Honest Opinion!

Okay so I've said before that I'm a part time web designer, I just re-did my web design website and I would like some *constructive* feedback from anyone willing to share it.

Looking for feedback from a design perspective not an SEO perspective as I haven't gotten to that yet. Now that the main visual design is done I'll start working on the content.

Thanks in advance.

to me its not bad.
nice and simple.

i dont automatically hate the site because of its design.

I'm not impressed, at all.

I am against FULL flash based websites. I don't know why anyone still uses it. There's a reason only ONE wordpress flash site template exists. Please remove the flash. Please.

The menu link in flash took me a while to find, and if I wasn't going to tell you what I thought I probabaly wouldn't have found it and left.

The font, is horrible. Some pages it's one font, other pages it's another, your typography is failing hardcore.

As for the HTML design, its very 2001. Why don't you just get a nice template for joomla and spend your time collecting a bunch more to sell to your clientel as customized versions.

Rockettheme, joomlashack, etc. ANY ONE of those designers make you look like a newb. Seriously.

The music is annoying aswell. Not everyone enjoys the same music.

Buy templates, sell templates. You need to spend 6 hours a day more than you already are now on learning graphic design to get to a competitive level.

im just an average user.
i guess ^^ that guy is an expert.

there is a stop button on the music though if you dont like it.
i still like flash sites when they are simple like that.

Only the home page is full flash, If you didn't notice the non flash links up top then that would be good for me to know. As for the typography and fonts, well I did say that I haven't worked on the content all that much. As a matter of fact I personally haven't touched on the content at all.

Believe it or not this happens to be a Joomla template. The flash is something that built but it resides on the home page of a joomla site and the non flash links at the top continue on the the actual Joomla template.

Thanks for the feedback.

kayzne said:

You need to spend 6 hours a day more than you already are now on learning graphic design to get to a competitive level.

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I will agree with you that I am not any good at graphic design. I don't try to be. I have a graphic designer though she had nothing to do with this site yet.

The graphics you see in the Joomla portion are the original template graphics.

I specialty is sales and marketing. I have a developer a copywriter and a graphic designer. Being able to sell kinda gives me a hand up over the competition. Most web designers can't sell. I just got off the phone with a client in Cali and landed a web gig for 7.5K Even with my "Horrible" website.

I am not a big fan of flash only sites either but it looks good. I don't hate the font, but the music is too mellow and uninspiring. For something like this you want to inspire the visitor, so good classy upbeat music I think would be better

I think your site looks good. Like annaestves said "simple and fresh" pretty much sums up my thoughts on it. Good luck on the SEO part of your project.

jazz99 said:

the music is too mellow and uninspiring. For something like this you want to inspire the visitor, so good classy upbeat music I think would be better

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Yeah I had considered that thought I picked this one because it starts off mellow and gets better if you listen to it long enough. I didn't want them to be surprised by loud upbeat music on their first visit. I've gone to too many pages with my volume turned up too loud.

I would lose the music altogether. Generally, if a web site loads with music, I immediately click back.

justthinking said:

I would lose the music altogether. Generally, if a web site loads with music, I immediately click back.

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You really think so? I understand that for most websites but I'm kinda going for beauty and emotion, and music always adds emotion.

I thought some of the flash pages were pretty pleasing to the eye.
Music is fine too. I'd add back/forward buttons for ease of navigation.

Can't say the same about your html site though, it looks like you got lazy.
I'd keep the header but restructure the way you present your content.
Not very professional.

Best of luck, hope my criticism helps.

Dope Face said:

Can't say the same about your html site though, it looks like you got lazy.
I'd keep the header but restructure the way you present your content.
Not very professional.

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I completely agree and intend to do so. thanks!

eventus said:

I I just got off the phone with a client in Cali and landed a web gig for 7.5K Even with my "Horrible" website.

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Then why bother asking us what we think if the design doesn't matter? For props from your peeps? lol

If you're making 7.5k from ONE website. Maybe instead of asking you should be explaining how you did that.

OH the design does matter and I totally appreciate your opinion! Sorry I was just a little excited after that phone call is all. That's by far the biggest job I have landed. You would be excited too.

When I get too busy sometimes I need to outsource and it sounds like you may know something about web design Kayzne. Let me know if you're interested, Congrats on getting promoted btw, I just saw the video.

kayzne said:

If you're making 7.5k from ONE website. Maybe instead of asking you should be explaining how you did that.

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I would love to share, but there is no practical way for me to teach over 10 years of sales experience within a forum. Typically I'm more expensive than anyone else, but I do that on purpose by building perceived value and price conditioning, (not always in that order) If anyone ever needs advice I'll gladly help but sharing everything I know about selling just isn't feasible.

eventus said:

I would love to share, but there is no practical way for me to teach over 10 years of sales experience within a forum. Typically I'm more expensive than anyone else, but I do that on purpose by building perceived value and price conditioning, (not always in that order) If anyone ever needs advice I'll gladly help but sharing everything I know about selling just isn't feasible.

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I understand percieved value, but how do you back that up with such a cost. Please elaborate more on price conditioning and what you are offering someone for that price. Specifics if you can.

Also, you should know I don't really do web design anymore because I find it to be a waste of my time. It's much faster to outsource and/or purchase/download premade templates for a CMS.

I prefer to do that and then just customize it to be unique. If you need me to do that i'm sure we can work something out.

Fix the 2nd (joomla) and 3rd image (oscommerce) - http://www.eventusdesign.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=37

it just looks weird. they don't fit the page. Also, i think your font is too small.

http://www.eventusdesign.com/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=categories&Itemid=41 -- see if it's possible to use larger image. the page looks empty with small images.

kayzne said:

It's much faster to outsource and/or purchase/download premade templates for a CMS.

I prefer to do that and then just customize it to be unique. If you need me to do that i'm sure we can work something out.

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To be honest that's exactly what I do. If i were to send you to every website I have sold you would find that all but one is a Joomla customized template from yoo, rocket theme and other such sites.

I totally with you there.

K a quick example of price conditioning. (quick being relative)

You want to buy a lawn mower but you have never bought one and you have no clue what one costs, so you go to the store telling yourself that you are not going to pay any more than $200 for a lawn mower.

You get to the store and out front the have several mowers parked out front (no prices on them so you have to ask)

You were going to buy a push mower for $200 but you see the cool new zero point turn riding mowers with the 48" deck and you think about how useful that would be and how much time it will save you so you ask "how much"

$3000.00 and you are floored, No way are you paying that much, You're not going to pay any more than $1000 for a mower! "how much is the one with only the 40" deck?"

$2000 Thats way too much... You will not pay any more than $1500 for a mower! "How much is the little one thats not zero point turn and has the 36" deck?" "well that one is on sale for $1399"

SOLD! (see what happened)

I could have explained how to do it but showing you how it works is more important.

To use this you simply ignore how much they say they wanted to pay and show the something amazing. Start high, then start taking away from it to make it cheaper until they can't bare to lose anymore features or whatever and they end up spending much more then they originally wanted.

This works and I have used it for years.

G00B3R said:

I like it man, looks nice. What did you use to design that website?

G00B3R

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Thanks. The front page is Flash using xml as sort fo a flash content management and the rest of the site is joomla.