Show Us Your Xtreme 4 created Website!

[Soporose]

OK, feeling a little trepidatious about going public. Unlike the rest of you I don't have an artistic bone in my body -- well, maybe just the wishbone.

I haven't tried to included any fancy artwork, just a website for a service for which I'm a reseller. The idea is that the site should be functional and informative rather than artistically impressive.

Also, as a sales site, it needs to be reasonably SEO friendly, so I need to avoid things like text-as-an-image. There's still a lot of work to do in the SEO area -- manually altering the page titles, metatags, some images without alt/title, etc.

Another thing that's a real problem is the way that Ctrl+Scroll-Wheel has such a devastatingly different effect in Firefox to what it does in Internet Explorer. In IE the whole webpage is enlarged/reduced, which is fine. In Firefox the page stays fixed and text is enlarged, which completely screws the whole visual effect. Firefox seems to ignore the fact that font size is set in pixels. Anyone come up with a solution to that horror, other than text-as-image?

Anyway, I'd be most grateful for any suggestions for improvements. I'd also like to know if there are any visual anomalies in other browsers.

No need to be gentle -- I know I am very weak at this design stuff.

Website: http://www.DataSafetyCenter.com

[steve.ledger]

Anyone come up with a solution to that horror, other than text-as-image?

Yes.
Answer = Opera web browser or Firefox 3

Safari also does the same thing as Firefox2. Horrid browser (imho)


I like the site. It's clean, easy to follow/navigate.
My only problems is with the highly feathered edges on images.
This doesn't seem to work, it cheapens the look of the site to me.
Otherwise, top marks for your effort.

[pauland]

Soporose,

Here goes..

Just some thoughts about the site (using Firefox 2.0).

On the home page text is spilling off the side and being truncated - "data" and "disaster" are losing the end of the words in the first main paragraph.

In general, I think you have a strong high-contrast design with clear columns and colours that do not relax the reader - in keeping, I suppose with the disaster recovery theme.

I don't think that the fuzzy edges work with such a layout and I'd make all the images have straight edges.

Between pages the column layouts vary. I think it's OK to have three columns on page 1, and two columns on other pages, but if you have two columns on multiple pages they should be consistent in layout - currently the layouts change from page to page even where the column count is the same.

There's too much copy for my liking - it needs air to breathe - check out sledgers tip to make multi-length pages. It's OK to to have the user scroll downwards.

Reduce the use of different colours across the pages and leave the thin borders out. Choose a small colour pallet for the pages and stick to it.

If you have coloured bands behind text, they should respect the column layout and have some symmetry between columns.

The images top-right should sit naturally across the top band - the fuzzy edging clashes with the hard edges and the image would look better if it allowed the two band colours to flow around it. Often layouts wanting a larger area would be expanded (the black red band thickened on the right side, to permit the image to sit inside and not straddle the band).

For the FAQ in particular, the paragraph headings have quarrelled with the text they head. Use sledgers multi-length page fix to bring the FAQs into the main design theme.

Lastly the content. I think there's a dilemma. There's the hard-nosed approach - to try and frighten the reader with all the things that surely will go wrong if they don't use your services. For many readers it might make them too scared to continue reading (what you don't know, can't hurt you). An alternative approach would be to emphasize
with the reader and explain how good they'd feel by using a service that will save them the pain if things should go wrong. For example, the copy could say something like "There's one thing about the people who use our services - they can sleep well at night knowing that their data is safe, no matter what happens." The panic stricken man image then becomes
an image of someone sleeping soundly in their bed. You get the idea.

Inevitably, I've concentrated on the things that could do with some attention, rather than the good things about your design. For a hard-nosed sell you have a strong layout that looks business-like and certainly gets the message over. There are a lot of things I like about what you have done - my comments inevitably focus on the aspecs that might need a second look. If it's any comfort, I look at my own sites and see horrible things. It's easier to 'Do as I say' rather than 'Do as I do'!

A great start. I actually like a lot of what you have done and I realise that some of my comments may be because of cultural differences towards selling between the US and UK.

Paul

[PyrateM]

Hello Everyone!

I'm new to the forums and have been using various versions of Xara for about 6 months. I just been recently playing around with the website export feature. Here are the 2 sites I've done so far...

http://www.hp-ohio.com

http://www.cheaprentrocks.com

Two issues I've been having: It seems at a certain point, if I add a page (even if its the exact duplicate of the one above) it will fail to export it. If I delete it, then it works fine again. The changes are minimal, I'll add a page, change the text and that will be it and it'll fail. The other issue is that I'd like to incorporate a paypal donation form, but when I manually enter it into the code it will not show up.

