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My landlords are olive oil producers and asked if I could put a site up for them as they are exporting small boutique style olive oil bottles to Japan and they needed a web presence. I might have knocked this one up a little too quickly and may have missed some things, so any suggestions and criticisms are appreciated. www.australianoliveoilcompany.com.au
I will be back in 10 days (heading to the other side of Oz) so will make any suggested changes when I return. Thanks. Abi
That's a very nice site Abi, I like the slideshows you do on your sites. Beautiful photos.
Beautiful site, really good colours and the photos are stunning, really well done. And you are so lucky to have your workplace at an olive grove.
Very nice site! Love the colors and layout. Gorgeous photos too! A+
I like the site generally, but I don't think that the colour pallette matches the product - light olive oil and a dark, heavy background.
If your client needs a web presence because of the Japanese market, why isn't the site also in Japanese?
Paul
Thanks everyone for your comments. With regard to the dark background, that was at the request of my landlords. Below is the original website I made them, with the colours reflecting the olives, and the olive oil (I optimised the photos to reduce the size of the file to upload onto the forum, so pics are a bit pixelated). They wanted the site to be different from the one I made - larger, and dark so I made a new one which they are delighted with (although I think the first one was nicer - just needed a bit of tweaking with the layout). With regards to it being in Japanese, they did not have the $2,105 spare to pay for a Japanese translator to translate the website, and using an online translation tool does a very bad job, so the site is only in English. They have been selling in Japan for 4 years, but have not ever had a website.
Attachment 87242Attachment 87242
Thanks for the info. I'd probably have been heading to a more golden theme, to reflect the lightness of the oil and perhaps try and check out some japanese sites to get some cultural references. We'd have had a bit of an arm-wrestle about it!Quote:
Originally Posted by Abikadabra
Perhaps a Japanese student could have done the translation for a substantial discount!
I know from my own experience in Europe that taking the time to try and adapt to the local culture and language helps no end. I would think it's even more the case for Japan.
The customer is king, so great job!
Beautiful work Abi.
Paul, I think the dark is rich and tasty. Even if the oil is not.
Yes, but now I'm thinking about coffee or dark chocolate.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwpriester
I'm using a screen resolution of 1600 x 900 on my laptop and the content of the website is all below the fold. I think that's too much, having to scroll down to see even a single line of text.
I too think the colours are too dark. By all means use the colour of olives as a contrast, but I think to use it as your base colour is too dark. It's a mechanical, industrial colour and , for me anyway, doesn't invoke the wholesome, sun-drenched feeling of olive trees in full fruit.
Hi Big Frank. I agree with you, the colours do not invoke the feeling of olives, but as Paul said 'the customer is king'. As you can see from my first site for them, the whole site is in the various colours of olives but they didn't like that. They had seen a site they liked on the net and they wanted those colours, and similar format. They originally wanted the site to be black, but I advised them against that, so we compromised. They also wanted the visitor to land on the page and see all pictures rather than text. Its sounds like your laptop has the same colour resolution as my laptop and that you are getting a black background and shades of grey (hence 'a mechanical, industrial colour). The site actually has a very deep green background, deep olive page background and the text panels used on a couple of the pages are in a deep olive green. On my laptop they are a deep grey, and so is the page background, whilst the site background is black. On my apple they are different colours again. I guess it doesnt matter how you create the site, the colours will never look the same on many computers.
It's your responsibility as the designer to point these things out to the customer and, if all possible, show them examples of web developer discussion to demonstrate that their personal preferences come second to what is best for the site. Some you will win, some you will lose, that's the nature of customers :thx
Always remember that the customer is paying. I will always suggest the right thing to do to a customer in regard to the website design and give reasons, you can't just say use this colour or that colour, explain why and if you can do that and explain that it will benefit the look and therefore business then the customer should come around. When it comes to the design of a website the personal tastes of the customer or the designer should not dictate the look of the site but the end-user.
It's not about personal tastes at all, or the end-users likes or dislikes.Quote:
Originally Posted by skech
All web-sites have a purpose. Sometimes it's to facilitate some kind of service, sometimes it's to sell, sometimes to inform, sometimes to amuse or entertain - a whole host of reasons, and maybe more than one reason at a time - such as entertaining a user and educating them at the same time.
For sales, I think it's a question of motivating the visitor to see the product or products in a positive way and motivate them to purchase. My comments about the colour pallete aren't based on a whim, they are intended to reinforce the positive perception of the product - a natural golden light liquid, grown in sunshine. The suggestion was simply about promoting the positive aspects of the product in the users mind - suggesting lightness and purity of the product with a lighter pallete reflecting something of the natural golden colour of the product.
