website critique?

[Dave Gilbert]

I'm doing this design for a friend of the family.  He wants to have a "splash page" which contains his logo. I put his logo on the front page, but he isn't sure he likes it.  It looks great on a business card, but on the website it lacks "weight."  I can sort of see what he means.

If anyone has tips on how to give it more weight without altering the logo, i'd appreciate it.

EDIT:  And duh.  here's the link.  http://www.davelgil.com/mark

[juncmodule]

Some magical mythical survey taken at some point says that people spend something like 3 seconds on most websites (on first visit). Because of this statistic splash pages are generally frowned upon.

You need to get information to your customers and get it to them fast. Pretty splash screens, fancy flash movies, and all of that crap have become pretty useless in the corporate world. Look at most of the flash you see around now, it is integrated into the site, it is functional, simple and familiar. Splash pages are amateur and very 1999.

Hopefully my little rant there will give you some ammunition to convince him to drop the splash page. However, if you are unable to convince him then please scan and upload the business card so we can see how he makes the graphic work there. Pretty much I would attempt to simulate the business card on the page.

later,
-junc

[Russtaccio]

I agree with the above regarding the splash page.  I design corporate web sites for a living, and unless a customer is absolutely stubborn about flash animation, leave it out.  And you should at least have a 'Click to Enter' or something similar.  Your average user (yes, even in 2006) may not know they have to click on the animation.

Also, a quick glance at your page and I noticed you're using all HTML.  If you don't know CSS, learn it.  It will make your life a lot easier as a designer, because you can apply styles across a site without having to define every paramater a tag has every time you use it.

[Pet Terry]

Another thing you might want to take into account is that when displaying images and photos on your page, instead of resizing the images in code, resize them in paint program. You end up with more files, sure, but it makes loading times faster and looks prettier, especially with resized photos. Right now the logo and the photos look cruddy, like if you resized them with nearest neighbour on.

[Dave Gilbert]

Yeah, I know about splash pages.    He wants one though, so I'll make it for him.

Still unsure about what to do with the logo.  If anyone has any ideas, i'd appreciate it.

[edmundito]

Just tell your client that splash screens are not used anymore and explain to him why. I can probably get you a link that will help you develop the explanation...

As for the text, you should make the readable text a 10pt Verdana or Arial. If you want to add some variaety, you can set the titles and stuff to different fonts, but that type of text is easy to read.

[Dave Gilbert]

I appreciate all your comments and I know you all are trying to be helpful, but maybe I'm not being clear enough.

1 - the splash screen stays.  I totally understand the reasoning but it's not my decision  

2 - the logo itself can't be changed.  It's the logo on his business card and it needs to be remain the same in order to keep the "brand image", or whatnot.  Changing the font is a no-no.  However, I can add things TO the logo to make it stand out more.  That's where I'm having trouble.

Again, this isn't a dig at you guys.  I know you honestly want to help.  I still love you.

[juncmodule]

Understood.

Could you still upload a scan of the business card? It will help with design ideas since he likes the way it looks there. Could be a reason it looks better that you aren't seeing that one of us may see.

Also, the resolution on the logo text is screwy. It needs to be anti-aliased really bad. When you resize it looks like crap. I'm not saying change the text, just make it not look pixelated. What is the exact font? Do you have access to the originals that were used to make the business card?

Anyway, here is my page:

http://www.juncmodule.com/pub/davehelp.htm

Actually, I'm messing around with a few different things for the page. Just look here:

http://www.juncmodule.com/pub/

[Dave Gilbert]

Hey Juncster,

Thanks!

That's DEFINITELY more in line with what he's looking for.  The logo doesn't look all sad and lonely on the page.

I don't have a scan of the card.  Just a crappy .pdf of the logo.   This is just a prototype, so the quality of the graphics isn't as important as the layout.  I'll probably be getting better versions of the graphics soon.

[juncmodule]

I put up a second one, not sure if you saw that. heh...working while I post. If you need any more help feel free to contact me by PM or email if you like. Once you get more material for the project you should be able to go a lot further with it.

later,
-junc

[sergiocornaga]

Another thing you might want to take into account is that when displaying images and photos on your page, instead of resizing the images in code, resize them in paint program.

I agree, this is very important towards making the site look professional... especially since the third image is huge. Maintaining the same resoloution as the image is also important, and this hasn't been done either. More along the lines of this, maybe:







Feel free to use these. Oh, and I changed the image size... hope you don't mind.

[Mikko]

In addition, I suggest that after resampling photos you should always apply unsharp mask to them.

The amount is up to you, but like them a bit oversharpened in this size.

[Oneway]

The splash page looks a lot better now. Great job!
However, the address text is pretty distracting to me. I suggest using a gray color for them.
Same goes for the link colors. The standard blue and purple (for visited links) are pretty destructive for the black and white impression.
For both the links and text a gray color, as soft as possible without blending in with the white too much would be a nice alteration.

You seem to be designing the page for 800x600 resolution, which is fine if you're expecting many visitors using this resolution. (Designing for 1024x768 though is the standard nowadays.) On Firefox (with a 15 px extra toolbar) a vertical scrollbar appears and on IE, a horizontal scrollbar appears.

If you resize the logo (15 px smaller should do), and decrease the address text font size, both of these problems will probably be gone.



The black background on the actual website makes the white seem even brighter. This will become pretty tiring on the eyes so maybe a dark or even light gray would be better.
It also helps the transition from the splash page to the first page, as the splash page no longer has the black background.

[Dave Gilbert]

In addition, I suggest that after resampling photos you should always apply unsharp mask to them.

The amount is up to you, but like them a bit oversharpened in this size.

Thanks for this!  These photos are just placeholders that I nabbed off Google.  Guess I should have been clear on what needed to be edited.    But I'll keep this technique in mind once I get the "official" photos from my friend.

[juncmodule]

Mind if I hijack this thread for a second...

[hijack]
@Oneway

Designing for 1024x768 though is the standard nowadays

By chance do you have a reliable source for this? I'm a web developer at OSU and we are forced to keep our pages at a 800px width. I have yet to find a good reason that we do this. I thought it was part of accessibility standards but haven't been able to find any proof of that. As far as I can tell it's just the tech departments random or outdated decision. You seem to know what you're talking about from the post in this thread and in Rharpe's thread, so I believe you. I just need a good source to convince my boss!

[/hijack]

We now return to our regularly scheduled program...

thanks,
-junc

[Oneway]

Junc: Turns out i may have been wrong. To not further pollute this topic, i started a new thread in gen gen about this.