Completed Website

ncross · 18th September 2007, 02:21 PM

I have now completed my latest website:

Halls Gap Accommodation - Tree Tops Retreat

I would your comments regarding the design and how it can be improved.

I had already posted in the early stages of this project re. other questions but now I would appreciate your opinions re. it's design and functionality.

All of your comments will be gratefully received.

Thank you,

Nigel Cross

CrossDesign

percepts · 18th September 2007, 04:53 PM

personally I find the colour scheme a bit dull. Perhaps either a much darker green background which would make the content stand out better or much lighter, even white. Again the increased colour contrast would make the content stand out further.

Flash is great BUT only use it where it really adds something. The image gallery and maps work well in flash, but does the rest of the site really need to be in Flash? I don't think so.

Flash does not give you any benefits in terms of search engine indexing, especially when you have a lot of text buried in flash files. However, contrary to popular opinion, 100% flash sites can be well indexed but it depends on the competition. In your case, if you have the title and description written correctly, I think you should be OK with the seo. Search engines will be oblivious to the flash links and pages.

photo quality could be a bit better. Flash can ruin your photos if you let it size them. i.e. pre size images for flash and stop flash from resizing them otherwise they will look bad.

all in all its a nice little site. My main concern is the green background.

Oh and there is a little problem with scroll bars on IE6 W2K. sometimes there's some space between the scroll bar and window edge and other times not.

creativesp · 18th September 2007, 04:55 PM

nice lookin site - but have you tried it in IE7?

TygerTyger · 18th September 2007, 05:14 PM

Iv'e got the scrollbars on FF as well. Both inside frame and outside frame. I quite like the understatedness of it, but what stood out to me was that there was little consistency between the appearance of the first page and the other pages.

And be sure to use a contact form not an email link, don't want to introduce anyone new to spam heaven!

Vger · 18th September 2007, 05:35 PM

I like the site, except for two things:

1. I always expect the "Home" button to be at the top of a page and not the bottom.
2. If I stumbled across this site via a Search Engine I wouldn't have a clue what country this accommodation is in, not on the homepage anyway.

Vger

pursuit · 18th September 2007, 11:06 PM

could be better to add online booking function.

Terra · 19th September 2007, 09:37 AM

Site looks informative and has good info on the accomodation. A few points to resolve:
-> when I tested in 800x600 the top part of the site was cut off.
-> The name of the accomodation "Halls Gap Accomodation" looks quite small. A bit more branding would be nice to see.
-> The homepage & the flash pages look bolted together as if done by two separate designers .. any reason why you didn't do the whole site in flash?
-> "contact us" I would have expected a contact page (address, phone) not just an email link.

On the plus side, the map is very neat, there are plenty of photos.

percepts · 20th September 2007, 04:35 PM

And another thing...

when you use embeded fonts in flash, which is what you have done, flash strips the font down to a subset of the glyphs used in the font. It also doesn't pixel align your fonts with screen pixels when it renders them. This is not a problem when the point size is medium to large. However, for normal body text which is relatively small compared to titles and headings, it is a major problem because the font renders as fuzzy text which is very evident in your site.

There are 2 solutions, The first is to use system fonts in your movie which means you have to set the correct options in flash to use fonts on the users PC. The second is to use "Pixel fonts" and make sure they are pixel aligned in your movie. That way you get nice crisp small fonts in flash files.

google "pixel fonts" and you should find some free ones and look at:

Pixel Fonts and Super Pixel Fonts - Fonts For Flash - Download bitmap and free pixel flash fonts

which has a few free ones and some of the better pixel fonts for flash.

Note that pixel fonts are only used at one point size which is usually set as 8 point.
That doesn't mean they are all 8 point fonts. It means you get what you get so look at the fonts carefully on fonts for flash to see how big it looks before buying one as you cannot increase or decrease the font size.

Also note that pixel fonts are no use for flash movies which are resizable by the user. i.e. absolute sizing only for pixel fonts.

here's an example of a flash site using pixel fonts:

contemporary garden design surrey G4D Gardens contemporary garden design london surrey woking guildford south east uk

level18 · 21st September 2007, 08:46 AM

Very Nice Fast Loading, colours are a bit dull great photo slides did you use amara?

paul

ncross · 21st September 2007, 01:37 PM

I agree with most of the points raised and some of them had already crossed my mind.

In light of your comments I have altered the background colour to #905D48 & I have also increased the quality of the photos on the home page at the cost of a little more download time.

I'll keep you posted with what I change as I act upon your advise.

Thank you all for your constructive comments.

Regards

Nigel Cross

ncross · 26th September 2007, 04:44 AM

I have added a contact page from the home page as suggested by Terra.

In response to Percepts comments about low quality non-system fonts I have changed the "TreeTops Retreat" title on the home page. I kept the non-system font but used Flash to export the characters used. To do this highlight the text and change the text to dynamic and then in 'Character options' use 'auto fill' and it exports those characters used and should give a higher quality look to the text.

There are lots of other good suggestions which I am working through.

Nigel

corenominal · 2nd October 2007, 01:08 AM

Thought I'd chip in with my two cents.

Design wise, I really like it. It has a polished look and if I was in the market for such accommodation this site would definitely give me the confidence to book.

Technically, I'm not a big Flash fan and I'd ask the same as percepts, does the entire site really need to be offered up in Flash? Don't get me wrong, I think Flash is great at what it does best, but I'd never use it over HTML and CSS -- not unless absolutely necessary.

Other than that, great site!