Kebron,
1) I'm not here to bicker, your reply will go unanswered if you so much as attempt to turn my review into a back and forth game of 'i rule the forum'.
2) I've been in the design, let me rephrase, I've been developing new media across a variety of level both corporate, comtemporary, on and offline branding inititatives, and based on my clients bottom lines (and mine), I think I can clearly tell you that my opinion here counts. For validation feel free click on
http://www.ncmedia.ca or one of the hundreds of brand management pieces on and offline that we've helped make money through our marketing, and specificaly branding/imaging/calls to action.
3) Ok now that I've boasted a little and probably lost your respect along with a few others who may find my post somewhat forward or conceited, lets get rolling shall we?
a) Colors: From experience, Red, and variations of as your lead color IS harsh to the eye, why not try making the tables a light grey, and try red/burgendy text so you define the space better without my eye fighting which part of the bloody (literally) interface I should look at first.
b) Buttons. Meh, you really should switch back to regular text links if you are going to have buttons that look like yours do. Sorry let me rephrase: When you make buttons, they are navigational elements, and though aesthetics are potentialy easier to appeal to with photoshop, you have to keep in mind ppl see 4 links, HUGE links, they don't need to look at those more than twice and they know what they are forever. You're LOSING real estate on your page with so much bunky/large unformatted text. Wait back to buttons: Try creating a table in photoshop with rounded edges that would site behind those four buttons. GET RID of the black top/bottom shading, real shadows cast one way, so either shade only top or bottom of each button, however I recommend you shrink them to half their size verticaly, and leave them one color, IMO white, with red text, or vice versa.
c) Header: WOW! It's sooooooo BIG! ermm, I see what you are trying to do with your 'logo', however again you have totaly wasted so much real estate, if I was to inquire on my 'free makeover' and wanted ad space, you have pretty much killed it. Furthermore, PLEASE take a quick peak at some logo design template sites, actually I sell a tool that can help you out, I'm not here to promote it so if you want to learn more on how to get the boxed version of me, click the link above. Your header should idealy be no more than say maybe 200pxl high before you start your main content, you can do less, but you love those BIG buttons so stick to 200. Width should be 730-740 pxls, maximize your space, minimize your scroll for your users. Grab a few different fonts you like that contrast well against eachother in shape, so ones thick, and ones thin. Now, make your word FREE all caps in the thick font, and color it red, underneath it with the thin font, in white all lower case letters write 'website' so it lines up perfectly with your F and E in free ( so the width is the same ), and the final line repeat step one, thick, red, lined up. To the left of this you should now have nice room to add a glyph or icon of some kind, say a mini thumbnail of a few screen shots of...........websites maybe?
d) Imaging: I know you have no traffic yet, and may never get it if you keep fighting warranted and asked for reviews, be it from buttheads of other ceo's. But your traffic will never reach the point where you can't add an image or two, don't worry about hosting/bandwidth jjjjjjust yet. I reall feel that if you are selling websites, they should be able to sell themselves, and the text should only be a tiny teeny eeeeeny weeeeeeeeeeeny part of it. The call to action is simple, its in your domain name! Don't repeat FREE FREE or AMAZING TOP QUALITY unless you can back it up, so having said that even if you lie a bit, go grab some photoshop skills from some photoshop forums as that is essentailly every true designer/brand managers daily fav. and most responsible tool, and plug in a few images of people smiling with text bubbles saying 'I love the free website makeover I got!', or pictures of lunatics and put 'you'll go crazy over these giveaways'... You neeeeeeeed a brand brotha, not just text in fancy tables. You really need to pay attention to the important posts here, and disregard the negative ones, be it mine too if you don't it.... if you replaced the amount of time typing to these unsatisfied eyes, I feel you'd have a better website already. Infact, I'm being reduntant with most pouints, have typos without concern of your backlash and to be honest I signed up to this board just for YOU!! To both give you a nudge and say relax its only a computer, your friends are not inside yet, and to give you maybe a snarky but quantified realistic review that you can take to your dungeon and chew on with hopes of improving your whole business, intelect with these online initiative vs. PR, and overall appeal to both you as a person, and your website. I'd honestly hate to have to deal with YOU if I bought a website from you, and was not happy with it, what would you do then? And if by the third time I still didn't have what I wanted despite you being the internet guy and me being the client, I want what MY EYE wants, just like these kind folks on this site. We are ALL here to learn from eachother, even if it from mistakes you are making and not seeing, and now defending and choosing not to see. I agree with one member here on a snide remark, you have either too much time and or to much pride, suggest you sacrifice at least 10% for you own good grey hair. Right.... back to the website
