ecriteria — Fri, 30 Mar 2001 21:28:14 +0000

Thanks everyone! I really appreciate these comments and suggestions. I will definitely work on implementing these ideas for our next website revision.

Megan — Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:59:20 +0000

I definitely think it looks too cluttered. There are too many things on there competng for my attention. It would be a good idea to change the yellow backgrounds on the right to match the grey on the left. Also put the login area on top of one of those boxes too.

All your headers should look the same - the one at the top "Power your business..." is styled differently from the two "Database" tables below it. The rest of the pages look a lot better though. You might want to try changing your link colour to either black or red (or black with red hover..)

On the FAQ page you forgot to close a bold tag so half the page is in bold. Some of your graphics are a little bit over optimized looking (ie. the header on the "About Us" page).

Overall the design looks quite nice, it just needs a little bit of work. You might want to try integrating that honeycomb thing you've got into the design a little more.

Adam Oberdorfer — Thu, 29 Mar 2001 07:35:06 +0000

I think you have some great concepts and I only have a few comments, most of which are my personal opinion rather then a technical or design flaw.

a) The advertisements defiantly take away from the site design and make it look a whole lot less professional.

b) I like the honeycomb type shape near the login form however it looks strange as it's not used anywhere else.

c) I'd make all of the bars, backgrounds, headlines, etc all the same color. It makes things look a lot more uniform and doesn't distract the eye as much.

d) There is very little uniformity in text sizes. Take a look at the FEATURED PUBLIC DATABASE headline and the DATABASE WINNER OF THE WEEK. Both the actual bar and the font size are different.

Basically my critique would be to try to uniform the color scheme, layout style, sizes, and alignment. I think the site will look a whole lot better that way and provide a more professional appearance.

Good luck!!

outlaw — Thu, 29 Mar 2001 06:25:54 +0000

I like the graphics, principles, and the content is great. In could be perceived as overwhelming, or cluttered. I don't think this is because of to much stuff. Maybe the way in which it is laid out. One thing that I think you could do to decrease clutter is to have a focal point on the page. To me it seems their is a lot of info coming at me all a once. This can be a good thing, personally I do not prefer this when I visit a page. I agree that the ads should be few to none, especially if they are animated. In a site packed with info an animated graphic could be the defining factor between full of info and cluttered. Placing a center alignment on the entire site would be more appealing to viewers on larger monitors with out effecting the look to anyone else. Over all I think the site has a lot to offer and has a good design.
I am no expert but I hope this helps

mairving — Wed, 28 Mar 2001 01:51:05 +0000

Overall I think the site looks good. It displayed about the same in all browsers. I really just have a couple of comments:

It is very left-centric. In other words, instead of having all the wide open space on the right side on a large monitor. Why not center it and allow equal spacing on both sides.
It is a little busy. There seem to be too many places to go when I get to your site. I have found out that if you give a person a lot of choices, a lot of times they pick none. Going along with this, the page is a bit too long. I have to scroll down to get to the bottom. Maybe make a new page for some of the links. I would have a link maybe on the side for Featured Public Databases & Database winner of the week. I don't think that you need a whole section for them and that would get rid of most of your long page. Or maybe you could have your best customer testimonial quoted on the home page with a link to other testimonials.
Another little beef is why do you have ads on your site? I know that they generate revenue for you but your revenue should be coming from product sales. They really help to clutter the site up.

That is my 2-cents worth.