Please review maginnonline.co.uk

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

I have had the website nearly 2 years. It used to be a gadgets website but since i have started a small web hosting and design company i have transformed it into my services/portfolio.

Services are hosting, maintenance, design, search engine submission.

Please review the homepage and United Kingdom section Smiling

the site is http://www.maginnonline.co.uk

Peter Smiling

They have: 1 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

Needs some work. To start with center everything on the main page and add some graphics to the rest of the pages. Also I could not log into to the restricted area so can't help there Laughing out loud

Good luck

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

i know the restricted area is for clients only but all it is is a blue page with their profiles and website details (ftp, webmail, addons, upgrades) etc etc

Peter Smiling

They have: 1 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

Excellent production of a website. I like the simplicity of the site however the appearance of the information seems slightly disorganized. I would recommend re-organizing the site pages to reflect a more attractive storefront by possibly cordinating your information to take advantage of the interactive buttons in the upper left hand corner and giving it a more professional feel. However, I do feel that you are on the right track with your display of information within the categories displayed. When first entering the site I believe an initial display of complementary graphics might be a nice touch at the initial redirectional website to catch your customers attention initally and give them an indication of who you are or a brief statement of what they should expect to find. Overall great work so far. Good Luck Smiling

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

thanks mate Laughing out loud

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Apr 2007

The site has a nice design. A bit too simplistic for me but it's still good. It has some good content aswell.

Goodluck!

They have: 3 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

design is good and usefull .. you should correct mistakes in code .. you have 7 mistakes ..

ticktac's picture

He has: 28 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

Add some country flags or something.. so its easier to navigate from the start. As for the header, no matter what resolution.. the header didnt work out for me. resize the header image. everything else looks good. possibly create a logo and make it to like 20% opacity and set it as the background for one or two of the content columns.

http://www.funnymyspace.com -Myspace Comedianshttp://www.shirtstobuy.com -Daily shirt blog

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

The front page here is a bit of a problem because you're just forcing people to click another link before they can get to the actual site. I think it would be better to just have a link on the UK home page for US customers. Use a US flag or something to catch attention. The clients link could be a small link in the top-right corner, or the login box could be in the right sidebar.

This is also a problem for SEO because there's nothing on your index page for a SE to index.

The UK home page is not bad. Decent layout, but rather boring. There's nothing to provide interest on this page. At the very least, add a contrasting colour to the blue colour scheme. Green or orange might work well.

On higher screen resolutions your header image is repeating. Set a max-width on your layout on that so it doesn't repeat like that.

The home page and navigation aren't doing a very good job of highlighting what this site has to offer. The "about" text is further down where the user isn't going to see it right away.

The about, contact, and copyright appear on every page which is really overkill. The copyright especially is much more prominent than it should be. It's as if you keep telling me not to steal your stuff. I'm not going to take your content, okay? Do you know what I'm saying?? It's too "in your face".

The content on many of the pages is much too brief. Take the free software, for example. Where do I get this free softwrae? There are no download links, just a small note to email you, and the email address isn't even an active link.

I'm finding the text on this site to be a little small and hard to read.

Overall this isn't a bad implementation but you need to provide more information (for users and search engines), and make it more clear what users are supposed to do here. Add some graphics or contrasting elements to highlight key items on the page. Use the home page to direct users to the pages you want them to see. You want them to hire you, right?

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

thanks Megan,
i will be adding a text resizer so the user can set it to what they want Smiling

Pete.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

No, no no. Make it normally sized to start with. People who want to resize text will be able to do so in their browser. It's best to stay at a normal size o people don't have to change their settings or look for your text resize option. In your CSS you've got the base font size set to 70% - I usually find that about 75 or 80% works best. The grey-on-grey doesn't help either. You could make that a little darker.

He has: 698 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

Megan: I think he means he's going to add an in-site text resizer, not actually resizing the text.

To Pete:

I think the site is simple, but too simple. Some of the light gray text and borders is too difficult to see and serves basically no purpose in my eye. I would stray from including section headers if there is nothing in the section (e.g. "Links", "Clients", "Sponsors"). There's not much else to say as everyone else has covered it, but I do think it's a bit comical that you include a link at the bottom of the site proving your site is written in valid XHTML and CSS, but it actually is not valid XHTML...worth a fix, eh?

