Be gentle

[tspek]

Originally Posted by Rowsdower!

Perhaps not, but it would be something to explain to your friend as a suggestion/best practice. Even if he is not receptive to the idea it would still be your decision to move the link out of the main menu of the base site (since that's the one you have creative reign over). Wouldn't it?

There is no specific drawback to having the contact form on every page other than...having the contact form on every page. If you wanted to you could plop the sitemap into every page, too but then why bother with a sitemap page on its own? Not to mention that it adds code and takes up space in your layout that you shouldn't otherwise have to worry about. It's basically just clutter first and foremost and it doesn't provide any real benefit. That doesn't fit in so well on a minimalist design, but even in a busy layout this is just bad form.

The logic is that a lot of his traffic (at this point, the majority of it) is coming from referral links on message boards. I don't want someone coming to his "carbon wheel" and having an excuse to end up somewhere else and never sending him an inquiry.

Perhaps it's flawed.

[Rowsdower!]

If you're worried that the typical user might not find the contact page then you need to move it up in the menu a few spots to make it more likely that the user will actually see it.

Well, for better or worse that's still my suggestion for this issue. You certainly don't have to follow it if you don't like it though.

[tspek]

I'm actually interested in a conversation about it. From a design perspective I think its currently a little ugly. However, I fear that since he doesn't have an online store that he will lose potential customers who may not follow through with an email. If its not quickly available to do so.

[tspek]

I've made a few changes that I think have effectively made the site more visually appealing. Always appreciate and open to feedback. I also took the advice on the contact forms, and think that's probably a good thing.

[tspek]

Originally Posted by tspek

I've made a few changes that I think have effectively made the site more visually appealing. Always appreciate and open to feedback. I also took the advice on the contact forms, and think that's probably a good thing.

Originally Posted by client

I'd say put the contact form back on the pages....I have had more response with that form than I ever had. I love having ti there even if it seems non-pro.

I told him i'll put it back up, and simply work on making it prettier. I think that's kind of the key here.

[Rowsdower!]

His increased responses could have to do entirely with SEO/page ranking or even just the more legitimate look and feel of the new site for all we know. He is making a leap in logic that might not be warranted.

Has he had increased TRAFFIC as well or just an increase in response? That will be important to determine if SEO has played a role. You'll really never be able to pin down any change related specifically to the site design though.

At any rate, were it my client I would recommend that they at least give it a try without the recurring contact form. If response dips back down again significantly then you can discuss replacing it. That would be me.

Anyway, with regard to the layout, I'm much more pleased with the page width. On the home page the bottom image (two wheels - "PSIMET's Custom 50mm Deep Carbon Clincher wheelset") is too wide for the span class to handle which leaves an overlap on the right-hand side where the image/link breaks out of the containing span. You might want to re-evaluate either the width of that image (reduce it by 4px width in order to compensate for the 2px of border width on each side) or else increase the width of that span by 4px to fit the image/link border into the span. This same issue appears in any case where the image inside of this class of span is also a link - which is most of the time.

There is no hover state for the in-page text links. You might want to consider a moderate font color change or perhaps adding text-decoration:underline; as a hover state so that users can see when a link is hovered.

Your contact form appears differently between IE7 and FF3 (and probably other browsers, too). On some pages this is a bigger problem than it is on others. The problem is least noticeable on the contact page, but it still appears everywhere. You will need to do some cross-browser tweaking with that form in order to make it fall in line.

Other than that and the color issue I mentioned earlier I think it's good.

[tspek]

Originally Posted by Rowsdower!

His increased responses could have to do entirely with SEO/page ranking or even just the more legitimate look and feel of the new site for all we know. He is making a leap in logic that might not be warranted.

Has he had increased TRAFFIC as well or just an increase in response? That will be important to determine if SEO has played a role. You'll really never be able to pin down any change related specifically to the site design though.

At any rate, were it my client I would recommend that they at least give it a try without the recurring contact form. If response dips back down again significantly then you can discuss replacing it. That would be me.

