www.succeedservices.com

[succeeddesigns]

http://www.succeedservices.com/beta/index.php

Hello, I'm just looking for some opinions and such.

This is the main website for our corporation, which is quite small, and I was just wondering how does it look, etc.

[infinityspiral]

The tagline at the top about choice comes across as weak because it's followed by anonymous. If you don't know who said it don't say who it's from. And if it's not something someone at your company would say then it shouldn't be up there.

I'm not sure what the success library is but having the second link in the main navigation jumping off the site was confusing. It sends the message that the second most important content isn't on your site, it's on someone elses.

I wasn't sure about the spacing between the words and the artifact of the logo- they're not distributed evenly. The body text needs some reformatting- the font is hard to read and the text is too big. Also your roman numeral list is centered which creates a weird white space which doesn't look right next to the column of text to the left which is left formatted. Also paragraphs don't need an indent and one line space.

You should move the copyright information in the footer to the far right and not mix it in with potentially important links, if people see a generic copyright statement they stop reading and move on.

Chris
www.infinityspiral.com

[succeeddesigns]

Thanks for your opinion, I'll just throw in some of my own reasons for making those choices you outlined.

I think the quote adds some interest to the site and the company, and the fact that someone famous hasn't said it I think is even better. For instance if someone puts up a quote say by George W Bush and their site is about ancient history or something, it just doesn't look as good as saying anonymous. Our Parrent Company (SucceedServics) and Sister Companys (HostToSucceed) and (SucceedDesigns) would relate to the quote: “Choice, not circumstances, determines your success.”, However I do think it gets a little repetitive on each page.

You bring up a good point about not being able to tell what the Success Library is right off the bat, I might have to find a way to make that clearer. However Success Library is meant to be our helpdesk for customer questions, kind of like a FAQ, Forum, ect. all combined together. However no one would understand that right away since the site is not complete. But it's meant just to link to another site inside our company, not a 3rd party site to clear up any confusion.

Your right about the spacing between the graphic and the words in the header, The only benefit I can see of that bat is that the header words and graphic line up with the menu evenly, but I bet this can be fixed through a little Photoshop tweaking.

Hrmm, about that body text, I'm just not sure what exactly to do on it. By far text is the important thing in web design for a number of reasons. The reason I made it like it is, is to just get to the point, I don't wish to overload the potential customer with words, that they may or may not understand. Our target audience is non-tech 30-50 year olds looking to make a new web business or to turn their existing business into an online business. I will have to try and think what I could do to make the main text better, besides just lowering the font.

The space on the Roman Numeral list I think for the most part looks good, after the potential client reads the text on the left he will then look at what our company stands for on the right.

I always believe in a semi-symmetrical approach to things, and I think leaving the Copyright in the middle with 2 links on either side is like most sites. Most people don't even look at the footer anyways, so those links at the bottom or mostly made for people looking for specific information and not what our company offers.

Thanks for your suggestions, I will look them over and discuss them with my business associates. I look forward to more reviews and comments.

[infinityspiral]

I'm still stuck on that tagline, it seems to make a leap in logic. I know what you're trying to say, but it doesn't come through immediately. Maybe a cleaner line would be, "Great leaders are made, not born" or, "Success doesn't grow by accident."

The first one I heard somewhere, the second I wrote, you can use it if you like. Take a look at my site to see how I worked with the text. I've actually got more text than you do on my site, but by grouping and aligning it's remained very easy to read.

Chris
www.infinityspiral.com

[succeeddesigns]

Yea, I decided to take out the date, everyone should know the date anyhow, and I decided to lower the font size on the website, take out the indent, change the header around. I'll have to figure out ways to spruce up the text while reading it. Looking at your site, I found that you will capitalize and bold certain parts of text, which makes the reader kind of realize what their reading and not get bored. I also decided to take out the quote, your right in the fact it didn't mean much, and just seemed kind of fake being on all the pages, perhaps by the final design I will figure out something. Text just gets me though, and I have realized that its the most important thing in web design, do you know of any good links I could go to, that explain web text a bit or anything?

[infinityspiral]

That looks much cleaner, much easier to read. Text for the web is somewhat of an art in and of itself. I don't know any articles about text off the top of my head, but here's some general guidlines for text on the web:

1. Keep your color palette somewhat limited. Ten different paragraphs in ten different colors is hard on the eyes. Keep different colored headings to one or two colors. Muted colors look more professional than bright colors.

2. Maximize readability. Blue text on a blue background isn't fun for anyone. Neon colors are good ones to avoid unless you really know what you're doing with balancing colors. Black text on a white background reads easy.

3. Make it easy to scan- add bold or colored headings that give the reader an idea of what the paragraph is about. Don't make users read entire paragraphs before they know what's going on. This helps enhance the user experience because things seem more in control and wasted time is minimized.

4. Sprinkle in some variety, but just a little. Try making the first letter of the first paragraph of your page a little bigger. If you have large amounts of copy why not create a graphic of a quote from the text and have the text wrap around the quote. This will pull the reader's attention to the words and let them know about the content of the paragraph at the same time.

5. Watch your text size- bigger doesn't always mean that it's going to get more attention and it isn't pretty. Text on the web isn't anti-aliased (smooth), the bigger you make your text the more people can see that your text looks blocky and not sharp and smooth.

6. Serif fonts read easier than san-serif fonts over long passages.


Hope this help some!

Chris
www.infinityspiral.com

[Twissler]

That looks much cleaner, much easier to read. Text for the web is somewhat of an art in and of itself. I don't know any articles about text off the top of my head, but here's some general guidlines for text on the web:

1. Keep your color palette somewhat limited. Ten different paragraphs in ten different colors is hard on the eyes. Keep different colored headings to one or two colors. Muted colors look more professional than bright colors.

2. Maximize readability. Blue text on a blue background isn't fun for anyone. Neon colors are good ones to avoid unless you really know what you're doing with balancing colors. Black text on a white background reads easy.

3. Make it easy to scan- add bold or colored headings that give the reader an idea of what the paragraph is about. Don't make users read entire paragraphs before they know what's going on. This helps enhance the user experience because things seem more in control and wasted time is minimized.

4. Sprinkle in some variety, but just a little. Try making the first letter of the first paragraph of your page a little bigger. If you have large amounts of copy why not create a graphic of a quote from the text and have the text wrap around the quote. This will pull the reader's attention to the words and let them know about the content of the paragraph at the same time.

5. Watch your text size- bigger doesn't always mean that it's going to get more attention and it isn't pretty. Text on the web isn't anti-aliased (smooth), the bigger you make your text the more people can see that your text looks blocky and not sharp and smooth.

6. Serif fonts read easier than san-serif fonts over long passages.


Hope this help some!

Chris
www.infinityspiral.com

I just want to address two things really quick -

In IE7 and on any browser in Vista, it appears that text is anti-aliased. I'm typing this from FF on Vista Home Premium and it's definitely anti-aliased.

Most studies show that while serif typefaces are easier over long passages in print, the reverse holds true for viewing text on a computer screen.

I don't know if this will continue to be the trend or not considering the main reason for not using serif typefaces on websites was because of the blocky edges. Now that we have AA, who knows.

Time will tell, I guess.

[charlesgan]

basically its too plan.
u may refer to wordpress.org
and get some idea frm the design etc.