Hello all! I designed a new oppening page for my web site. I'm a little worried about it. Is this just wrong for business? Some of my clients include Interior designers, Cabinet manufacturers, and Contractors.
Thanks for your help ~Todd~http://www.woodworkingresource.com
The Moulding link is not working....
Links is going to Contact
The design is very classy and the animation on the main page is nice. Though I really like the paper drawing background on the main page, unfortunately it makes the Script font hard to read.
Your fotos are all very clear and show the quality of the woodwork very well. But I am wondering if you could compress them a bit more without distortion as the load time was a little long for dial ups. I am on DSL and it loaded fine. I guess it just depends on your target audiance.
Overall, I think the design, choice of colours and graphics are very nice. Great Job!
Thanks MsPamela for getting back so quickly. I know there are links that need attending to. I favor a smaller font size to the larger, I think it makes for a cleaner appearence. But your right it is a little tough to see. The quality of the digitals are extremely important so my potential customers can see the detail in our wood components. Although I have had some loading issues in the past, this new home page is half the size of the one previous. The images in the sprite are 27 pixels/inch(jpg). Do you have any suggestions regarding file format that might make for faster loading, so that my friends that are still on dial-up wont get impatient.
Thanks again for all your help,
~Todd~
Two things that need attention. You have a very good balance of light and dark on the page, so remove the turned table leg that is just to the right of the menu on the home page, it is lighter than your parchment, which is what you are bringing attention to on that page.
Second, give the font on the parchment more weight, or increase the size so it is easier to read.
If you change the font completely, maybe use something on the architecht side of things, like a technical font that you would use on drawings or schematics, or use a casual font as if you were hand writing some technical details.
Thank you for your input. Your dead-on with that leg sugggestion. I'm going to replace it with something, or just replace the home page entirely,I just dont know yet. I need something a little more corporate looking for business, dont you agree?
I actually like your homepage, with a few tweaks, it could be perfect. I do not think that you need an entire redesign on the homepage, just make some adjustments, save the work you have done, and do not be afraid to rework some of what you have. It is pretty good, and very unique. I think the timing of the pic changes, and the overall look and feel are good for your woodworking theme - just fine tune it.
Keep me posted...if you have some ideas of what you want to change, post them here, and I am sure you will get feedback.
Ok here it is, the final draft of the home page. I added a little bit of flash (simple fades)to the Accents, and Custom pages. Do the pages load smoothly for you guys? I am a little worried about the pre-loader working properly.
Thanks again for all your help, Toddhttp://www.woodworkingresource.com
I actually liked the other design better.......but one thing I thought may help you is the logo. Your leaf was showing a bit of an edge and so I thought it may help you to see how to draw such a thing in SWiSH Max. I have included the SWI and the SWF in a zip file.
The "Molding" link is still not working.
The loading time is better. The design is very clean with the exception of the logo. :-) Nice job.
Hello MsPamela, How is the weather out there in Germany?
The leaf is a photo taken of a real one. Your right I didnt extract it correctly in photoshop. I will fix it. Fantastic job on drawing that leaf, and thank you for sharing that with me. I like this home page better because of the back-ground image. Architecture is something my clients will be familar with, and I think blue tones are easiest on the eyes when it comes to color on the web. Thanks again~Todd~
Looked at the new page. I have a couple of 3 comments on the design and then some suggestions on the direction you have taken.
Design Stuff-
First, design wise, I like the look and feel of the new page, I even like the way you staggered the menu to look like it falls in the spaces between the columns as you traverse down the length of the walkway. I can definetly see the effect you were going for, and it works.
Second, increase the weight or size of the font you are using for the menu. If you make changes to the menu so that you can actually see the menu items without straining it would be easier to navigate (particularly for the last two menu items.)
Third, if you mute out or reduce the alpha of your columnar walkway, you may be able to do more with the font layout, which would place more emphasis on your message.
Direction Stuff-
Though I think the design changes you made were good, you lost the uniqueness and style that I enjoyed so much in your initial design that I reveiwed a few weeks ago. I think that is what Ms Pamela was referring. When I think of someone who is going to perform contracting or woodworking tasks for me, I liked the idea of sketches and post-it notes and paper, what I call the old basics.
