Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello Startup Nationoids,

Curious as to what you think of my website, http://www.precision-ar.com.  Simply designed without flash or java so as to be accessible to those still stuck with dial-up connections and/or antique computers. (like this 500MHz laptop)  I`d be interested to know how it appears to non-IE and FF browsers.

Thanks for looking.

Joe

Hi Joe,
Welcome/splash/intro pages have fallen out of favour in recent times ( i.e. refer to this article - http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/splash/ ), it is worth considering whether you should keep it or incorporate it into the main page of your site.

I like the `LED` menu/buttons at the top of the page - very cool! However it was not clear to me that I needed to click on the white button - I kept trying to click on the LED. The power on/off button is cool - but I am not sure what the purpose of it is?

If you get the top menu to display in one row that would help as well - it takes a fair amount of room.

Kind Regards,
Scott

Invoice Place - Invoices, quotes and receipts - free, fast and easy.

http://www.invoiceplace.com

Scott,

Thanks for the reply, and especially the document about spash pages.  The splash page was intended as an intermediate step between a static website, and a flash enabled animated website with more sights and sounds.  The splash page would give the surfer a choice between the original dialup static website pages, and something that would be flashy and require broadband. 

Given the statistics given in the document, I will definately reconsider this strategy.

The site was designed to look like stereo gear, and the buttons are actually pictures of the buttons on my personal stereo components.  The power button was included as a bit of humor, and serves no practical purpose, except that stereo gear always has a power button, so there it is.

Thanks!

Hi Joe,
The power button is very cool and indeed a talking point about the site! :) It`s refreshing to see humor in a business website - there seems to be this unwritten law that whoever can write the dryest site wins an award (a sour lolly perhaps?).

Yes worth considering about whether to keep the splash page, but I can understand why you had it there originally.

Regards,
Scott

Invoice Place - Invoices, quotes and receipts - free, fast and easy.

http://www.invoiceplace.com

My biggest concern before going through the site is the immediate intro page.  This was a website practice that has been shown to be an impediment to users attempting to access information on websites.

I`d literally "skip" this page and send visitors directly to your homepage.  Stay posted...I`ll try to jump back in with some more suggestions.

-------------------------

Brian Cleveland,
Web Producer,
StartupNation

Took a look at the website, very interesting business and I`m no expert at websites etc but i didn`t find the website very friendly or inviting.  After browsing around it made me never want to come back because of the color scheme.

Just thought I would share that with you...dont know if it helps, but good luck, i wish you great success.


-------------------------

Erik
www.usspin.com
www.unitedbusinessalliance.com

AudioPoobah... I too found the site to be less than inviting. I think colors are
one concern as noted by davenny. Also I would look into a more visually
compelling layout.

I think the service you provide is great. I hope to see it as a success.

-------------------------

Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words

I`ve gotta say (using FireFox 1.0) I didn`t like the Power LED button. It was funny, for about 1 second. Then I realized I couldn`t get out of the black screen without using the Back button. Why not put a "Standby" button in the middle of the screen that blinks? If I click that, I`m back to the Home page?

I recently ran across an interesting article about vision. which may explain why the site seems a bit unfriendly. Apparently (I haven`t authenticated each fact), typical field of vision is at about a 15-degree angle. We focus mostly on that field, and quickly fade to peripheral vision when there`s information outside that arc.

I`m using a 19" LCD panel and what struck me was how much work my eyes were doing to retain the text on the intro-splash page. (I agree that having a splash page is a waste of time.) From 2 feet away, I had to constantly shift back and forth to read what you`re selling. Eventually I processed it, seeing that you`re putting audio onto disks.

When I went to the next pages, the same sort of thing happened. I`ve been giving all this some serious thought, reading books, then contemplating which books are "easy to read" and "hard to read." What I`m coming up with, for my own site, is that I`ll probably have a 12-point font, thereabouts. But I`ll try to hold it to about 10-12 words per line.

On your home page you have in one line of text:

This works out to 29 words! By the time I get past the first 10, into the next, I`ve forgotten what I just read.

It`s a thought for you, at any rate. Other than that, the site runs fast, easy to understand, but I too wasn`t sure if I should click the white or green LED buttons. Maybe you could "gray" the button for the current page, and leave white the ones that should be clicked?

Thanks all for your input.

I`ve deleted the splash page and incorporated parts of it into the home (index) page. 

Some of the other suggestions, such as graying out buttons, require Javascript, which I`m not fluent in, so that will have to wait for when I have more time. (HA!)

Those who thought that the color scheme is bad: would it look better with a black brushed aluminum background?  I may have to try one page as an experiment. Making it look like stereo gear has it`s limitations.

Let me know what you think about the changes.

Joe

I like the gray background, and definitely the eliminated splash page! However, now the black text really has a strong contrast to the gray background. Being that most of that text is center-aligned in each table cell, the end result is a sort of "zig-zag" path pulling my eye. I`m going back and forth, back and forth, and it makes me confused and irritable.

I get the idea of varying the layout with text and images, but I think I`d rather see all the text on one side, and the images to their left or right. In this case, with the basic structure of the site, I think readability has to take priority over graphic layout. Particularly since there isn`t much "graphic" to work with. :-) My thoughts, at any rate.