Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi fellow SUNies,
I am submitting this web site for ratings, I want as much input good or bad. The company that I designed this web site for is getting ready to advertise, and put thousands of dollars in marketing into their web site. Please help me find glitches and bugs if applicable

http://www.catanoinsurance.net

I would appreciate it

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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Edgar,

My 2 cents worth.  Lose the flash intro... this was meant to be an ecommerce site so get to the point.  Don`t make the surfers wait to see content or you will lose them.  The Audi image on the top is not clear... I think it should be because it`s in the header.

For the contract form and online quote form, you might want to put brute force security code on the bottom before the submit button so that bot and scripts will not auto send you empty junk forms.




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Peter Nguyen Founder 2Keene Ventures, LLC. www.premiersaver.com "Even heaven has a rainy day"

?? Contract form? What is brute force security code? Do you mean loose the flash or put a skip intro button? What is a Junk form?

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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Sorry.  Contact form. 
Brute force code is the random codes that shows up and users have to enter it before they can submit the form.  If this is not use, bots that scans the sites will auto submit the empty forms.
Does that make sense?


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Peter Nguyen Founder 2Keene Ventures, LLC. www.premiersaver.com "Even heaven has a rainy day"

Oh the Fuzzy Letters that you have to try to decipher? I was actually going to put it but the client didn`t want it on there, I might just tell them the purpose of it and we`ll take it from there but thanks.

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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Hey Edgar,

I didn`t see the whatever the intro is because i was looking at another screen, but I like the home page. 

• I like the three images moving, something I haven`t seen before.
• There are some serious capitalization issues.  You really need someone good at English to go over your site for grammar.  That failure to pay attention to details will turn me off from a company.
• Ditto the Audi needs to be focused.
• To me the red text in "we`ve got you covered" doesn`t go.  Red with the gold and black isn`t doing it.
• Throughout the site, come up with a consistent text color theme.  What`s going on with the blue, red, brown, black and gold text??  Too much!  Stay consistent.
• I like the fact that I don`t have to scroll, that it all fits in one screen shot.
• Like the drop down menus, I`m a huge fan of those.

Overall, I like the site and think it looks professional.  Easily navigated.  Just tweak a couple little things and you`ll be good to go :)

Diana

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"Whether you think you can or you think you can`t, you`re right."
paraphrased Henry Ford

Grits, you keep beating me to the punch - I can`t take the red text on gold background - change the background or change the font when a user hovers over a link.

On the homepage, the black area on the left side is completely wasted - I see that this is used for content on sub-pages, but you should consider using it in some way on the home page, or break out of the template for the homepage.

The bulleted list doesn`t look good either - offset them perhaps, ditch the bullets, something different there.

There must be an easy option to turn off the music - I`d leave the site immediately just because there`s not a simple way to do so.

The `services` and `about us` drop downs - there are some usability issues with those - you can`t click on the links that spawn the drop-downs (common practice is to allow the user to click on those to access the first option in the drop-down); there`s no visual change in the arrows next to them when the drop-down opens.

That`s where I`d start - I`m going to have that drum beat in my head all day.


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chuck fuller

Did anyone say this?
I think you need to allow someone to click through the opening flash animation. At least I didn`t see a way to do that.
I do like the whole layout. Very snazzy and professional. And it loads quick.
Once again... this may have been covered. The home page copy should be more dynamic... It`s repetitive.
Are you currently in the market looking to switch your current Insurance provider

If you tighten up those few things and listen to some other comments... I think you have a winner.

Matt

 

I, too, was looking for the skip intro button.  But then I realized that the flash thing isn`t a movie of any sort, it`s just an animated logo?  I`m wondering if that could be imbedded in the homepage or something, a little smaller and faster, and it wouldn`t be something people want to skip.  It`d be more like those little animated logos you see pop up on television channels these days. 

I like the animation of the 3 moving pictures, but the vertical line going back and forth across the "serving our community" part was distracting.    It was sort of like that "spotlight across the sky" thing that you sometimes see in real life, but not enough to make it leap out at me, you know?

Wait a sec...did you disable the back button?  Is this whole site one big ColdFusion app?  I got a 404 on one of the links and I`m just realizing that the browser is not refreshing. so I can`t say what URL gave me the problem.  I think that if you`re playing tricks with the page refresh, the search engines are going to be very bad to you.  Explicit URLs are a central part of good SEO.  Not to mention people bookmarking your site.

Maybe make the little arrows next to Services and About Us point down, to signify that there`s a dropdown menu there.  With them pointing sideways it looks like you`re expected to read them and then move to the next one, or something.

I would just say "FAQ", since the plural of "questions" is assumed with the Q.  No need for FAQ`s.

Some of the lefthand nav bar images I like, but the one on the customer service page looks a little alien.

Your Mission Statement link right now appears very broken -- I just see a nav bar, no page.

Overall I like the style, and the professionalism of the design.  I think most of what I just listed above is personal opinion and not anything specifically wrong.  Except for the broken link :).

D



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Personal: http://www.morinfamily.com/blog
Geeky: http://duanesbrain.blogspot.com
Shakespeare: http://suchshakespearestuff.blogspot.com

Sorry, ignore what I said about the 404 and the ColdFusion app.  I think my browser was having a mental breakdown.  I go back to the site now after a full reboot, and I see a new page URL for every link.

d



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Personal: http://www.morinfamily.com/blog
Geeky: http://duanesbrain.blogspot.com
Shakespeare: http://suchshakespearestuff.blogspot.com