Hello, So i got this site: http://www.philapcrepair.com . I'd like to hear your input on design, layout etc. I welcome and suggestions on how to improve the site. Thanks
Just to warn you, I can be a little harsh because I won't sugar coat it, I'm going to tell you EXACTLY what I see instead of slapping the rose coloured glasses on your head. Fixed metric fonts are an accessibility /FAIL/ - or should I say what few elements you have on the page that are ACTUALLY text. WAY too many static images for textual elements which is why search engines and images off users end up with nothing to look at. The use of yellow and white text that's showing through to the body background (if that darker area is supposed to stretch to it's content, it's failing) is effectively illegible so it also fails on accessibility grounds for that reason. From a layout perspective it kind-of feels like all the content is just thrown in there any old way giving it the same feel as many of your fly-by-night PDF download websites, If as a casual browser I came across this page from a search result, I'd probably 'bounce' as soon as I hit. Your giant mess of god knows what the **** links at the bottom is pretty much guaranteed to get you slapped down for abuse by Google on redundant content grounds and keyword stuffing... which immediately makes one wonder how it's doing under the hood... First we look at some filesizes - first thing I always look at is how much HTML is there compared to the amount of actual text on the page; the so called 'code to content ratio'. For HTML anything more than 3 to 1 is probably complete trash - since you have 16k of text (about twice what it should be thanks to those stuffed links) and 109k of HTML, the page's markup is most likely non-semantic, overcomplicated, and unnecessarily redundant... and that's without my even hitting view-source yet. Next to throw the validator at it - and I really have to congratulate you - I've have never seen a website that has more validation errors than it does lines of code! I am well known for saying that if you have invalid markup you do not have HTML, you have gibberish - but usually I say that for sites with 40, 50, 100, maybe as many as 300 errors; I have NEVER seen a website before break the thousand mark... It's no surprise it takes almost a minute for the validator to even TRY to come up with an error count. 1144 Errors That's just... wow. Taking an actual look inside, we see images for text content, endless outdated techniques like spacer div's, the same ID's being used more than once, tags like CENTER and FONT which have no place in modern markup, hordes of unnecessary DIV around damned near EVERYTHING, title attributes on anchors redundant or even contrary to the content of said anchors, script based podcast embed that appears to be broken (probably why I don't see a flash embed working anywhere on the page), copypasta from libraries that never worked right in the first place (like craftylive), Multiple H1's (you should only have one), abuse of h1's and heading tags in general which will probably ALSO get the site slapped down by the search engines, invalid table structures, tables for layout, absolute URL's for no good reason, HTML 3.2 in a XHTML doctype... I could go on for HOURS. Now, I know I say "Throw it out and start over" a whole lot, but this one REALLY takes the prize in that regard - there is NOTHING from that page even worth TRYING to salvage.
Holly crap! Yea work on validating the source code then post back.. I have never seen so many errors on a single static page. But don't be that discouraged, it would be you simply forgot to end a table or containing div or forgot the "" around something and it messed with everything on the page... or something idk check it out.
deathshadow hit the hammer on the head...I'd rather see you use a standards compliant template and edit the content. They're all over the web...find one, run it through the validator, and then change your content.
thanks for your replies. I've seen this site so many times that it is hard for me to judge it. I'd like to hear more about design, rather than code. what's the first thing that runs through your mind when you see it, is it likable?
It's about as likeable as the code. Fixed metric fonts are an accessibility /FAIL/, it switches font sizes so often you'd think it was written by five separate web designers who some third party then hodge-podged together... The general layout is a confusing blob with zero consistency of formatting, the artifacting on the images used for text is at unacceptable levels making it look like the old 'fast' mode of Netzero, the inconsistent padding on the menu looking amaturish (even more unforgivable since those too are images), the lack of hovers on most of the navigation elements doesn't make it clear what's a link and what isn't, as already mentioned what I'm ASSUMING is a broken layout where the yellow text ends up over the body background grey; something effectively illegible... and the language used on the page is somewhat painful - as in Engrish moist goodry. It's about as good from a design perspective as it is from a coding perspective; My advice to the owner would be to throw it out and start over.
I thought there was too much on the front page and the font is too small and the wrong color to be easily read.
I actually think it looks ok. From a front end perspective, your images all seem to be "low quality" when you rendered them. High quality, sharp images will make your site look MUCH better!