Suggestions for my site

[JoyDivision]

http://www.m21technology.co.uk/

I am in the process of making a commericial section owned at businesses but I just wondered if anybody had any ideas about the design. It was kind of been thrown together in a bit of a rush but I now have time to spend on it to make it look more professional.

The internet will be playing a vital part in my marketing so I need to ensure the website is good.

The programming front is not a problem, its just my creativity is still not what it was so I need ideas :p:

Thanks.

[Jayne]

Hi,

See what you mean about it looking rubbish. You may be better paying a designer to help out and get a good job done, plus it will save you time and you can concentrate on your business :D

Jayne

[confused]

Just out of interest, is there a problem using images such as yours that are of course someone elses? just curious as I need some for my site. (I'm tempted to nick a bit of your text but I wont lol)

CALV

PS

Your site isnt "rubbish" it just needs some work on it

[JoyDivision]

Pretty much all the photos are there are my own, with a couple which are royalty free. The photos are easy, put the camera into macro mode, spend a bit of time in photoshop and thats that :).

I have made the link bar thing look a lot better which helps.

I just need to play about with the spacing, I had problems getting it work in older versions of Firefox which is why it looks like there is a lot of space between things.

I am a actually a web developer so I don't want to pay anybody else to my own job. I just don't have much creativity at the moment which is why I need suggestions.

I know the site is no work out of art but with a few good sugestions it can be.

This is a site I did my parents which I think looks a lot better

www.cascade-cleaning.co.uk

The problem with my site is it was thrown together too quickly and it shows but its not bad enough to warrant a start from scratch.

I am not keen on the special offer thing either I think that looks cheap.

[DuaneJackson]

Pay a designer to put together a 'look' for the site as a JPG image - I'm sure you can then cut it up and make a better looking site, and it shouldn't cost much either.

[Jayne]

lol..What pictures, just came up blue on mine with a bit of writing on, that why I thought he was saying it wasn't very good, therefore I agreed :lol:

Sorry if it came out wrong :D

Jayne

[JoyDivision]

lol..What pictures, just came up blue on mine with a bit of writing on, that why I thought he was saying it wasn't very good, therefore I agreed :lol:

Sorry if it came out wrong :D

Jayne

Could you post a screenshot please? I have tested it on IE and Firefox, there is a minor bug with IE at the moment but it shouldn't affect the design. The blue is just the background colour around the main site.

[JoyDivision]

it should look somthing like this, and I have tested in lots of browsers and different resolutions

http://m21technology.co.uk/screenshot.jpg

[Jayne]

No idea what one of those screen things are. I will describe it. All the page was blue, with white text menu up the side and big white text on the bottom. First time I tried it wouldn't open.

I'm on AOL broadband and i'm using IE to view, if that helps :D

Jayne

[bwglaw]

The header is missing on my IE5.1 for MAC. The second column is further down the page leaving a blank white space to the right.

[JoyDivision]

Yeah IE5 for the MAC though is extremely buggy so much so Microsoft even admit it, I am not worried about that as I could spend for ever and it still won't work.

I am rather more worried about it not working properly for Jane.

It sounds like a CSS issue :(

In terms of the XHTML only the contact page needs a lot of work still so the only browser problems should be due to CSS.

[JoyDivision]

There is a site which takes a screenshot of how the site looks in each browser does anybody remember the URL?

That would be really handy for me right now.

[DuaneJackson]

I have it somehwere, it didn't work though.

[JoyDivision]

I think part of the problem with the site is my persistance for it to scale (i.e let the user decide the text size) it limits what I can do graphicaly but then a lot of my customers may be old and have poor eye sight so essential that they can increase the text size.

If I got rid of the special offer thing on the front page I am not sure what I could put in place.

[kevbcharlton]

http://www.browsercam.com offer a free trial.

Mac IE5 isn't being supporteed anymore and will not be given out with new Macs as of Jan06, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

The site is very well built, but the design looks amateurish I'm afraid, and i think if it's very important for your business you should look into employing a freelance designer to come up with a new 'look'. This could easily be adapted into your current markup structure.

[JoyDivision]

MK2 will be up later. I have got rid of the special offer thing on the right hand page because I felt that looked tatty. It does look a bit more professional now.