Website Critique required

[utopia-y2k9]

Hi there,

this is my new website Design Utopia

Let me know your thoughts/feedback/critique

Many thanks in advance

Tomo

 

[ezekielrage_99]

Not much to say really, it looks great and it's very conservative/planned design.

Great stuff!

 

[Shoesy]

Neat and proffessional - only thing I'd bring up is the charachter spacing looks a bit tight on the graphics.

Nice work.

 

[decksnap]

Overall it's very nice. Since you asked...

•*Exclamation points don't feel very professional.
•*The tracking on some of the flash text on the home page is a little tight. I know it's a style you're going for, but on the thinner weights it doesn't work the same as the heavier ones.
•*the icon on the bottom right looks kinda familiar.
•*I don't usually say something like this, but the L1 nav feels like the kind of nav that could benefit from rollover states.
•*The body copy feels a little small.
•*The insets on your blog page need more padding/margin.
•*There are only three sites in your portfolio. Maybe call it 'sample work' instead?

 

[citizenzen]

You can't miss with clean and professional, but I do have a couple of comments...

• I agree that the nav bar could use a subtle rollover or selected state.
• I also agree that the tracking of some graphic type is too tight.
• I'd bring a little color to the headline font. Gray after gray gets a little... gray. The blue from the underside of your top nav or from the gradient blue-black perhaps... or something related.
• Not a fan of the Vag Rounded (or whatever that is). But I know that's a deal breaker for you, so don't sweat it.

 

[Peace]

Looks good but a person with an iPad won't be able to view the flash on it.

 

[needlnerdz]

- under 'our services' the read more link would work much nicer if it was a show/hide div or an accordion javascript, since you are leading the user to a new page that offers only 1 or maybe 2 sentences more.

- the initial flash movie on the home page is kind of a waste of bandwidth.. maybe if it was an animation of rotating text, or showcasing the sample work it would make sense, but right now its just a non interactive flare of particles that looks like it should react or change in some way, considering how long it took to load.

- on the nav bar, you could probably drop 'home' and just make the DU be an active link for the home page.. otherwise keep home and still make the DU a link for redundant navigational ease.

- it seems like the logo on top is wasting some valuable retail space.. on my laptop almost a third of the page is taken up by it, therefore having to scroll down on every page I view.. surely not a problem for those working on larger screens, but i'd keep the header size in consideration.

otherwise its clean and easy to navigate through. I second the suggestion of changing portfolio to 'sample work' or something similar..

 

[calderone]

Navigation:

Rollover on the nav is defintely needed. Sprites is the best way to accomplish this. They can also be used to let the user know the active page.

To do this, I would create a more grayscale-ish nav and on rollover use some color, the blue would be a good idea.

I would suggest pushing the blue to gray and reserving the blue for the rollover state, but there is a serious lack of color. If you can more color in there I would consider reserving the blue line as an informative tool for the user.

To add a nice effect, consider something like:

opacity: .8;
-webkit-transition: opacity .1s linear;

You could use this as the hover state feedback, where you apply an opacity of 1 when the user hovers.

Drop the DU.

Also, you nav isn't scaling well, see the image below from Safari.

Color:
You need some color in there, it is rather drab.

Fonts:
I think you could stand to use something a little stronger in a few places.

Portfolio:

I do not recommend changing "portfolio" to "sample work," at least not for navigation purposes. "Sample work" just sounds amateur while "Portfolio" does not. Other than this I agree with the rest of the suggestions.

 

[Helmutek]

Hate to spoil...

Your site looks good, but knowing rapidweaver and sandvox it looks to me too much like one of the templates... Looks like a tweaked rapidweaver "apper" theme or something similar... I know many customers/clients won't know the difference, but it I was looking to redesign a site/graphics I would be turned off by cookie cutter templates especially on designers front page... So sorry I don't mean to bash or anything, just my two cents...

 

[citizenzen]

a few more thoughts...

In most of your pages you have the left column carrying the content and the thinner right column holding the "ads" except for the technology page where that is reversed. I would flop those columns so your technology page matched the rest of the site.

One note about the "ads". They are designed in such a way that they literally feel like advertisements for outside companies. It took me a while to realize they were all in-house promotions and links to your site. I would try to find a way to make them feel more like a part of your website and less like appeals by outside agencies.

I realize that's getting a bit quibblish... but hey, you asked.

 

[substeel]

flash takes too long to load

The flash takes wayyyyy to long to load. I punt a site quickly when the flash does not load in 15 seconds.

 

[eleven2brett]

Overall look of the site is great.
Just some of my suggestions:
The seam in your background and your header image is pretty visible when you scroll.
Flash header takes too long to load. It's cool and all but I don't think it does more for you than an image with the same content would.
Incorporate hover effects for your menu.

 

[Jett0516]

looks great but I think the layout is a little too wide.

 

[M-5]

Your little introduction message on the main page has some typos and incorrect grammar (missing commas and such).

It's not a big deal, but certainly turns me off right away, since it's the welcoming statement and on the front page.

Also perhaps this should say "Give us a call at" rather than "Give us a call on"

These are just minor things I noticed with a quick glance. I really like the fonts though, and it certainly looks really friendly and professional.

 

[a cat *miaow*]

Also perhaps this should say "Give us a call at" rather than "Give us a call on".

Give us a call on is correct –*maybe "call at" is more American-English?

have to agree with the rollover in the main nav, you have rollovers everywhere else so thought maybe this was broken?

A poster above said it was a bit drab, hmm I think the colours are OK but I agree that it could do with some type of accent colour like an orange perhaps.

It's a personal preference, but I don't like the type size at all. Feels so squashed and uninviting to read. I'd use a larger font size, more line spacing and more padding around the content column. Lots of items on the site feel a bit to squashed without enough breathing space.

And, rewrite your URLs.

All in all a good start though!

 

[niuniu]

There's a DU on the top menu that looks like a button but it's really just a design quirk. I'd remove that. I tried to click it several times. Either that or rename home to DU, people will associate that button with the home button naturally.

Overall, it has a professional quality finish, so well done, that's the hardest part in the end. You can come up with new ideas as you go along and really develop it, but it has to be professional quality from the outset or you lose sales. Well done.