As Frank has said, explaining the reasons for the colour pallete choice is important and if the client doesn't agree, so be it, but often the client may choose on the basis of a personal preference, not a reasoned decision, probably because they don't understand the reason for choosing a particular pallette.
You can see that with some TV advertising, companies go out of the way to get the general colour pallette seen on screen to match the colours of the product. My suggestion is no differrent.
Yes, like I said the end-user is the important person whenever you design something, everything in whichever form of design, be it the 2-d world of print or the web to packaging and product design is there to appeal to the end-user, to entice them into buying it, I for instance don't mind having dark colours for a landscaping company but good design (for the purposes of attracting the end-user at least) dictate that you have predominantly various shades of green, therefore I will design something for the eyes of the end user. You suggest having olive colours is because you are the end-user in the sense that you have formed an opinion about the site just from the colour, as your rightly should. If you read between the lines in my post you will realise that I am agreeing with you. You seem to be taking the fact that some posters have said that they don't mind the darker colour as a personal attack on you saying that you think a lighter more olive colour is better (again I agree with you) When you say "All websites have a purpose" you are right, and that purpose is to sell something or provide information to the end-user, therefore it is about the end-users.
In an ideal world one designs for the end user, but when all is said and done, it doesn't matter what the designer advises the client has the final word. As you can see from my attachment on the previous page, the first site was designed to evoke the feeling of olives. The client originally liked the site and it was uploaded for about 2 months, and then they saw another site they liked (for a restaurant) and they wanted the same colours...and a new design to boot. I advised my landlords against the darker colours (generally I prefer a lighter or brighter palette myself) but they persisted and as they are the client I have a responsibility to do what the client wants, not what I feel is more appropriate. They are thrilled with the site, as are their Japanese agents, and the site has generated them business. What I preferred in terms of the site is irrelevant when the end result is what the client wanted.
That never entered my mind. I'm startled that you think my comments on the subject suggest that is the case.Quote:
Originally Posted by skech
May I refer to my earlier post: The customer is king, so great job!.Quote:
Originally Posted by Abikadabra
We're just having a friendly discussion about colours and the importance of trying to educate the customer regardless of whether they accept the advice or not.
Yesterday I attended a lecture given by a well known web designer. His lecture was mainly about designing for future technology. He said the whole concept of designing above the fold is null and void and that designers should be designing with pictures and not with text. He stated that the modern user is browsing with newer technology and is speed browsing, garnering information from a site in seconds rather than in minutes. In 2009 the average time a visitor spent browsing a website was 3 minutes and 42 seconds. It is now half that. Apparently visitors want to get an overall picture of what you do, how they can obtain what you do, and how they can contact you. They are not interested in spending time reading stuff on your site. The lecturer said that we should continue to use text for SEO purposes, but be aware that text used is not necessarily information the site visitor wants. He said the speed browser will whisk over the site garnering the information they feel they need, so it is important to design for this new breed of browsers. As many visitors will access your site on the run (in the car, on the bus, in their lunch break, at an appointment etc) you need to design with big pictures, and each picture should have a linking function, even if it is just to take the browser to the contact or about us page. He mentioned that speed browsers like to touch everything and see that thing expand or link to somewhere else.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Frank
One thing he said that I felt was quite interesting was that he said too many sites are way to big. He gave the example of website designers. He mentioned that WS designers have a tendency to "lecture" to people on their websites and that they stuff their sites full of 'articles' and informative resources in the belief that this is appropriate and effective SEO for google, and that visitors will consider this wonderful information to be so valuable that they will be grateful to the designer and decide to get him to make their website. He said e-commerce sites are possibly twice as large as they need to be, and that it is ludicrous to think that visitors to the site will actually read more than 2 pages. He said he personally gets frustrated by all the small print navigation bars that not only run along the top of the site, but also down the side, and he expressed that navigation bars are difficult to navigate on iphones and that we should abandon the navigation bar.
He summarised by saying design sites so that they are picture rich, not text rich, use big pictures, make sure every picture can be touched and linked to somewhere else that has significance to the visitor, the fold is null and void, and throw away the navigation bar as it no longer has a place in new technology.