When I think woodworking I think wood, lathes, blades, pencils, jigsaws, sawdust and goggles,etc., and your new design reflects architecture, but not the closer feel and personal touch of the woodworking site you had before.
If it is the three dimensional depth you like of the new homepage, and you want to work more in that framework, grab your digital camera, go to your local lumberyard and take a few photos of the stacked lumber at different angles. If you frame your picture the right way, I am sure you can get the depth in your picture that you are looking for. You could also just refinish a lenghty section of stock wood you may already have, lay it or a few pieces on a worktable in the workshop and take photos along the length of your stock to get the depth in your photos. (I refer to your local lumberyard or wherever you currently buy your stock, since they know you and they may not mind you taking pictures because it will also be helping their business.)
Once you have your images the way you want them, I think you can use the same ideas that you used on your rework of the site, and bring those new ideas into the site you had posted last week with the parchment and the columns on the paper.
I think it would bring back the uniqueness and the warmth of your original design ideals that married your architecture and woodworking theme well with the new design ideas you used for depth.
The weather in Germany is great! About two weeks ago it was snowing but now the flowers are actually starting to bloom!
I see that you got the molding link working and it looks fine.
I understand your idea with the colours and agree they are very nice. I just liked the other one better. To each his own. :-) The drip of water was cool........ But then, Blue is my favorite colour and your site has a very clean look with it. Your fotos are extreemly clear and seem to load just fine now.
You have not yet cleaned up the graphic of the leaf though. :-) Oh, and you don't have to worry about the graphic you put under it....you can easily put the background graphic under the file I posted for you. You may find it easier to do your text and simple graphics in Swish and leave only your fotos to Photoshop.
MsPamela,
I really liked the other home page as well, and especially the drop effect I created in swishmax. I'm very proud of that effect.
But I think it may be flash thats hurting my ultimate goal, search engine optimization. I've been researching and have learned that flash sites do not resize, and search engine spiders tend to shy away from such sites. I have to develope a pure HTML version of the site.
Can pure HTML be saved in swishmax. I do not want to use my yahoo site builder to create the HTML version.
I am not sure what you mean by "flash sites do not resize" If you go to my website, which is made in SWiSH Palette Masters You will see that no matter what size you make your explorer window, the file resizes to fit..... also you will notice there is no scroll bar.
You may alter your HTML in SWiSH no problem, but you can not build a HTML site in SWiSH... this would be a bit of over kill I would think. Also, I don't think the issues that were around about Flash Sites a few years ago are the same today... I am not as savy as some of the others in this area but I do know that there are ways to address this issue of the search engines in SWiSH Max now.
I also liked that drop effect !!! That was really nice!
That hidden scroll bar effect is cool. Also I noticed you use it for some of your cients. I took a look at your source and tried to apply it to my page. (hope you dont mind). I could'nt get it to work, I think it would look great added to my site. Whats your secret? Todd.
Well I've got the page centered vertically perfect, witch is nice. But the scroll bar is still their. Also, now that I've changed to 100% values, I'm wondering if the page can now be viewed correctly on smaller screens (600-800). This is what I was reffering to in the post prior. Todd
Yes, if you take the corner of the window and drag the size to say half your screen you will see that the file will change with the window. :-)
Where did you place the script? It has to go at the top of your html file under
<html>
<head>
<title>Palette Masters Design</title>
<bgsound src="" loop=infinite>
A note on your worries about sites being indexed for search engines. If you encapsulate your site in html, meaning having some of your site in html, you can put all you need there to have your site indexed. I am actually going back to do some of that more efficiently with my own site.
I got this from another listing, and working on finding it to add to my list of hot topics. But there are many ways to show your html so that your site is indexed. I cannot take credit for the following idea, however the poor paraphrasing is mine.
Pretty much, if you make an html page with the same background color as your movie, and put text in it the same color as your background, the text is actually invisible to the visitor, but not to the search engines.
As I get more information on the subject, I will post it here and in an email to you.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. The site has been up for about 8 months now and still has not been indexed (or noticed)by the
search engines. I pasted my keywords onto the back-ground, behind the sprite as you suggested.
MsPamela
I'm still trying to figure out the hidden scroll bar effect. Thank you for your patience.
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