MACORA Web Studios Opinions!!

[MACORA]

I started a new Web Design Company and was wondering what you guys thought of the design for it. We made it with photoshop 6 and with Flash.

the addy is. http://www.macorastudios.com

thanks,
James Montemagno

[splufdaddy]

The homepage is cool looking, but I would definately reccommend putting some text there. I dont know where to go from the home page. News is the first link, but I dont want to read news first about a company I know nothing about.

Also, I'm not a fan of how the site design changes on the rest of the pages from the homepage. The rest of the pages don't have much style to them, they're just black text on a white bg, with a header.

A nice start, could be great w/ some work.

[smoseley]

I agree with splufdaddy. Additionally, your menu reloads every time the user changes pages. Not a good idea with flash. And your frame rate is too slow. Looks like default 12 fps. Increase it to 20+ fps (i like 30).

[MACORA]

It was my first time working with Flash so I'm not sure how everything works yet. I agree with the Sub pages and we are working on that as well. We will probably work on a new layout in a couple of months or so. and thanks for your opinions.

[skrlin]

The flash looks great, a little slow like transio said, but the interface looks nice.

My biggest peeve is the reloading menu for a couple of reasons.
1. It's a waste of bandwidth having to re-download it for every page accessed.
2. It takes time that people, even on cable and better modems, don't like giving up to loading the menu.

My suggestion, if you choose to stick with that design, would be to put the flash menu in a seperate frame and direct the links to the bottom frame. At least that way the menu only loads once, and with the rest of the site being text-only it should load relatively quick even for 56k.

[MACORA]

yes i think that putting it in a iframe is a good idea. i will probably move it over to that. the front page i think loads for me in like 15-20 secs on my 56k it is only a 45K file i believe.

[MACORA]

Ok i have moved them to 20 fps. see how u guys like that.and i also took off the loading on the sub pages.

[smoseley]

Just a note. It's not a waste of bandwidth if your browser has default content caching enabled. It will recognize that the file has been loaded already and use the local copy.

[TheGAME1264]

From a layout standpoint, there's very little I'd change in it. It's reasonably clean and quick-loading from this end, and the colour scheme is cool (I'm not normally big on anything monochromatic but in this case, you made it work).

Two things I'd change from this standpoint.

1) Your use of Times New Roman. Times New Roman is such a blah-looking font. I personally prefer Verdana, but any common sans-serif font other than TNR would look so much nicer.

2) Your stock photo. I'm not a big advocate of stock photos on websites since they never really convey the proper "emotional image" that they're supposed to, and this is no different. (Sorry, this just annoys the you-know-what out of me.)

My only other criticism is one not of you specifically, but of everyone who does this: do not, do not, do not put personal websites in a professional portfolio. Your customers are looking for professional sites that at least appear to make money when they take the time to look at your portfolio, and your portfolio should reflect this. This is especially true with "perturbedmind.com". That's a rather...well...disturbing domain name and it has a "Deliverance" feel to it. ("You got a real purdy mouth, boy!")

You don't need to mention that you designed your own website as well. It'd be one of those things that'd kind of look a little bizarre if someone else did it.

Hope this helps.

[MACORA]

understandable and thanks, yes we are also working on a new way to show our portfolio.