Controversial New Product - Website critique

[jistforum]

I have been working diligently on my first website with a professional marketing firm for the past 3 months. I must say that I have learned a ton about a process I was never quite familiar with. So now that I have launched about 3 days ago I'm itching to hear feedback.

[removed promotional content]

We are continuing with development and changes in 2 more phases and I would absolutely appreciate all feedback. I'm excited for the work thats about to come.

JIST
http://Jist.us.com

[wh666-666]

First off, well done so far and welcome to the forum.

Please dont take any of this as negative, just as constructive opinions. Personally i liked the site based on general aesthetics.

To start with, the loading of the initial welcome page loads at an ok-ish speed, although it could be faster (12 seconds). All of the sub pages are quite slow on loading (20 seconds) on a 2 meg connection. Typically you need to have it loading as quickly as possible to keep a customers interest. The site on a tabbed ff3, xp system, made my entire browser a touch sluggish. This is something really to work on as it would make me close this sluggish tab straight away otherwise.

First off, with the content, flash is always a bit controversial. I dont mind flash but alot of people dont have flash enabled.

The loading screen is fine, however on the welcome page i would be inclined to shorten the initial selling point to just one paragraph instead of two. It just needs to be short and snappy or have another little catchphrase that sums it up like "jist, smoke anywhere, anytime". You have the advantage section to tell people all of the benefits. I would be inclined to get rid of those images in that section as well as they spoil the initial artwork. With a short snappy phrase you could have it written in smoke from the womans cigar, that way overlayed images wouldnt steal from the seduction and refinement you want to project.

As i said, i really like the artwork, but feel that box with the two paragraphs and two images spoils it.

I would also change your height and width of the swf to %. I always detest it when the vertical scroll is just there purely for scrolling on one line of the site. If you changed the height to something like 90%/95% it would all fit on one page. The text at the bottom with things like distribute and privacy policy can be made a much smaller font so it doesnt steal away from the visitor's focus. People searching for the small print will see it down there.

Personally, all of the sub pages, i would like to see the content displayed on the same background as the online shop section. The way its overlayed on a strip black background over the initial welcome page background doesnt quite look right. On the online section shop on the right hand side the online shop background overlay colour doesnt quite stretch all the way. Just little tweaks like this would help.

[eloquentBohemia]

Nice layout, excellent colors, well-chosen artwork. Aesthetically pleasing. I like the transluscent menu overlay in the top left-hand corner.
Load-time is slowish, though Flash usually is. I am using FF3/XP 1meg connection.
Will agree with wh666-666 in that the initial page could load faster.
Have you considered an HTML intro page which would link to the subsequent Flash pages?
All in all, I am impressed.

[Declan1991]

You have 624 kB of Flash, 100 kB of JavaScript, and no actual content. That's not too good for search engine rankings.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of Flash, it can be quite nice. But it's way overdone (although it looks nice). It freezes up my browser quite a lot. You have about 4 seconds to capture the users interest. You're way beyond that with that page.