Construction Website

A construction site created with Xara. Sliders and photo gallery are made from apycom software.

http://millercustombuilder.com

What a nice website!! You are him!!!

;)

What's all this silliness?
Are you seriously looking for some feedback/critique on your site or just here to fool around? :rolleyes:

The world does need a little silliness every now and again.

Please critique away, as it is what I am looking for.

One thing I am looking to fix is to optimize images. Example would be the big wood blocks on the top and bottom. They are in png format and when I optimize them the shading goes all to hell and just looks....bad.

I would love these two png's to be rendered right away, at least with the two wooden side bars that connect the top and bottom but this is not the case especially if you never visited the site before.



When I put the url in the search bar and hit images, it actually shows me the wood backgrounds!! Cant find other sites that do this so any way of optimizing these two png's.

Hi Iamhim you can optimize your images quite easily Utilities> optimize Photo

I did try that and that's when the shading started to get ugly.
Question: the image has to be in png to get the shading, right? I tried jpg format and it was even worse.
Right now I think the backgrounds ( the wood bg's) are being treated like a high quality photo. Ill try and let Xara optimize them again and see what happens.
Thanks for your input.

The timber panels have a drop shadow that uses alpha transparency. As JPG does not support transparencies, they remain as PNG which are generally much larger than JPG.
You may have to rethink your design, there's a lot going on there with no real sense of focus.

Ok. The site is sold already so there is not too much of rethinking my design, I just want it to render better. When you say no real sense of focus, do you mean It just looks like I threw a bunch of things together? Maybe to much?
Should I have not made the timber panels png? Please elaborate on the "no real sense of focus". I am all ears since I have been reading and taking advice from you and angelize for some time now, probably going on two years and you guys have helped a lot. Really. Thankyou. All the moderators here are very knowledgeable, especially with Xara.
Is there too much?

Quote:

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Is there too much?

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I mean this in the nicest possible way..
Your site is really cluttered and appears as though you've grabbed a bag full of ideas that you really like and thrown them all into the one site without any thought to how they will work together as a whole or where they fit best. There are black glow shadows and red glow shadows and white glow shadows, there is animation at the top and animation below on the home page both trying to grab the visitors attention (there's even snow on one page!), there are too many different font faces and way too many different font sizes, flat text and 3D text. There's G+ and Twitter graphics at the top and twitter again at the bottom, even a twitter feed on one page. There's a variety of facebook buttons or tiles all of different designs and/or sizes scattered all over the place. The red text on a blue envelope for the contact page hurts (it is a well known colour-mix no-no) There are flat objects, raised objects, 3D objects, at least two styles of popup galleries, solid colour backgrounds and textured backgrounds, rounded-rectangles and non-rounded rectangles - really there is no homogeny at all to this website. And google custom search on every page? What would I be searching for, there's barely any text that has any information about the site, it's all wiggly things, widgets and boxes of pictures..
The only thing I didn't find there is the kitchen sink! ;))

But hey you very likely had a great deal of fun building it and honestly, if you've sold the site and the client is satisfied then take everything I have said with a pinch of salt..
But you did ask. :)

I know what you mean and kinda knew thats what you were going to say. The client would always check out the site as its being develped saying 'it looks great, better than before' and when I finished or was close I would always ask "its not to much right?' Always answered with no no no its perfect. But I knew. They liked it so I didnt change anything. Even down to the dopey google search bar. (I didnt know this till I actually used the google search, but it only searches for things on the site. be useful for some site, just not this one)
Oh and the client did give me a picture of a kitchen sink, I just didnt put it in HAHA.

thanks for the input.

You're a Comic Sans Criminal

http://comicsanscriminal.com/

Life is not a contest to see how many distractions you can build into a website. :rolleyes:

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

The object of a good website is to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to find the information/content for which they have come to your site. There is no focus to your site. I don't know what I am supposed to look at because everything is screaming to get my attention.

Look at some of the websites that are created by member sketch (look in the Xara web gallery forum). These sites are clean, logically designed, easy to navigate and the content is easy to access.

This is not to say you have to design like this. But there is a simplicity and logic that make these sites user friendly and welcoming as opposed to a minefield of distractions.

And stop using Comic Sans.

No comic sans....check.

The only way I can think about fixing it would be to take out some of the attention getting things and replace them with some text content. I could use their flyer for some more text content i suppose.

Next one will definatelty be a cleaner design with less eye catching things and more informational things, like actual paragraphs lol.
thanks for the input

And do not stretch (or squash) photographs, such as you did with the images you used for the home-page banner! The houses look ill-proportioned now and that is not the showcasing of Mr. Miller's abilities you want.

Look here's the deal. Your client hired you to design a website. Lucky for you, you got a very accepting client who gave you free rein to do with the site as you wanted.

As any designer who earns her or his income from design will tell you, this is a rare gift. It means you have carte blanc to return the favor by doing the best design job you can.

Here's the reason why. This website is going to determine the kind of work you get in the future. If the site is beautifully designed and a joy to visit, and easy to navigate, you stand a very good chance of getting more jobs like this one. If the site you design is filled with gimcrack, people are going to assume that this is the best you can do and expect you to do the same.

Here is what I would advise. Tell your client that you are thrilled that he or she is happy with your design. But, you think that now that you have designed the website, that there are ways you can simplify the site and make it better. And you are offering to do this for free. Then design as clean and functional website as you are able to.

It might be the best investment of your own time you ever made. And if you pull off a miracle and design a really knock out site, your reward will be more business from clients who want to have a great website.

Just my dos centavos.

I just typed a hug reply and it didnt let me post. ugh. So i copied and re logged in, hit reply again and then paste... "fontsize" is what was pasted on the reply . Dont know what happened there. Anyway, thankyou for all your replies and I will be updating this site very soon, just have to talk to miller first and try and get content that for......mostly all the pages (text content i mean). I will get rid of a few sliders like the spinning slider on the home page and replace with text along with all other pages. You guys are right, there is really no textual content to explain things, from the home page, products page, contact page, and even the about us page.
Thanks for your input.

And getting rid of the google search also, if miller agrees.

And the picture squashing....yes I agree with you 'boy'. I will be fixing that also at edit time. thanks.

:-bd Well done, it's great to see someone who is receptive to friendly criticism about their work.

Sledger..........I concur with your in-depth evaluation of iamhim site. I am only a neophyte to XARA and know very little about it's particulars. What I do understand came from years ago at a seminar on correct publication on PC's. The main warning was not to use every font and variety offered by the software. Back then we all wanted to show off the entire font selections with all the bells and whistles. Some times the created page looked more like a salad of everything imaginable. Your so right that a few well chosen fonts and functionality makes a creation shine. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Loading up a website is like coming up to the front door of a business.
Choctaw