I actually like nav bars, and I personally spend about 5 minutes on each site I visit, but speaking with my sons and their friends last night about the lecture, they agreed with the web designer. They are avid iphone users and access websites mainly from their phones. They said they only spend enough time on a site to get an overall picture of what is going on, they get the contact info, and that's all. They said they will stay on a site if the site looks appealing, but most importantly they will stay on the site if they can move around it easily, for example by touching pictures or large text panels to navigate on the site. They said they leave a site if they need to expand a nav bar to be able to read it, and they felt nav bars and subsequent menus are too fiddly to mess around with on their phones. They said they prefer text to be in point form, and they want the text to get straight to the crux of what the site is about. They agreed with the lecturer that big pictures that tell the story immediately entice them to stay on a site. Interestingly, they said they found sites designed for mobile phones to be a bit boring. They preferred sites designed for PCs that do not have nav bars, but also designed with touch-users in mind. They are not interested in slideshows or moving text or anything too fancy on a site. My sons and their friends are in their twenties and early thirties, and this is the demographic that the designer said we should be aiming to please as they are the biggest consumers on the planet and are probably our clients.
I would be interested to hear from others on this subject, and Frances if you think this should be moved elsewhere please feel free to pop it wherever you feel is more appropriate.
Haha! Yes I am aware of that Paul. I am not in the least bit miffed by any of the discussion. I think it is interesting. It is funny how the feeling of the words that we write can be interpreted in different ways by different people. I was just putting in my two bobs worth into the discussion and am not at all offended by any of the comments relating to the site. Being new to this biz, I find any advice invaluable and I appreciate it immensley.Quote:
Originally Posted by pauland
Who was it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Abikadabra
I think a lot of what was said is quite relevant - the move to mobile platforms is changing interactions greatly, though the vast majority of people aren't there yet.
I think the "Above the fold" advice is premature - I suspect it's related more to the notion that page interactions are changing - if you have a tablet you will be used to flicking to a new page or section and drilling down to get more detailed information. The tablet browsing experience is quite differrent to that of the desktop and I expect that browsing experience to migrate. Windows 8 will push that kind of interface. Touch interfaces require large controls not fiddly interfaces requiring precision.
I think the "above the fold" advice is going to be relevant always, though the fold in question may be differrent to what it is today ( for example, tablet web pages just need a flick to move to new content, that is far easier than scrolling with a mouse, so it's easier to access secondary content, but still the content we see initially ("above the fold") is always going to be the primary initial focus.
Things are changing fast.
There is an excellent intro to web design in the beautifully produced book, also entitled "Above the fold" by Brian Miller.
Done :) I have copied Abi's post into a new thread in the Xara Web design forum. You can now continue discussing this in the web design forum. Designing for Future TechnologyQuote:
I would be interested to hear from others on this subject, and Frances if you think this should be moved elsewhere please feel free to pop it wherever you feel is more appropriate.
Of course any further comments or constructive critiques for Abi regarding her site are still more than welcome here.
Graham Someone.... I will find out his surname for you next week. He is English but lives in Victoria in Australia. He designs mainly for clothing designers and artists and musicians. He was invited to speak to our class (we are all newbies) whilst he was visiting Perth on business. He was very passionate about his profession, but also very critical. For example, he kept talking about how the pomposity of design and designers ego continually gets in the way of the end result, and that web designers need to listen more to their clients requests, but more importantly, he insisted that older designers (and he is one of them, possibly late 60s) needed to keep abreast of future technology and design predictive websites that cater for this. All the young ones in the class were savvy to what he was talking about and the lecture was very dynamic and interactive. I listened and took notes, but didn't feel I could contribute very much as I don't know very much!
well that answers my question anywayQuote:
Originally Posted by Abikadabra
Haha! He spoke of the pomposity of design and designers ego, but I must have missed the bit about web designers snobbery .....:confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Frank
95%, maybe more, who knows, of web designers do NOT design for the "clothing designers and artists and musicians" market, they design for a far more mundane market, requiring a totally different set of guidelines. I don't mind that you call me a snob, I admit it whole-heartedly, proudly and with my hand firmly grasping my wallet, but I would mind if you put me in the same bag as the pompous gasbag that lectured to you.
:D
Frank, you are a breath of fresh air, not afraid to call a spade a shovel.
Bob.
You are too, Bob, as you well know. It's simply that you are less precipitous than I am. I have an exceptionally large mouth made-to-measure for the foot that invariably finds a home there. ;)
Ahem... you fellas are getting off topic here. Does anyone have any more comments or suggestions for Abi, regarding the site?
speaking purely as a user I really like that site - and I think the colour scheme is good and on my monitor very legible more than some with dark backgrounds...
as far as the lecture goes, well I personally am turned off by just pictures or flash movies above the fold- and you know why - because I am in a hurry most of the time and I cannot be bothered to scroll around or wait for a flash to load unless I know its going to be worth it - but then I don't use an ipad - art doesn't look as good on an ipad whichever way you look at it, as on a 23inch
frank - just make sure its always your foot.........:D