need some constructive critisizm

[brandonroloff]

I'm building a info site about the company i work for. Our main target is realtors and home builders to explain our services. I know that the content is lacking and we are working on that aspect of the website. Im just looking for some suggestions to spice up the overall look. I was recently told that my design looks amatuerish so im trying to find ways to make it look more professional.


anyways, let me know what you think.

[planetgman]

Looks good enough. A couple of things I did see.

1) Your logos on the right move pretty quickly. More imporantly, they are way too big. They don't fit the overall feel of the rest of the site. I think you could shrink them down a bit.
Plus, it doesn't say what they are. No titles. Are they clients, are the vendors, what?

2) Along with that, your text looks small compared to it. Your one paragraph (you should have at least 2-3) gets lost next to those logos.
You need to say what it is you do and tell me why I want to use you.

Something about the reflections that seem out of place, but can't really put my finger on it.

Overall the site is pretty good.
Good luck with it......

[brandonroloff]

Looks good enough. A couple of things I did see.

1) Your logos on the right move pretty quickly. More imporantly, they are way too big. They don't fit the overall feel of the rest of the site. I think you could shrink them down a bit.
Plus, it doesn't say what they are. No titles. Are they clients, are the vendors, what?

2) Along with that, your text looks small compared to it. Your one paragraph (you should have at least 2-3) gets lost next to those logos.
You need to say what it is you do and tell me why I want to use you.

Something about the reflections that seem out of place, but can't really put my finger on it.

Overall the site is pretty good.
Good luck with it......

I'm on the fence about displaying the clients being featured in that column. I was asked if it was something we could do so i added it there. I havent really decided how i want to improve that area, and that feature could go away its placement is not mandantory.
Im still waiting on more content. For the realtors & builders page, and index page. The other pages have info on them. I plan to add some more links in the paragraphs that go to the products page.
Those reflections are buttons, (however im afraid that most people will not know that they are clickable).

[ljm]

The reflections would be better if the text wasn't reflected too. I'd suggest making the buttons and reflections separate images, and putting plain text on top. You can still do the same hover effects with CSS. If you don't want to do that, then just lose the upside down text and possibly fade them out before they reach the bottom of the header. To make them look like links, I'd turn them into text with backgrounds and hover attributes. It's quite hard to make a button look like a link, especially as they are now, because they just appear to be descriptions, and not navigational links.

The scrolling thing on the side would be better if it didn't scroll and the images were scaled down and turned into a normal unordered list, I think. It's too distracting as is and it takes attention away from the main content. It looks a lot better on the builders page, but you'll have to make sure that sidebar is never as long as the main content section.

There is also page scrolling for no reason. That could easily fit on one page, but I couldn't quite tell you how to stop it looking daft if the layout didn't touch the bottom of the screen. I've yet to figure that out myself.

Also, why have you used a table for a horizontal list of links? It doesn't make sense at all that, to be honest. An unordered list could do the same thing.

Other than that, the layout's nice and clean and you're certainly heading in the right direction.

[planetgman]

I think it is ok to feature the clients, as long as it wasn't so bold/big. It takes away from the content.

Other than that (and the reflection issue), I wouldn't change much. It is pretty clean and easy to nav.

Good luck.....

[brandonroloff]

I think it is ok to feature the clients, as long as it wasn't so bold/big. It takes away from the content.

Other than that (and the reflection issue), I wouldn't change much. It is pretty clean and easy to nav.

Good luck.....

I switched the sidebar back to the "products" side bar. The reason the text is part of the image on the rollovers is that i was trying to control the font, (and i didnt wasn't sure how to get the text on the rollover without having to use positioning).

Thanks for the input thus far. Sounds like the overall design looks good to most of you, just needs some tweaks. Its still a work in progress i really need the rest of the content once i have it i might be able to come up with a better way to feature our clients. The reason i came up with the scroller is that we have over 100 different builder clients (though i only featured a few). I figured that would be a way to get them all on a page without it being 5000px of page to scroll through.

I will keep working on it.

[Steax]

How about giving the paragraphs some line spacing? Also... I think your main problem is that your color scheme is just too dull, to dark and lacking interesting contrast...

[brandonroloff]

Okay, I have made some changes since my last post.

Removed the scrolling logo's
Changed the color theme

Im not going to change the nav, i know someone suggested using list for the nav, i have used it in the past and had alot of issues with validatation and getting it to look the way i want it to appear in all browsers. That being said i have used this menu in a few websites and it has worked flawlessly. If its not broke don't fix it. I know it may not be the "in" thing to do.

I've still got some work to do, just wanted to post the update. I stumbled accross this forum while looking for some tutorials i will definatley be coming back.

Thanks,
BR

[Ferro]

I'm not sure that the reflection works on the logo as well, looks a bit wierd IMHO.
Also I agree the reflections in the tabs might look better without the text.

Looks like a pretty clean, clear site.