Wedding Template (2nd Color)" is interesting since it's not unique at all...

I also got this on your template page:
"Error in viewing our Templates - Read our FAQs page!"

When looking at your free templates and choosing to download one I get this error:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e07'

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Error converting data type nvarchar to smallint.

/counter.asp, line 13

Nice error management there guys!

Not seconded!

[Piewife]

Hmm

My comments are not so technical...

I understand that there is a maximum amount of separate chunks of information you should ideally have on a web page - I think it goes something like "Seven, plus or minus two". News pages often exceed this, but get away with it. A site offering a service like web design I think should be very careful about pushing this rule of thumb. Your home page doesn't (I think) excced 9 separate areas but it looks like it does, fromm first view. I didn't want to dig much deeper because I suffered from information overload just from the mix of bold and standard text on the right hand side.

Maybe you should limit your front page to the normal 'About Us/Services' information and provide good links to separate pages for the rest of the text, through image links that are big enough to see your design prowess?

Just a suggestion.

[Stylise]

It's quite hard to navigate. I kinda of got there and went, "Alright, now what?". There's just too much information all over the place.

People can only process so much information at once, especially when it comes to reading. If the user doesn't get what's going on in under 1 second, they'll be put off.

There's a rule (as Piewife said) that you should have Seven, give or take two clusters of content. Usually you should take, but not give.

[Piewife]

Aah! Phew, glad I got the 'seven' correct. A little bit tired this morning!

I'm currently doing a short course with the Open University on principles of web design, which is why I picked up on that aspect of it. My technical skills will come along later, but I thought that as what you see is also important for the site user, it was good to take a lookysee at this aspect as well.

Anyway, before I go off topic, I'll sign off!

[smartwebby]

Hmm

My comments are not so technical...

I understand that there is a maximum amount of separate chunks of information you should ideally have on a web page - I think it goes something like "Seven, plus or minus two".
Maybe you should limit your front page to the normal 'About Us/Services' information and provide good links to separate pages for the rest of the text, through image links that are big enough to see your design prowess?

Just a suggestion.

Thanks for your constructive comments. We have been wanting to change the homepage structure for quite some time, but unfortunately it kept getting put off due to heavy inflow of client projects. However, as soon as we read your post we realized it was high time. We have changed the home page layout and request you to view it now (http://www.smartwebby.com). Your second round of opinion is much awaited.

Coming to our navigation, the site is really huge with over 175 pages and we have done our best to make the navigation easy to follow. Do you have any suggestions for this? Please note that we would prefer not to display most of our resource links in a visible navigation to keep the focus on our services.

Thanks again & warmest regards,

[mossoi]

Thread moved from Site of The Month as the original poster has requested feedback on the site. Smartwebby, if you would like to enter the site of the month contest please feel free to post your site again in the Site of The Month forum.

[mossoi]

As far as the amount of information on the page goes personally I think it works in this case. It's not particularly easy to read but then again I know that I don't really need to read it all. The "Welcome to SmartWebby" paragraph tells me the sort of site that I'm looking at and allows me to make up my mind about whether I want to read through the rest of the standard stuff (client Quotes etc.).

As for the navigation, while it's not particularly hidden or difficult to use I would perhaps bring it down below the blue/green banner. The area it's currently in (very top right) is commonly used for affiliate or offsite links and tends to get ignored (as well as seeming apart from the rest of the site).

Other than that I've no real criticisms, it's a well executed, standard layout. Nothing fancy.

EDIT: Just realised that the homepage has been changed since the earlier comments. I didn't see it before which may account for my contradictions with previous posters.

[echoSwe]

Thanks for your constructive comments. We have been wanting to change the homepage structure for quite some time, but unfortunately it kept getting put off due to heavy inflow of client projects. However, as soon as we read your post we realized it was high time. We have changed the home page layout and request you to view it now (http://www.smartwebby.com). Your second round of opinion is much awaited.

Coming to our navigation, the site is really huge with over 175 pages and we have done our best to make the navigation easy to follow. Do you have any suggestions for this? Please note that we would prefer not to display most of our resource links in a visible navigation to keep the focus on our services.

Thanks again & warmest regards,

Well, it's much better structure on the front page. Easier to follow.

Look at my image for more comments.

http://194.236.30.84/swedendesign2/images/comment.jpg

[CrowChick]

I am a young female who dabbles in graphic design and site design. DABBLES, so remember how crude my opinion is going to be.

The white nav bar at the top startled me when my mouse ran over it to drop down a green menu. I hadn't noticed the bar there bfore, and the green menu made the menu even less obvious. Consider changing the color of the menu to white or somehow making the navigation bar a little more obvious. Your hot links area is where I expected to find the white navigation bar's content, and the blue-on-blue link colors makes them seem arbitrary (almost like you hid the words there to dupe search engines--which I know you didn't!). Changing them to white might help bring them forward in the layout. Their small text makes them inconspicuous enough, if subtlty was what you were going for.

Just my first impressions, for what they are worth.

Your site seems to have a wealth of information. I look forward to exploring it.