Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi everyone,

First of all, I want to say thank you to all of you SuN members for keeping this site alive. I love community and podcasts.

GetVive is a web development and branding company located in Brick, New Jersey. All information about us can be found on our website (http://www.getvive.com/) so it doesn`t make sense to copy it here. Please take some time, review it and tell me what you think. Every little piece is important - graphic design, code, SEO, hosting performance etc.

WEBSITE ADDRESS: http://www.getvive.com/

I really appreciate your help. Thank you in advance.

Tomasz Banas


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GetVive.com
"You Know You Want It"

I think your site did nothing to capture my interest.

I also think it loads slowly.

The guy`s head getting blurred out at the top kind of freaks me out.

Banaro,

Overall I thought the site was above average. Blue is always a safe color, which is a positive and a negative. It feels very much like a template that was purchased from a template site. If your business is creating sites for others, then I would expect to see something a little more...well...more.

Pros:

• Non-offensive look and feel.
• Navigation is easily accessed and visible at all times.
• Toll-free phone number is well placed and refreshing to see.
• I liked the contact us page. Specifically the map. Very clean.

Cons:

• I don`t see any compelling reason to use Flash for the header. All of the visual effects could be reproduced using other standard (DHTML/JavaScript) techniques.
• The animation on the logo icon is distracting. It was drawing my eye away while I was trying to read the content on the site.
• The Last Project picture on the home page is not click-able. People love to click pictures.
• I see the online chat on a lot of sites, but I rarely see one that is actually online. When I visited your site it was offline. If you are offline more than on, it should be off your site.
• I didn`t understand the audio link on the About Us page at first.
• The Top and Back links on your Services page didn`t make sense. All of the service description pages are quite short (good), but that makes the Top link unnecessary. The Back took me back to the previously viewed page, but I expected it to take me up to a services overview page (which is a broken link, BTW).
• Having the 2nd nav of the Portfolio page start on the second link (websites) was weird. Switch the order of the links.
• You are linking to your brochure in a non-standard way which makes it circumvent the standard pdf open behavior.
• Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the main image in your brochure (with the plant) has an out of focus shirtless person in it, and I can see things I really don`t care to see.

I hope that helps. Keep up the good work.

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Nate Jones


Top Thought Studios :: Sales not what you expected? We think we know why.

Now I had to go back and download the brochure.

I`m still laughing, sorry.

There`s really no reason to even have a downloadable brochure on your site. The info is already on the site.

I don`t think there`s anything funny about your website!  I think it is a good idea to be able to print a brochure.  I look for and print brochures all of the time so that when I meet with someone that I am trying to sell something to I have all of the information there in front of me.  You should keep that!  As with most businesses (that I know of, at least) the person that is buying the website is not researching how to get one.  That is done by an administrative person and then they meet with the boss.  You probably already knew that though and that`s why you put it up there!

I do think the download time is slow, probably due to a lot of the graphics and flash.  I would find a better balance between the two.  It is visually appealing, but for me it was too slow.  I have dial up, so it is a little different for some people, but there are still a lot of people with dial up!  Also, I don`t mind the person`s head fading out because I can tell it is behind a translucent navigation bar.

Even though I agree with the second poster that if you are not going to be available for chat more than 50% of the time then you shouldn`t have it on there, I think it is still nice to show the capabilities of different applications to potential clients.

Overall, the site is awesome!  The main thing I would change is the download times.  

I agree with everyone... on one level or another. 

Topthought,
I really appreciate time you spent reviewing our site.
I won`t comment pros from your list. I will focus on cons because these are more important.

    * I don`t see any compelling reason to use Flash for the header. All of the visual effects could be reproduced using other standard (DHTML/JavaScript) techniques.
    - We decided to use Flash so I don`t take it as con. You are right, different technology could be used.

    * The animation on the logo icon is distracting. It was drawing my eye away while I was trying to read the content on the site.
     - I didn`t really know if that`s true. It is not distracting me, our team and friends, so I asked few people people and it`s also not distracting them. It`s only small 1-2sec animation every 5sec.     

    * The Last Project picture on the home page is not click-able. People love to click pictures.
     - You are absolutely right. We`ll work on it next week.

    * I see the online chat on a lot of sites, but I rarely see one that is actually online. When I visited your site it was offline. If you are offline more than on, it should be off your site.
     - I agree. We thought it`s a great idea to have this feature but we don`t really have time to be available online all the time or at least 50% or more. We will consider removing it.

    * I didn`t understand the audio link on the About Us page at first.
     - My partner pointed this out when it first went up so I agree. Do you think it`s suppose to be removed or just add description?

    * The Top and Back links on your Services page didn`t make sense. All of the service description pages are quite short (good), but that makes the Top link unnecessary. The Back took me back to the previously viewed page, but I expected it to take me up to a services overview page (which is a broken link, BTW).
     - I agree top and back don`t make sense. It will be removed. There is no services overview page. Once you click on services it takes you to `Custom Site Design` section. I can change default section anytime. `Our Web Services` image above vertical navigation is not suppose to be a link. It will be removed.

    * Having the 2nd nav of the Portfolio page start on the second link (websites) was weird. Switch the order of the links.
     - You are right. I changed it.

    * You are linking to your brochure in a non-standard way which makes it circumvent the standard pdf open behavior.
     - This one is not clear for me. Please explain.

    * Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the main image in your brochure (with the plant) has an out of focus shirtless person in it, and I can see things I really don`t care to see.
     - Topthought, you are good. I agree. it`s a young boy.

Again, thank you so much for your time.

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GetVive.com
"You Know You Want It"

MkDigi,

Thanks for good words. It`s nice to hear it sometimes. As I explained before I will focus on cons.

1. I do think the download time is slow, probably due to a lot of the graphics and flash.  I would find a better balance between the two.
    - I do understand, there is a lot of graphic. It may be little hard to do big changes now. I checked and we had only 4 dial-up visitors in last 30 days - I hope you understand.

2. Live help availability.
    - answered in last msg.


Thank you again.
Tomasz Banas


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GetVive.com
"You Know You Want It"

I think if you don`t know why you shouldn`t be using Flash unless necessary, you need to rethink providing web services to other people. I`m sorry to sound harsh but that is the truth. You have several things on your site (the logo, the brochure) that randomly have a shine effect for no reason -- it adds nothing to your message or your site, and can quite possibly distract your reader. And now you have that slightly ambiguous picture right smack on your front page, which is really just ... kind of wrong. I have 2 choices on the front page ... people with the tops of their heads cut off, or a picture that could possibly be a naked woman. Meanwhile, you have very tiny text and unattractive content.

I really think you should stop arguing with the feedback here and learn how to assemble a decent site before you hang up a shingle to do it for someone else. That front page has an insane amount of empty div tags and nbsp code.

Hi Aaron,
Thank you for posting here.

1. I agree it does nothing to capture my attention.
    - We`re trying our best but it`s hard to capture everybody`s attention. Every person has different interests

2. I agree the flash is unnecessary (especially for the download button)
    - We wanted to have a little of everything so when we meet with our clients/prospects we can show it and explain so they understand.

3. I agree nipples = not appropriate for the site (the pic in the brochure)
    - I agree, it will be fixed.

4. Re-think the site design.  Too many stock photos make it look like a template.
    - Whole site is built from scratch, It is not template. I don`t have an idea which photos we can remove.

Aaron, Thank you again,
Tomasz Banas

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GetVive.com
"You Know You Want It"