e) Text, from the start of the site, you should have had a color format down pat. i.e. you have red/black, THAT is the stage to ask for help, because if your 'foundation' is bad, the rest will crumble. Looking at a color wheel/chart, you will see that red to black are both saturated, and on the dark side, meaning black text over black text would be invisible, well red over black is also bad to the eye, that's why ppl are potentialy upset, RED is the most pwerful color, certain reds can drive ppl to madness if they paint their entire room that color, you may be disturbing ppl with your color choices: THIS was NOT a snide remark. I took color theory for years going through the design ladders, believe me your colors are what make or break you too. So I really think that from a virgin eye to your site, and seeing what you are trying to do, you should consider redoing the entire site (I know what your thinking, *** me right?), It would be easy, all your content is there just cut/paste in Dreamweaver or whatever WYSIWYG you use. And stick to CORPORATE design, may be a little more boring than what you have, however you will convince a lot more ppl to believe in you if you follow my steps so far. I TRULY believe having a white center/main section of the site where ppl read/view and scroll is the best option. Putting red text all the way through would not be though, remember how your teacher would cross out stuff or give you an A+ on a test with RED usually? Imagine reading pages of that really small.... again disturbing. I will resort to my own site here one last time for reference to clean, corporate, WE LOOK HUGE type of design that is easy to navigate, read through heavily (if I read through your whole site with the colors there now I would have a headache, or want to leave, again that black/red side effect really shows poor design knowledge, please TAKE IT, don't defend it, TAKE IT BLACK AND RED DON"T WORK, there is no secret, nothing you can say or twist through quoting my words, I'm telling you the facts and teachings through generations of award winning designer/advertising firms/books/and influence through self teachings, your website needs to look corporate, not cool/shiny and chrome thick bars, I look at those more than whats important, THE TEXT!
f) Content: Again, if you feel that you are providing a good service to people, and free (for now as you upsell them or whatever your catch is, there better be one I'd hate to find out you have that much spare time that you post here and build free sites every day all day). What do you think ppl that own worse websites than yours and are looking to get to your level may be looking for other than your mediochre online brochure design? errrr text formatting design? Always think to diversify service offerings, and always aim to expect your customers to say 'great, what ELSE can you do for me?'. I've found that by saying 'oh we just build small sites' will kill you in the long run, and if you don't shape up your design/photoshop/imaging/typography/composition/layout/color scheme to what ppl are telling you works, you will fade fast, maybe with a struggle like this UTMOST popular thread, you will go down.
In closing, I do admire your efforts to defend and flip every comment made to ppl, it shows character and that you are a fighter!! Except your trying to kick the ball in your own net here, and kick some ppl jock straps while your at it if they tell you that was a back play.... I feel that your contribution to the oodles and ooooooodles of giggles you've provided here to the laughing and entertained members of this forum have been somewhat fun to read, it me to join!! However this is my first and probably longest post EVER! Yeah half out of spite as I think you 'nose in the air' and self centered approach to daily conversation is ill advized and not well responded to by your fellow members, and I personaly find your website a 3 out of 10, with no room to grow if you cannot grow as a designer, and business owner. One last note on the review, the purpose, the one thing we shoud all be here for, to tell eachother how much we love AND HATE eachothers websites, and how to improve them (Oh wait, that;s right we are all here to tell you how to make your site worse, that's the point of this site, let's trick Kebron in to thinking we hate his site, and tell him how to make it worse, with attitude). Not sure where else you've surfed, and I'm a bit ambitious or even rambunctious myself, however never in my life have I asked for help or opinions and then backlashed like I was BraveHeart himself.
Thank you, hope you can cherry pick through my fluff, and yes, I did have to say all that.
Norb
NC Media.
**PPS - As a last note, for all WE know you are a mad genious, because the intent of marketing is to create a buzz, be it good or bad, you got MORE ppl to your site than many on this board, FOR THAT i salute you.
