I'm starting a side project and have begun piecing together a web design firm to make some money on the side from my day job. So far I'm simply designing the overall design and look of the page before it's coded, via images.

If you could, please provide some constructive criticism from the website and give me the bottom line: would you consider purchasing services from my company?

http://www.illiniwebdesign.com/

I like the look and feel a lot; however, it somewhat resembles a blog - this might just be because of the color selection.

Overall, yeah, I would consider purchasing your services.

reserved for lunchtime commentary

The Site that you link a reference of is down, this would not be a good example of your work if the site is down indefinitely, or if it is down when potential customers are wanting to see your work first hand.

The Color choices as was said earlier are a bit drab, and a drop down menu of options detailing your services.

For example

Web Site Design:

[Description of this service and what tools or features a site could have]

Logo and Corporate Identity;

[Description of these features or services available]

etc

Last thing Kay, I know your looking for this to be a local service, but if it's on the internet you might as well make it more accessible to any customer, and to do that you might want to choose a different back ground other then Illinois. However that is a business/economic personal choice and not really meant to be a critique.

it's not down

He's talking about the website on the portfolio. I'm doing database maintenance on it right now so I took it down.

Like I said, the site isn't advertised or by any means live, so I'm not worried about having it down.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2mmd4b5.png

That's how the images are currently supposed to render. I noticed that some browsers are fucking it up because they suck. Firefox is displaying it currectly. I'll fix it later.

Here's the test
http://browsershots.org/http://www.illiniwebdesign.com/

Firstly the color scheme is not bad.

1)I would get rid of that part about never receiving payment if dissatisfied. That is a terrible idea and people will try an rip you off all the time.

2) Id get rid of all the contact information off the main page and bundle that all under the contact area. You seem to be going for a "wholesome simplified" scheme, no need to make it noisy.

3)I always like breadcrumb navigation as well and perhaps a site map.

4)The text in the "our clients" section has no alignment.

5)Background colors on the tables have different colors in Explorer8 and Firefox.

6) Other Explorer8 issues, the our portfolio page is bunk. When you go to that page the left justifies the header image and the navigation bar seem to have right justification.

7) Also, if you want to keep the order of you navigation, the general convention seems to be to return to the "main" page of the site to be the left link. Could always just make the header graphic a link back to the "our company" section as well, something I really hate when people dont do on their sites.


Other than that looks very..clean which I like.

That's exactly what I was going for Ithkrul. Clean, simple, and a bit different with the colors.

I'm working through making it compatible in all browsers but it's very, very difficult. Internet Explorer is horrible. It gets like a 32/100 on the ACID test, whereas Safari gets a 98 and Chrome gets like 100.

Anyways, appreciate the comments.


edit: As far as the payments go, my policy is if you don't like the website, you don't pay. You don't keep the site, since I'm hosting it, you just are not obligated to purchase it. Some web design companies require payment up front or 50% payment up front, whereas I don't.

Well it is Internet Explorer 8 which is using the standard syntax. I know that most of us use Firefox and friends. But the masses use IE. Just stick to the pure standard CSS 2.1 and should be OK. Although I'm sure some stupid things will still arise.

I think that as far as the payment thing goes, the ability for your customer to communicate as well as your ability to communicate can make this is non-issue. Good requirements up front. Don't take shit from anyone!

lol was just wondering why the bottom section was being funny...its one big image. Was like...hey theres a scroll bar...WTF it doesnt work!

Yea I made everything imaged before coding it, because nothing is more annoying than writing it all and then being like "wow this is ugly".

I always design my sites in photoshop first so that I can get a good idea how I want it to turn out

Lol I do the same thing... but the few links you have mixed in were messing with me =)

http://www.bowers-group.com/home.html

This is Martha Bowers page, a consultant I work with, who has similar orange and is a very clean look. Hers has a consistent color theme.

One thing to think about is creating a consistent color theme, the color rainbow you have across the top is fine but why not use those colors instead of a different pallet for the 3 boxes of info below? That might add a level of consistency.

This color thing is a matter of taste but my opinion is you have so many colors going it seems busy and is distracting from your message.

KAY - I am looking for someone who can get .wmv files (videos) to run online for me - if that's something you are considering let me know.

Btw my website is crap and needs an overhaul.

Dude, you live in Urbana? I go to school at u of i.

Illini ftw

Some awesome portfolio : http://browse.deviantart.com/designs/web/?order=9

I like your site. I think it portrays an artistic look which is very important for site designers... it's also very difficult to make a site look good without loads of content.... which you've also managed to do.

It took me a great deal of time (and a ton of revisions) before I finally got my site to a point where I'm finally ok with it(don't love it though www.redenginesystems.com). I'll definitely keep you in mind for some subcontracting work if the need arises.

Also if you haven't found a host yet.. reliablesite.net is the best deal I've seen around. They actually allow you to host unlimited (not sub domains) on whatever hosting package you choose...plus you get an mssql server at a very cheap price.

That's pretty cool - I use hostgator.com who has unlimited domains/unlimited bandwidth/unlimited email/and unlimited storage. It's pretty much the best thing ever. I use it for all my clients.

Not a bad host at all..too bad they are just linux though

They're Windows too, it just costs a little more.

i like da linux

I ran a marketing, web & cdrom development team of ~18 graphic designers & programmers from 1996-2001 ... a couple of constructive comments:

Be careful about your font colors over backgrounds. Your footer font colors get lost against your background. The content is the single most important aspect of your design ... your design should enhance the presentation of the content, especially your phone number! ... which is lost against the background ... make that important content pop out, inviting the user's eye towards it. The "request a free quote" is a well done example.

Watch your leading ... your portfolio sidebar has inconsistant leading bewteen the headers (Company\Service\Description) ... if I caught it, others will too.

In my experience, highlighting how you work with clients, from a relationship standpoint vs. snazzy design, goes a long way in attracting work. People will either like or dislike your designs ... illustrating that you can take direction well, can quickly understand the objective, are easy to work with & produce results in a timely fashion will score huge points in closing a deal ... keep that in mind as you press forward with your site's content.

Best of luck ...