Website Critique Required Please

[CCRepair]

Hi Guys,
Posted on here a few month ago for a website critique and yes my website got ripped to shreds, hopefully I think you guys will think I have improved it alot.

Any reviews much appreciated and any tips would be to.


URL : http://www.clevelandcomputerrepair.co.uk

Thankyou
CCRepair

 

[Carl]

Don't feel bad about your site getting trashed....
(Mine is back on the drawing board)

Its too "White" for me, like the text is washed out.
Would do logo in color - as AVG pulls attention away from "site-name"

Using FF - shows dots far left of <ul><li></li></ul> area - should be tucked in closer.

After "happy" 9 lines to "Hartlepool"

Don't hate it, just could use more color...

 

[Martyn]

I haven't got a great eye for design but I would say the images on the front pages with text in look all washed out. Next, to me, it spells out one man band, young and amateur. You talk about us but have a mobile number and no address anywhere that I can see. The mobile number needs to be split up for readability by the way.

I don't know about your area but mine I go into some amazing houses and they want to be able to 'know' who is coming to their house and having access to their data. So get some personal stuff on the site so they can embrace you.

 

[CCRepair]

Thanks alot for the advice

 

[iisjman07]

My Opinions (I only looked at the front page):

• Take out of the AVG logo from the header; it's out of place, too low resolution and is stretched
• I would take out the "100% INSURED, TRAINED AND RELIABLE!" as I think it looks suspect if anything
• Use a higher resolution/better quality version of your logo, it needs to be crisp, and it's not very easy to read the bottom line
• All of the "Computer Repair Hartlepool" seo things shouldn't be the first thing the client sees. Put 'em at the bottom or something
• You don't have a favicon (or one that shows up on my computer)
• The bit that explains 8 of your services is good; I like that. I don't like the images however. Most of them appear to have odd aspect ratios or the colours look bad, so try and find some nicer images
• There's a nice big white space at the bottom of the page which is odd

 

[16k_zx81]

- the txt under your logo is very difficult to read.

- blue image in top right banner looks out of place

- paragraph text looks washed-out / hard to read - not all your visitors will be able bodied or sprightly - this is a significant accessibility issue

- center-justified text with left-justified dot points? (home page) looks wrong to me

- focus on the original aspect ratio of your images. You can't take a picture and 'squash' it to fit. Resize retaining original height and width dimensions or it will look awful. IE:
http://www.clevelandcomputerrepair.co.uk/Services.html
> think of badly re-sized images as a big stamp on your website that says "I made this myself!" - but not in a good way.

- avoid leaving big blocks of blank space, and try to keep your main content ideas "above the fold"
IE:
http://www.clevelandcomputerrepair.co.uk/Services.html

--- the image could be right-justified and the body text lifted to the top.

- swap-out text-based call-to-action's with larger brighter, buttons.

- this entire SERVICES page needs developing in terms of content - its the only place in your site that actually describes what you do. d-e-l-i-n-e-a-t-e to your visitors, in detail, so they can see - at a glance - if what they are looking for is available from you.

"I am quite pleased with the work you have carried out on my laptop and quite pleased about the price, I will use you again. Thank you very much. - Margaret Gofton. Hartlepool"

- the quotation mark goes after the quotation. It does not belong at the end of the person's name and location.

- customer comments on every page if possible

- why is there a scroll bar on your contact form?

- make the phone number larger. you dont want people emailing you in preference to picking up the phone and calling. Phone call should always be the preferred mode of contact, because its instant, which means you can instantly close the sale before any other variables intervene. (Ie they get on the phone to a competitor, fix it themselves, etc)

- what areas do you service? - consider providing a map - dont make people think or wonder about this. Show them.

- Consider deciding on a single colour and implementing it in all of your Heading tags - it will brighten up the site and make it look more visually appealing. I get what you are trying to do with the 'all grey' thing, but it does look very dull.

Computer Repair Hartlepool | PC Repair Hartlepool | Laptop Repair Hartlepool

Computer Repair Stockton | PC Repair Stockton | Laptop Repair Stockton

Computer Repair Middlesbrough | PC Repair Middlesbrough | Laptop Repair Middlesbrough

- is there a reason for all this at the top of your home page?

I wrote an ABC's of website selling for Technibble awhile back - consider the ideas here for implementation on your site

- on that subject, READ, READ, READ on basics of website design.

- once your site is complete, get it reviewed at feedbackroulette.com

 

[CCRepair]

Thanks for comments much appreciated will take all this on board!

 

[Martyn]

And thank you for taking it the right way, some don't.

 

[Lefty]

And thank you for taking it the right way, some don't.

I can understand this reaction, as for quite a few of us, our website is our "baby". We spend so much time on it and to have someone call our "baby" ugly; well, you know how that goes!

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

You could change the background of the sides...sort of like this page is done http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/18-Whats-with-narrow-web-layouts.html I would use a different background for the sides though but the concept is the same.

I would then change the color of the area between the top menu bar and just under "075 8297 9484".

 

[16k_zx81]

And thank you for taking it the right way, some don't.

Yeah I often wonder about that, after I have posted (how it comes across I mean).

These days I just get right to what I want to say and then up to the OP to decide what to do with the information. Its never intended to be rude, just that I dont sugar coat what I want to express.. its too time consuming.

The response (or lack thereof) is always interesting, though

Also the aspects people incorporate or ignore, also, never fail to fascinate me.

our website is our "baby". We spend so much time on it and to have someone call our "baby" ugly; well, you know how that goes!

Exactly.

Ive been through this process many times myself over the years with sites I have made, and these days Im not too precious about other people's opinions. The fact is that good quality, informed opinion, is hard to find. The trick is to be able to recognise it and to be prepared to act on it when its available.

 

[mattastechservice]

I'll be the first to say the !DOCTYPE is incorrect:

<!DOCTYPE html
  PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html40/strict.dtd">

Should be using:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Or:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

Doesn't pass validation and code is not very pretty. Below is a template I created and saved, so every time I want to design a page I don't have to be annoyed by typing the same thing over and over.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
	<head>
		<title>Title Here</title>
		<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
	<head>
	<body>
	Insert Text Here
	</body>
</html>

I'm not trying to be harsh, just helpful. I actually bookmarked this, because once I'm done with this other web project I plan on coming back to this post to do a few things to help out

 

[Danjack]

I've read through all the comments, and I don't think I can add anything substantial. My first reaction was that I'm missing design, it looks almost like a word document with bullet points. My screen is 16:9 and the two sides of the page are very empty, which is a problem only because this ratio is much more common nowadays than the 4:3 one. So I'd work on that, and adding a bit of color, design to the background.

I also think it is great that you are open to constructive criticism, we are not hating, just trying to help!