Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

We are a graphic and web design studio and we just launched our new website. It has been a long time coming as we got behind on our work mostly due to the birth of our daughter and taking on a little more than we could chew as we were trying to expand our web capabilities and services. The reasons behind the re-design was to update our portfolio (still in progress) with newer and better pieces, announce our new capabilities and services and give our site a new fresh look with more interactivity and functionality.  I am curious to see how it is received by the SUN community. Constructive criticism is certainly appreciated. What are your thoughts on the overall design/layout? Is it easy to navigate? Do you find yourself reading the text, or is it too much? Keep in mind some pages are still in production like the ecommerce, cms, and MLS search virtual tours and demos, but those are more sales pieces, and I`m looking to hear back on the overall impression of the site. Is it professional, trustworhy, etc.

We greatly appreciate your time, and will offer 10% off your next design project for any well constructed feedback.

Thank you!

Scott Lawrence and Bold Print Design Team.
www.boldprintdesign.com

Over 40 people have reviewed my original post, and nobody has commented on the site. I wonder if it`s because we are web designers and people are intimidated about leaving feedback? There are plenty of sites that we will submit our site to to get feedback from expert website critics. What I am looking for is a response from what would be potential clients. I am wondering how our site is perceived by other business owners that could be in the market for graphic design services. Not in the market for design services? That`s ok, hypothetically, if you were and you found our site, what are your impressions? Do you like what you see and feel confident in our services enough to contact us? If not, what would you need to see in order to fill out our quote request form or contact us?

www.boldprintdesign.com

I`ll throw out another offer, if you review our site and leave constructive criticism, we`ll give your site a professional review and offer a few things you can do to make it more effective.

Thank you for your time!

Scott Lawrence

Overall, I like the look and feel of it .... the accordian menu on the left is a really nice touch ... the graphics are nice and clear ....

To me, the main problem is the fonts .... overall the white and gold font is a bit small for my liking, the white seems to "glare" a little with the background, and the gold could be a hair lighter .... just personal preferences of mine ....

I like the Meet the Team page, as it helps make your business a little more personable ...

All in all, you provide a lot of information without looking cluttered and confused .... nice work ....



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

M Hall,

Thanks for the feedback. The size of our font has certainly been an inner office debate. I see what you`re saying concerning the coloring too, it`s something we`ll have to take another look at again after we fill some holes.

I read through your site. I`m intrigued by your business model. I like the community approach. It is certainly a targeted niche and will hopefully establish your business as the expert in the community which will certainly give you a lot of credibility and exposure. Be sure to take advantage of the PR opportunities.

Best,

Scott

Hi Scott :-)
I use FireFox 1.x, partly because I also use Win98, and partly because I haven`t yet got around to upgrading to 2.x. I can`t use 3.x because it only works on XP and so on.

In FF 1x, everything is in a single column going down. In IE 6.x, it looks the way you intended. I`m not sure what the various market shares are, but thought I`d at least mention the need for a newer browser. Everyone has their own philosophy on how far back to go for compatibility.

What bothers me, looking at the site properly, is that it isn`t easy to get your sales pitch. Everything looks very nice, but there isn`t an immediate sense of "here`s what we do, and here`s how it`ll improve your life." It`s that part about improving my life that matters---the offer, and "what`s in it for me."

One example is under your Specialty Markets Served, you`ve got a sort of brownish font over a gray background, and that makes it low contrast, hard to read. Then, when I hover over each link they turn maroon and disappear. That`s not elegant, particularly for a graphics design company, right?

On the portfolio, I`m with Webline....what a cool concept!! Very Awesome!

Looking through the portfolio, I`m pondering some of the main topics and questions we have, here on SuN regarding graphics design. People want logos, flyers, Web page and site layouts, and business cards.

In the corporate world, there`s the need for across-the-board graphics. Could you offer two "customer journeys," one for large corporations, the other for small business owners? Again, the key would be "here`s what`s in it for YOU!" both visually, and in text.

Right now you`re leading off with:

So? It`s so "blah," if you see what I mean. How have you improved these things? Could you do a "before-after" kind of comparison for visuals? (Also, "many various industries" is redundant.)

What I`m thinking is that you could brainstorm some sort of tag-line as part of your new marketing strategy and plan. Develop a "theme" for that marketing, then build on it across all of your site pages. What`s the 1 main thing you want to sell?

Craig,

Thank you for your response. I especially appreciate the comments on the overall sales pitch and copy of the site as we are web developers, not copywriters, so this is the area that we are unsure about.

The different browsers are driving us crazy. I checked our stats and saw that in the month of November we only have about 200 hits from FF 1.x which comes in at 0% of our activity from browsers. However we don`t want to turn anyone away. If you are using it, so are others so we will look into this. IE 6 is more of a concern because it is actually not rendering how we want it to, and 50% of IE users are using 6. We have put some band aids in place that at least make it presentable. For instance, the accordian on the home page is expanded out and not functioning. That`s the services text down the left side. Its all supposed to collapse and when you click on a headline it opens up. That shortens the home page, greatly decreasing most of the scrolling. Also, the portfolio overview page is screwy in IE 6. Can`t all browsers just get along?

I`m not sure if you went into our actual portfolio or if you stopped at the overview page, but there it does demonstrate that we do single projects like logos, business cads, brochures etc for the small business. Your comment is a good one and we`ll probably go ahead and include a slide or two in the slide show about solutions for small business etc.

Our tagline is "If you want to stand out... Use Bold Print" I know the entrance text on our homepage is blah. I already have new text written there, just haven`t put it in yet.

Craig, thanks for your time reviewing our site. We greatly appreciate the feedback as we finetune our site.

Best!

Scott

Scott,
I did view both the home page and the portfolio page. I didn`t see your tag line, so perhaps that could be better highlighted. It`s a good one.

On the FireFox issue, don`t think about compatibility with 1.x, as I`m probably one of five people left using it. LOL! I`ll upgrade soon to 2.x, and hopefully that`ll work.

I didn`t catch this earlier, but that`s not what you should be seeing. I know now what you`re seeing with the gray background and brownish font. It should be a green background with either a white or soft yellow font. I have IE6 as well and see the green background, not gray. Would you happen to know what version of IE6 you use?

Thanks,

Scott

I`m using IE 6.0.2800 on Win 98SE
Definitely gray background with tan text on view, with dark maroon on hover.

Send me a private message with an email address, and I`ll send you a screen capture image attachment if you`d like.