Anyway, with regard to the layout, I'm much more pleased with the page width. On the home page the bottom image (two wheels - "PSIMET's Custom 50mm Deep Carbon Clincher wheelset") is too wide for the span class to handle which leaves an overlap on the right-hand side where the image/link breaks out of the containing span. You might want to re-evaluate either the width of that image (reduce it by 4px width in order to compensate for the 2px of border width on each side) or else increase the width of that span by 4px to fit the image/link border into the span. This same issue appears in any case where the image inside of this class of span is also a link - which is most of the time.

There is no hover state for the in-page text links. You might want to consider a moderate font color change or perhaps adding text-decoration:underline; as a hover state so that users can see when a link is hovered.

Your contact form appears differently between IE7 and FF3 (and probably other browsers, too). On some pages this is a bigger problem than it is on others. The problem is least noticeable on the contact page, but it still appears everywhere. You will need to do some cross-browser tweaking with that form in order to make it fall in line.

Other than that and the color issue I mentioned earlier I think it's good.

I'm actually with you 100% on the contact form being there. I know it's not an SEO thing because google only just recently indexed his site (3 days ago, took a while...). Organic traffic is up 1% in those three days but that's probably attributed to me to be honest.

I'll re-approach it in a few weeks when his organic traffic goes up, because it will go up (his last site was horrible SEO-wise)


Re: Linked images...that was another thing I removed before but for some reason i managed to upload an outdated CSS. I have removed the link border from the images so i don't think it's an issue anymore.

As for the form width, it's set to a specific width via HTML and I can't seem to replicate this. Would you mind posting a screen shot??

The hover state was always meant to be red, typo in the CSS fixed that...thanks

[SB65]

I like the gradient background you've added, makes the whole site look smarter.

The contact form message box is being thrown a bit by:

<textarea name="Message" rows="5px" cols="90px"></textarea>

and is very small in IE7. Remove the px, so it's rows="5" and cols="90", and I think that might sort it for IE and FF at least.

[tspek]

Originally Posted by SB65

I like the gradient background you've added, makes the whole site look smarter.

The contact form message box is being thrown a bit by:

<textarea name="Message" rows="5px" cols="90px"></textarea>

and is very small in IE7. Remove the px, so it's rows="5" and cols="90", and I think that might sort it for IE and FF at least.

Hmm. I actually added the px to see if i noticed a change across browsers. It didn't. I'll delete that though.

[Rowsdower!]

Originally Posted by SB65

I like the gradient background you've added, makes the whole site look smarter.

The contact form message box is being thrown a bit by:

<textarea name="Message" rows="5px" cols="90px"></textarea>

and is very small in IE7. Remove the px, so it's rows="5" and cols="90", and I think that might sort it for IE and FF at least.

Yes, try something like this. Actually, remove the rows and cols all together and use ONLY CSS for this part.

Screen shots are attached for a view from the home page. The first is IE7 and the second is FF3.

[Apostropartheid]

Originally Posted by Rowsdower!

Yes, try something like this. Actually, remove the rows and cols all together and use ONLY CSS for this part.

Screen shots are attached for a view from the home page. The first is IE7 and the second is FF3.

rows and cols are required attributes. CSS overrides them.

[Rowsdower!]

Originally Posted by Apostropartheid

rows and cols are required attributes. CSS overrides them.

Hmm. I didn't realize that they were required. I don't mess with forms much on the whole. That's good to know, though.

Thanks!

[tspek]

So he row & column is required but it's irrelevant as it gets overridden by CSS?

[abduraooft]

Originally Posted by tspek

So he row & column is required but it's irrelevant as it gets overridden by CSS?

It's required to give the dimensions to the textarea, in browsers like lynx, in which there's no CSS support. Also, it's required to pass w3's markup validation

[SB65]

Originally Posted by tspek

So he row & column is required but it's irrelevant as it gets overridden by CSS?

I think the point here is that the rows and column attributes are required. Without them the page won't validate.

If you are additionally setting the height/width of the textarea via css, then this will override the rows/cols. You don't have any such settings in your css, hence in your case rows/cols will have an effect.