Site for review

lithriel

08-19-2007, 06:16 AM

I'd like a review of the following website:

http://www.clarusmarketingllc.com/
CSS File: http://www.clarusmarketingllc.com/css/style.css

Up for review:

Design
XHTML
CSS
Accessibility
Usability
Browser Compatibility (Safari on Mac especially)
Screen Resolution Bugs (Mine screen resolution only goes up to 1200 x 800)

The design and coding were both done by me.
I used only 7 layout images and used no hacks- this was a hard piece of work. :eek: The code actually uses Server Side Includes. I've posted the original code at the bottom in case anyone catches anything funny.

I don't need a review of the content. I've just barely started working for this new company so it might be a long time before we actually start directing people here. However I'd like to catch any mistakes and take suggestions before I go any further.

Once we get rolling I am considering a CSS powered drop-down menu. Any suggestions? Thanks for your comments and your time. They are much appreciated. :)

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Clarus Marketing LLC. Homepage</title>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Clarus Marketing LLC., Adverting, ads, company, increase, monopolize, marketplace" />
<meta name="description" content="Revolutionary Marketing Techniques from Clarus Marketing can quadruple the size and profits of your company while crushing your competition." />



</head>

<body>


<div id="content">

<div id="column2">
<img src="images/photos/businessman.jpg" alt="Business Man" />

<h2>Consulting</h2>

<p>Call us at <strong>(208)656-9990</strong> or send us a messsage at <strong>
info@clarusmarketingllc.com</strong></p>

</div>

<div id="column1">

<h1><em>What You Should Know About Marketing</em></h1>
<p>Strategic marketing- <strong>what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to- is MORE important than how you present it. </strong> </p>

<p>Most ads you see don't use strategic marketing effectively. Instead they use words that are overused and predictable-<em>"highest quality,
best service in town, greatest selection, lowest price, etc".</em> Ads like this don't engage the prospective buyer and DON'T get you results.
<strong>Stop spending your money on this type of advertising now!</strong>
</p>

<h3>Monopolize Your Marketplace with Clarus</h3>
<ul>
<li>Destroy your competition as you quadruple your company and profits.</li>
<li>Create effective strategic ads for a fraction of the cost you are paying now.</li>
<li>And have your customers saying "I would be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you... regardless of price"</li>
</ul>

</div>
</div>



</body>
</html>

NancyJ

08-19-2007, 08:43 AM

* Design
Fine. Pretty generic, nothing special but slick and well executed. Not sure about mr pointy
* XHTML
Minimalistic - which is good
* CSS
gave it a quick look over and it looks find
* Accessibility
Too wide - your max-width is 2000, its too wide at 1280 let alone 2000. Wide layouts and long lines are hard to read, especially for those with sight issues or learning difficulties.
* Usability
....really nothing to comment on here since theres only one page - you can't really 'use' it.
* Browser Compatibility (Safari on Mac especially)
Fine in FF 2 (but you probably knew that)
* Screen Resolution Bugs (Mine screen resolution only goes up to 1200 x 800
other than being too wide its fine at 1280x1024
* Tint (does it appear to have a green tint to anyone? My husband's monitor makes it look awful!)
That depends what the colours are supposed to be. If its supposed to be red, black and grey then your grey values are low on blue. Red its harder to tell since we don't know the exact shade you're trying for. Recalibrate your monitor and check the hex values in photoshop. For black -> grey -> white all the RGB values should be equal.

srule_

08-19-2007, 03:22 PM

Nope, No green tint for me.

Looks very sleak and nice.

Only thing i would addon to what nancy said is:

a) Maybe you can find a way to separate the content in the main area. For example maybe you can put it on a white background with curved borders or something over the left side content. Just as of right now i don't find it looks as organized as it could with everything over that beige gradient.

and a very minor issue, which is just basicly how I like to do things but find it helps,

b) Maybe add a few more comments to your css to make it easier for you to modify in the future or easier for your client to understand if he needs somthing. (ie: point out the nav section,header,footer, contect...). This is very minor tho, hehe.

lithriel

08-19-2007, 07:27 PM

Design- Fine. Pretty generic, nothing special but slick and well executed.

I'll take that as a compliment.

Too wide - your max-width is 2000, its too wide at 1280 let alone 2000. Wide layouts and long lines are hard to read, especially for those with sight issues or learning difficulties.

Okay, I will size down the max-width value. I like the website at 1200px wide.

* Usability
....really nothing to comment on here since theres only one page - you can't really 'use' it.

I've added lots of pages now: About, Contact, Industry Binders, Newsletter, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Contact Us, and a Sitemap. Content for these pages are not up. No I will not be using the picture of that man you see on the website right now he's just a good filler until I get some real content.

Maybe you can find a way to separate the content in the main area. For example maybe you can put it on a white background with curved borders or something over the left side content. Just as of right now i don't find it looks as organized as it could with everything over that beige gradient.

Great idea. I will create some decorations to go around blocks of content.

ess

08-19-2007, 09:33 PM

I personally like it.

Well done ;)

ahallicks

08-19-2007, 11:04 PM

I agree with Nancy for the most part. It's clean and crisp... nothing too fancy, but then again you don't want it to be. For what it does it looks fine. I would consider making the link font-size a little larger, as it is more difficult to read than maybe it should be? Or try a brighter colour.

You have one validation error where you have forgotten to close an <li>for the login section (which I presume is a sitewide include, so nothing too majoy).

Your CSS looks fine, if a little unorthodox as it's usually coded by structure of the page whereby you define the defaults for the html and body, and any other original tags. And then split it into the sections of header, body and footer within the CSS so you know what does what. But this is more for personal gain (and to help those that want to look through your code ;))

srule_

08-19-2007, 11:32 PM

Just notices a minor detail yet important. When I hover over the nav links, there is about a 2px gap at the very top that do not change background. looks a little odd.

lithriel

08-20-2007, 12:36 AM

. I would consider making the link font-size a little larger, as it is more difficult to read than maybe it should be

Thanks for the tip. I made the links in the navbar slightly larger. :)

You have one validation error where you have forgotten to close an <li>for the login section (which I presume is a sitewide include, so nothing too majoy).

Good heavens, why didn't my validator pick that one up? Fixed, but thanks. If you hadn't have told me I might never have caught that one. I can't stand my code to have errors.

Just notices a minor detail yet important. When I hover over the nav links, there is about a 2px gap at the very top that do not change background. looks a little odd.

Good catch srule. I played with some CSS and I've got it looking better now.

lithriel

08-24-2007, 05:28 PM

So I was just clicking on the link for this page and I kept getting a "Problem Loading Page" screen. I checked the ping for the address clarusmarketingllc.com and it was fine but refreshing the page did nothing.

Then I decided to take the www. out of the adress leaving http://clarusmarketingllc.com (http://clarusmarketingllc.com)and then it showed up. Then I clicked on the link I provided at the top again- http://www.clarusmarketingllc.com and it worked all of the sudden. What is up with that?

Is anyone else having trouble accessing the link at the top that I have provided? It worked for a few days after I posted at least. Unfortunately I am not given the option to edit my post anymore to fix the problem. I assume there is a time limitation for editing then.

Looking at this thread
http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=122018 (http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=122018) I get and idea of what could be causing this problem. But what I do not understand is why- when using www. in my link worked at one time, it would not work at another time.