On 12 Nov 2004, at 12:33, Laurie Keith wrote:
If any of you busy people have a spare 15 minutes, can you give me an
honest
evaluation on our new corporate web site.
15 minutes spent so here goes:
http://www.createwith.com
http://with.shunuk.co.uk
It is just a simple mock-up but I wanted to show you the point which
Susan, Sam and Veine have made. It truly is that easy to create
something like this.
Veine made the point that it lacks graphics. Whilst I partially agree,
I don't think this is your main concern. The content is really your key
here and you should be presenting it in the best way possible. I'm not
saying you shouldn't ever use flash, but use it when needs require.
Flash shouldn't be needed for a website navigation system or even for
text content.
Branding is always a corporate issue. The company i work for also chose
a minimalist design so don't be frightened of those plain white
web-sites they really do work. Our main company web-site and stationary
received praise for having courage to accept that minimalist designs
can be visually stunning and aesthetically pleasing.
<title ID="title">
with™ : people who create business effective communication
with you
</title>
This (taken from your source code) needs trimming down, and ID="title"
removed.
To return back to the point about flash. I notice you are loading a lot
of external flash anyway. This should be easily integrated into an
ordinary page with alternative content available. The maps are a nice
touch. Alternative content could be something as simple as a link to
the multimap page with the same map.
I agree with Susan with regards to the about page being the main entry.
Whilst it is handy to offer some information _about_ the company, what
is needed is some real content to interest the visitor and give them a
general overview of what you really do. Plus, marquespeak doesn't
always gel with people. "Deliver business effective communication"
sounds delicious but I had to think thrice to understand it. I'm not
saying "pretend you're writing for a nursery class" but take
consideration that not everyone understands it. To go to the extreme,
dyslexia is a language difficulty which isn't actually a
"thick-persons-disease" (my esteemed friend is a terrible dyslexic but
he has a BA (hons), MA and is now heading off to be political) but
appears in many walks of life. In tech-speak what i just said was,
"don't shullbit a shullbitter".
I'd comment more but I'm sure there are others who will offer other
tidbits of info.
--
Paul Connolley
SQL/Systems Programmer
Egocentric - http://egocentric.co.uk
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