So! That's where I'm at and I'd love your feedback!

Manda

[Soporose]

Thanks very much to Paul and Steve for your input with regard to http://DataSafetyCenter.com.

The images top-right should sit naturally across the top band - the fuzzy edging clashes with the hard edges and the image would look better if it allowed the two band colours to flow around it. Often layouts wanting a larger area would be expanded (the black red band thickened on the right side, to permit the image to sit inside and not straddle the band).

Since you both mentioned it I thought I'd tackle the feathered images first. however...

Paul, I'm not quite sure what you mean, especially with regard to "would look better if it allowed the two band colors to flow around it". Could you explain that in more detail please, or point to an example (even approximate) if you know of one.

Following Egg's tutorial I have cut the people out from their backgrounds and it will be a simple matter to place them top right, spanning the red and black and protruding slightly into the white. It looks OK but I'm curious about your flow-around suggestion.

Just some thoughts about the site (using Firefox 2.0).

On the home page text is spilling off the side and being truncated - "data" and "disaster" are losing the end of the words in the first main paragraph.

This is the problem I mentioned with Firefox resizing text that is defined in pixels. Ctrl+Scroll-Wheel down one size and you should see it come good. However, I had that text on a text line; I'll try putting it in a text box to see if that's an improvement.

Reduce the use of different colours across the pages and leave the thin borders out.

What are the thin borders you're referring to?

For the FAQ in particular, the paragraph headings have quarrelled with the text they head. Use sledgers multi-length page fix to bring the FAQs into the main design theme.

Yes, I wasn't aware at the time that page lengths could be variable, so I was still considering what to do with the FAQ. At the moment it's a Word document saved as a htm.

Lastly the content. I think there's a dilemma. There's the hard-nosed approach - to try and frighten the reader with all the things that surely will go wrong if they don't use your services. For many readers it might make them too scared to continue reading (what you don't know, can't hurt you). An alternative approach would be to emphasize with the reader and explain how good they'd feel by using a service that will save them the pain if things should go wrong. For example, the copy could say something like "There's one thing about the people who use our services - they can sleep well at night knowing that their data is safe, no matter what happens." The panic stricken man image then becomes an image of someone sleeping soundly in their bed. You get the idea.

The "tone" of the message is something I've tossed back and forth in my mind for some time. In one aspect of my life I consult on security issues. My experience has been that, by and large, home and very-small-business users are fairly apathetic when it comes to security in general and backing up in particular. Most aren't going to be convinced they can sleep better because they're not worrying about it in the first place. The most effective technique that I've found for promoting action is example horror stories of people "just like them". Even then there is the problem of convincing them that these things don't only happen to other people. However you have a good point and I'll probably end up with two versions of the site and split-test between fright-night and feel-good.

Other things to do:

• Variable page lengths
• Reassess range of colors used
• Try to equalize column positions/widths on each page

I'll re-present when I've made some of the recommended changes.

if anyone else has any thoughts I'd be pleased to hear them.

[mightyfun]

I upgraded to X4 to use this tool, but have yet to figure out how it will help my website, or where it's even located.

I did all of my graphics in Xara and put it together in Yahoo Sitebuilder, my question is " Will Xara's new HTML help my website? " or "How am I supposed to use it with an existing website?".



Jen

[a4hire]

Jen, your web site looks very nice. Currently I don't think that xtreme will help you at all to improve the web site. Unless you are worried about having the site in CSS.

[steve.ledger]

, my question is " Will Xara's new HTML help my website? " or "How am I supposed to use it with an existing website?".

The answer really is that while Xara Xtreme can be a very useful website builder , it is not a website editor
Using all of your graphics you have created in Xtreme, you can re build the page (in Xtreme), add all the links you need within Xtreme and then export it to a new fresh build. Note that all the graphics will be exported along with the html, and be named differently to those you imported.

Xtreme is not a website editor for current sites built by other HTML software and neither will it even edit html sites exported by Xtreme. You can only edit the original saved .xar from which you exported *as* html, which often means that the entire site has to be re uploaded due to image names being changed.

[smoke133]

I've created my front page with xara. I have to fix the rest of my site now to match it. Great program. [link removed]

[Scotty]

hi Smoke133,
Just visited your website usient IE7 windowsXp and when firat entering the whole page shift to right side of browser 1024x768. But if you follow a link then hit home button everything is fine.
Jim