Kurtis

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

mscreashuns;222059 wrote: Megan: I think he means he's going to add an in-site text resizer, not actually resizing the text.

That's what I thought too - I think those things shouldn't be necessary unless you think people won't know how to use their browsers... Keep the text at a normal readable size - don't make people change their font size for every site or try to find your little font resizer which won't be the same as font resizers on other sites etc. etc. It's just an annoyance.

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

check the site again maginnonline.co.uk
i have revamped the sites design yet again Smiling
i think this ones better
didnt like the green across top at first but i think its good now

Pete Laughing out loud

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

This looks much better (from what I remember about the previous version). I like the About section in the mdidle - it gives you a lot of credibility to say who you are and where you're from.

The font size is still too small, as mentioned.

This is very different from what you normally see from hosting companies. It might throw people off. Normally you'd highlight some of your hosting plans on the home page. The services page would lise them again, with more details. There should be a comparison chart with all your plans. People are probably going around comparing several companies and they might turn away when they encounter something completely different.

However, it looks like you only have one plan. If so, you need to sell it better and give some indication as to why there is only one plan. Something like "all you'll ever need" or "complete small business package". Simplicity is good if you sell it right.

He has: 49 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

On first impressions good looking site, i like the colours and layout.
You might want to look at your mark-up as it returned 83 errors on validation.
The css validation button could be linked so that it validates automatically, rather than the viewer having to paste the url in.

Gary

They have: 7 posts

Joined: Sep 2007

u can do better..but is nice, mate in final..Smiling

He has: 11 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

Your site is very well organized, It was easy to see everything that you have going on. It could use some images of servers,but who am i to talk my site needs alot of everything!!! Good Job Megan. Wink

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

Cheers Megan,
Erm... yes i have only 1 plan but in the next month on the services page it says 750MB and there will be other plans like with all the features of the 750MB plan except extra webspace 1GB and 1.5GB

Pete Smiling

navyfalcon's picture

They have: 11 posts

Joined: Jun 2007

marginnonline.co.uk
using 800x600 display with firefox
Validation errors - 54
may want to use CSE Validator Lite (free) http://www.htmlvalidator.com/
or
firefox firebug https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
to check and correct
CSE Validator is also an editor so you can validate and correct without leaving the program
May want to change your description as it looks like keywords
search engines use the description so it wants to be as descriptive as possible
may want to remove the @ sign from your email and replace with (at) - you get less spammers this way
navigation buttons - may want to give more contrast to the mouseovers or put a light color (white or similar) behind when moused over
need a symbol or logo for the banner left side. A nice one would be a computer (server) left side banner covering both the gray and blue area
hope this helps
falcon

These 5 things observe with care, with whom you speak, to whom you speak, how, when and where.

He has: 16 posts

Joined: Aug 2007

I see that you used a template.
The color scheme does not work for me.

Try to get a nice logo.

XHTML code looks good
Meta tags look good

I would remove the email address [email protected] from the code. Spam bots like these. You can make do it like this ealigam (at) gmail (dot) com

Not bad, but still needs a lot of work

navyfalcon's picture

They have: 11 posts

Joined: Jun 2007

how come you have the w3css check when it doesn't validate ??
I would think the type of business you represent would prefer validation
just a thought
falcon

These 5 things observe with care, with whom you speak, to whom you speak, how, when and where.

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

robfenn's picture

He has: 471 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

I think if this was someones blog i'd like the design and leave it at that. For the business you're involved with - hosting - it's pretty useless.

Take a look at the competiton. Do i care who you are? No! I should be able to view a sample of your deals straight way. No scrolling or visiting other pages should be needed.

I wanted trust a company that has a logo with a smiley face on it either...

If you want to look cool then take inspiration from somone like Media Temple.

http://www.mediatemple.net/

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

just to let u know ive revamped the design after taking pictures of my third party data centres etc etc Smiling

They have: 3 posts

Joined: Sep 2007

I think the site is ok, but needs larger strings and there're some words that are going above the pics.
The sub pages are to simple but the main page is a great template.
But I hope you'll work hard and you will correct that.

They have: 10 posts

Joined: Oct 2007

I can clearly understand that you are using a ready made template I think changing the layout a bit would increase the professional look in it ...

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