Car Hire site

[salaam]

Hi,
Please give me some critical feedback:
http://www.salaam.force9.co.uk/ultimate/
I had a lot of problems with colour, now it is very simply and white. I was trying out some online colour matching; complete disaster!!
Is it OK now?

Anas

[Intbel]

Clean and simple , like it. One negative: repetition:

"We also provide a dedicated, professional and personal service to all our clients.
An unrivalled quality of service based in the heart of England."

Twice on the same page and adjacent to each other ...

I take it the links are not supposed to be working yet?

[remi]

hm... Here comes my critical feedback:

1. It tooks a while before the menu is loaded.
2. I wouldn't recommend to use this animation near the menu.
3. It's a kind of personal flavour, but I wouldn't work with blinky menus.
4. I'm not able to click on the menu entries with the Firefox browser.
5. The logo would look more elegant, if you use a more decent 3D effect.
6. The text blocks needs more space between them.

I hope, you're not disappointed, but you ask for my opinion.

Regards,
Remi

[salaam]

Thanks Intbel,
4. No, this is the only page I've done so far and the text will be edited later by the customer using Xara modules.

Thanks Remi, very constructive. The animation was intially bigger. My client liked it but asked if I could add more detail. I wanted to scream but instead told him that I would reduce the size and add some lines over it to compensate.

6. I have spaced out the menu options and I think you're right, it looks better.
5. I had so much trouble with the 3D on the logo, I gave up. I may try improving it later.
1. Is it possible to add a 'loading...' "blinky" (sorry) using Swishmax?

Thanks again.
Anas

[Seagull]

Hi Anas

now it is very simply and white

Been a while now. The plain white work wonders with me. Clean and simple. Sometimes a nice grey also works as a background. I like the logo and your menu designs, I can really, really appreciate all the work that has gone into the animation, you did a fantastic job on it, but it does absolutly nothing for me on the page. Realize it's not your choice but tell the boss that instead of reading his add I my eye is just drawn to the animation. The other thing is the two columns of text, they work, they don't work mainly due to their different sizes. Maybe if the orange was the same size or they were spit apart by having the truck between them. But in my opion, good, simple design, fits perfectly on my screen resolution, but a bit slow on the download as Remi mentioned, probably a lot faster without the animation. Still, a great index page, congratulations.

I'll give you a small hint when checking your site. If you just reload it comes in so fast because of the cache that you over look it's size. So next time, push down on your shift button when reloading and it comes in as if it is the first time you've been on the site. I'm connect to high speed here and I counted to a slow 7 before it came in. If I was still on dial up I would probably be long gone before you page ever came in. Your page has to, has to come in under 15 seconds or you start loosing people. The longer it takes the more you loose. I have read this statement over and over and over again where ever you read an article on good web design. It's the menu and / or animation that may end up hurting you but again, it's the person that is paying you that gets the final decision regardless of all your good advice.............frank

[salaam]

really appreciate all the work that has gone into the animation, you did a fantastic job on it, but it does absolutly nothing for me on the page. Realize it's not your choice but tell the boss that instead of reading his add I my eye is just drawn to the animation. The other thing is the two columns of text, they work, they don't work mainly due to their different sizes. Maybe if the orange was the same size or they were spit apart by having the truck between them. But in my opion, good, simple design, fits perfectly on my screen resolution, but a bit slow on the download as Remi mentioned, probably a lot faster without the animation. Still, a great index page, congratulations.

Thanks for your input Frank, I agree about the text box sizes and have changed them to equal sizes. The animation was my idea and if the client continues being negative about it, I might burst into tears. I'm generally not too respectful of customer opinions, although I do try to please them but I have found few who really know what they want without contradicting themselves. Another problem that I have is that I can be a bit too precious with my work. I'm not a practical business man.

Anas

[Seagull]

Just checked your page and it is looking very good. If you drew the logo also you should be very proud of yourself" Everything comes in extreamly fast except for the menu, but the animation still draws my eye, probably because it is so well done I just want to stare at it, I envy you in your talent since I now have a very good idea what you must have gone through creating it in x3d.

As for being a practical business man, the only thing I have ever succeded at being is poor, but at least I'm relatively happy with what I am and where I am at at this stage of life. I figured long ago that since I don't have much money there is no point in trying to center my life around it as so many do.

Anyway, I was just looking at your source and I gather you do not use a wysiwyg program, but write all your html code by your self. If this is true, congratulations again on this. Personally I just use simple html on my site but am not good enough to do all by scratch, so use a simple html editor called siteaid. It doesn't even have it's own preview window but relies on msexplorer to do it's job for it. What this means is if you wish to create a site you do not sit in front of the computer and start doodling, but sit behind your desk with a pencil and paper and draw your site by hand, decideing where you want your images, your text boxes and decide and draw all the interlinking pages with a map of all the links. This last one can get messy since you will have arrows all over the pages; opps, clients just came dow so much run and start the breakfast.......frank

[salaam]

Anyway, I was just looking at your source and I gather you do not use a wysiwyg program, but write all your html code by your self. If this is true, congratulations again on this.

Thank Frank,
I am far too lazy to want to learn coding. I use shortcuts as much as I can:
Frontpage
Menu Maker
Xaraonline modules
etc.
I am happy to be considered a cowboy by the experienced and a master by the ignorant.

Anas

[juergen]

Morning,

I like the looks of the site too. Clean, fresh colors, balanced except for one item you seem to love )

The menu:
Firefox: Doesnt work at all. Dont know what percentage is using Firefox by now but even if its only 10%, you reduce the potential customer base by that number.
IE: With this browser you get asked to activate the control before being able to use it. No idea how many people turned that off, but those who didnt, cant use the menu too.
Cant check with Opera or Safari on this PC.

I personally would remove the animation as well. You only create a distraction from the links you want to be found and used easily.

If I dont forget, I will add the URL of a huuuuge collection of good looking menu examples later, where you can look at source and .css files.

In summary I like the looks except for the navigation part.

Juergen

[MarciaB]

Hello,
I like it too in whole, but I have nevertheless some suggestions.
I would have placed another colour 'block' at the bottom in the same soft orange as in the logo. You can put some text in it, like Ultimate Car Rental.com and Northants. This makes the page more compact.
See attachment.
Also I agree that the animation distracts the eye from what is really important.
But again, I like it. Especially the colours!