A reveiw (RSG Consulting)

They have: 10 posts

Joined: May 2007

Hey guys, whats going on, looking for some advice on what to do with my site. Sadly, I am a well trained network and server engineer, but, I know i am how you would say, design challenged. I have no logo, and Basic design, mostly because I really need nothing more than just basic pages and easy navigation.

I dont feel it has a professional enough look for me to portray my company as an IT specialist company with such poor design.

Any tips would be great and i appreciate it. I Know the community here is very supportive and intelligent so...

Thanks in advance.

RSG Consulting - Houston Area's Best Small Business Consultants

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

Basically the layout looks pretty good, judging by the html however you used some Table block elements to layout the page. I suggest you up the font sizes a bit, and lighten the page colours. as currently its too dark, as an IT site, you need to portray openness, cant really articulate it, but its better if you lighten the site up a notch.

You also need a better logo, and make the main Navigation Links exceptional. Currently it feels like a template was smacked on a CMS system and made it run... It needs more work, but its well on its way... Update us if you had any changes....

travelagent's picture

He has: 26 posts

Joined: Dec 2004

It's already been suggested to make the colors lighter, which I definitely agree -- with such dark colors, the text links should be done is a white color so they are more visible.

I would also suggest you not use Tables, as they are for Tabular Data and it would be cleaner code if you went to a Table-less CSS design.

Since you're using XHTML, you may wish to fix the following 15 code warnings so your site validates and displays properly in all browsers:

line 5 column 1 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 6 column 1 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 7 column 1 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 8 column 1 - Warning: <meta> element not empty or not closed
line 50 column 37 - Warning: missing </i> before <h3>
line 50 column 34 - Warning: missing </b> before <h3>
line 50 column 44 - Warning: inserting implicit <b>
line 50 column 44 - Warning: inserting implicit <i>
line 50 column 63 - Warning: <br> element not empty or not closed
line 50 column 67 - Warning: <img> element not empty or not closed
line 50 column 67 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 50 column 37 - Warning: trimming empty <i>
line 50 column 34 - Warning: trimming empty <b>
line 84 column 7 - Warning: trimming empty <p>
line 85 column 5 - Warning: trimming empty <p>
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He has: 20 posts

Joined: May 2007

I don't like the color theme, there are quite too many dark shades and using blue link color with that just doesn't look good in my opinion. The header image (the grass thing) seems a bit strange to me, I'd change it.

The copy on the main page could need some work, for example, headlines ending with a period are usually converting poorly. You should highlight the benefits of your service and not the features. Also, just looking at your front page I really can't quite get an idea what services you are actually offering.

You should perhaps remove the "News from the front" link and put it back when you have some contents to the page, seeing too many "Coming soon" or "Under construction" messages can hurt your conversion.

When one clicks the About Us link (or any of the bottom link bar links) the page is opened in blank white page, shouldn't all the pages open with the same layout as the front page? The "Customer satisfaction" page should perhaps be called as "Client testimonials" or something similar, now when I click that says "Customer Satisfaction" I'm expecting to see a some kind of guarantee on customer satisfaction and when I don't see one I ask myself why you are not offering one, don't you trust the quality of your services enough?

These are just my 2 cents, I hope this helps.

They have: 10 posts

Joined: May 2007

Just wanted to say thanks a million for the tips. I am currently making revisions to several areas and should have a new page to demo really soon! thanks for everything.

I am liking the sites new look with lighter colors, though still tweaking for best results, and hopefully i can add in some drop down or sliding menus for stuff in the future.

Just a friendly thank you and know I will be doing my best to review more of your sites in the future!

They have: 10 posts

Joined: May 2007

Hey everyone me again, Just did a complete overhaul of the site, looking for some comments about the color change and layout change. anything is appreciated! Thanks a million!

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

Wow!, Nice update, these looks way better, although, I feel this one has too little contrast... see you used a bright blue, maybe make it a bit duller, lean on to the gray side of the spectrum. I like the current color of the logo but the logo itself is too tall and destroys the feel of the page.

Content wise, looks promising, the organization of page elements, especially the menu is great. The Sidebars are useful this time, and so thus the arrangement of the content areas. IMHO all you need now is some color adjustment, and a nice logo... Good Job!

They have: 20 posts

Joined: Apr 2007

Hi there,

Like the color, looks much nicer.
Maybe place the home/services/etc. more aligned center, same with copywright 2007 .. but nothing major. Maybe allow users to be redirected 'home' when clicking on logo ? I think I saw one text error on your slogan ' .. before it beigns'.

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