This website look professional enough?

Norm Sanders

Norm Sanders

Script Wrangler
www.eefilm.com/playitagain

I am NOT a design or website expert. I took a photoshop template (one file), and created this site from it.

Before I begin advertising, just looking for some general feedback if you feel this will have a nice attractive look, if the font is legible, if people would be confident enough from the look to inquire about ordering, etc.

There are still some links that need to be fixed, etc., but for the most part I'm about 99% complete. I also need to have the domains propegate, so the website will show up (www.playitagainprod.com)

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!
 
I dig it. Nice clean, friendly design. Going to be having any flash stuff on there? A little movement might make it "pop" a bit more.
 
Thanks Brandon ... I agree it would pop more with some FLASH, but I'm not a FLASH guy. If someone's got a killer teaser/motion strip they want to create for kicks, I at least know how to integrate it.

I'm also not confident with how text will size on the screen over graphics (I don't know how to make the page/graphics expand with the browser), so I just did all the text and everything in images ... so I'm concerned about load time as it is, let alone adding much FLASH to it.
 
you spelled "unique" wrong on the About Us page...also, don't put "lowest price guaranteed" on the first page as basically the first headline - it's bad marketing...you want your selling point to be the quality, not the cheapness...if it's inexpensive even better, but don't use that as your primary selling point...
 
Thanks OregonDank! Wish Photoshop could spell check! :) I'll get that fixed, as well as look to move that lowest price portion, unless others disagree. I see your point, but also know that most people are HUGE into the lowest price for this kind of thing, so thought that's what I should stress.

Again, thanks, and I'll look to take care of those things.
 
Envision said:
Thanks Brandon ... I agree it would pop more with some FLASH, but I'm not a FLASH guy. If someone's got a killer teaser/motion strip they want to create for kicks, I at least know how to integrate it.

I'm also not confident with how text will size on the screen over graphics (I don't know how to make the page/graphics expand with the browser), so I just did all the text and everything in images ... so I'm concerned about load time as it is, let alone adding much FLASH to it.
Click to expand...

Cool! I would suggest you PM g0ldenb0y55. I work with him and he's pretty good at making basic flash animations that add a lot, and they are not memory intensive. They load quick. Just make sure all of your images are .gif, and you should be cool with load times. Sorry for not catching the typos. I was looking at it strictly from a design standpoint.
 
what you should stress is a USP (Unique Selling Point) - that is to say, what sets you apart from your competition? everyone's heard low low prices before...i'm not saying DON'T mention it, just don't make it your bread and butter
 
Geez, good question. The only three things I can think of to say is FAST turn around times, LOW/competetive pricing, and excellent service ... all three of which are things other companies can spout off ... while not always providing (i.e. great service - they can say it, but not always provide it).

Anyone got any great ideas of what to say that's "unique"?
 
I think it looks extremely professional.

But (isn't there always a but), I have no idea what the web site is for and what they do.

You buried the lead. :)

Chris
 
I agree with Chris, the website looks great, except I didn't know what it was for, I had to search around.

Make the DVD duplication the center of attention.
 
Another thought, while the image on the left is very clean and professional, I have no idea what it is. It doesn't convey any message.

I think a different, more recognizable image there, could help a lot.

Chris
 
It looks professional enough, I suppose, but it also looks very bland and a bit dated. Sort of like a 2001-era linkfarm, in my opinion. Nothing about the design of the site tells me anything about your company; unfortunately, I had to read halfway through the ABOUT US page to find out what you do.

So that's the bad news. The good news is a lot of that stuff isn't hard to fix. Here's my top five suggestions:

1) change the picture on the front page (what is that?) to something immediately recognizable to your customers. A stack of DVDs or similar. Preferably something stylish and iconic.

2) change your headlines to reflect what you do, not a sales pitch. Instead of "An effective way to do business," say "Personalized disc duplication services" or something like that. Better than that, even: make it bigger, make it the first thing I see, make it snappy.

3) lose the stuff that's pure stock photography. Why is there a ballerina there? I don't know. If there was a DVD case study that you did for a ballerina documentary, I'd love to see that, though!

4) absolutely clean up the pricing page. sort those payment groups into sensible, color coded tables. make it obvious at a single glance that one thing is separate from another. give me a way to intuit what I need to see so I can filter out the rest myself.

5) change "Company Info" to "Contact Us" or similar. What's the difference between "About Us" and "Company Info", semantically speaking? Not much. People will automatically scan looking for the word "contact".


And here's a few bonus tips:
* make the logo into a link that returns you to the main page. I barely even noticed the "return to main" link at the bottom of your pages.
* use other colors as a visual tool. right now it's just purple, lighter purple, and another purple. It's good that you have a color motif, but you need to expand it so it becomes a really sensible color scheme.


Those are my at-a-glance tips. Sorry if that's a bit overwhelming, but like I said, most of it's easy easy stuff to fix that will vastly improve your image.
 
You might want to check the spelling/usage of the word(s) "turn around". For some reason, I keep looking at it thinking it should read "turnaround"...but I could be completely wrong. Also in the disclaimer page, I think it should read "monies" instead of moneys in the first paragraph.

Otherwise, I liked it, taking the additional advice from our other friends in this thread. :thumbsup:
 
Cool, thanks everyone. Chris and especially doug (okay, you too Thartley, Brandon, and Oregon!) some great helpful tips.

As far as the dancer ... nothing to do with DVD's, came with the stock PSD file, but I thought with the tagline, it would look kind of cute ... like someone marching, happy, etc.

The colors ... you have no idea how impressed I am with people that can coordinate colors, designs, etc. I am just so extremely limited in this area ... some day I'll have to go to school for it, but even at that, I think it's a natural gift some have & some don't ... I'm in the latter section.

Doug, if you've got ideas of how to color that pricing stuff so it's broken up, yet professionally laid out & blends with the other color theme, I'd love to hear it.

Otherwise, I'll see if I can make those changes tonight to reflect most, if not all, of the above observations. Great stuff folks, and I truly appreciate it!
 
It's a nice design, but it's obvious you took it from a generic template and changed it to meet your needs. Not good. I echo everyone's comments above, but have one more which you seriously need to consider if you actually want visitors. This mistake happens a lot here so I've bolded it (and made it the DVXuser yellow) for future reference. :)

Unfortunately your design has no REAL content. That means there's no text, it's all images, so search engines will place you on the bottom of their lists. This is a HUGE mistake that is made often. You want people to find your site but, with the site you have now, NOBODY will ever see/find it because search engines can not crawl images for keywords. Meta-tags (descriptions, keywords, etc.) don't help as much as real content that Google and the other guys can crawl and update. To fix this you need to rebuild this site in HTML/Dreamweaver and use actual content.

Sorry to sound so cruel but consider it tough love. I want people to find your site or else all your hard work is wasted. Good luck and PM me if you need any help.
 
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I know, I know ... I DROOL over a lot of the stuff I see out there, but to have someone else create the site for us the average bid starts at $3K and goes up from there.

If someone wants to build a killer site, we can try to work out a deal with discounts on duplication, etc., but we otherwise don't have the capital in the account (all invested in the equipment & inventory) to pay for the professional website I'd love to have ... as such, it's a template.
 
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