Nerve-wracking!

Okay, anyone. Makes me nervous to say this, but I'd appreciate your opinions on our site. Go ahead, cut me to ribbons...I can take it.

The url is http://whalesweb.com.

Thanks!

John

Hi John,

I don't think you've got anything to be nervous about - your site's excellent!

The splash screen is nicely designed and creates a professional first impression. The main index page, although information-rich due to the right-hand catalog menu, is fairly easy to read, though you may want to add a bit more horizontal space between the main left and right hand columns in the page.

The random faces element is used to good effect and helps to personalise the site, as well as give the impression of something "new" each time you visit.

The one issue I have is with the slightly confusing navigation. You have the "Quick Menu" top-right, but then also the "Who are we? What do we offer?" etc menus above and below the email login on the index page. Conflicting navigation systems are often confusing. Consider adding "Who are we? What do we offer?" etc. to your Quick Menu as well.

Also, on the Quick Menu, I couldn't see how to navigate back to the main index page. Eventually I found it - under "Catalog" - but this was not what I was expecting. How about "home page" or "main page"?

A couple of small points - the banner frame is a bit to small vertically, so on my Netscape it chops off the bottom pixel or two of the banner. And on your "Contact Us" page, the "Send" button at the bottom needs a border="0" to stop the blue rectangular border on Netscape.

Overall, a nicely designed site, especially the splash page and the random faces idea. I also really liked the multi-language option (though I can't speak Japanese or Korean!).

Cheers,
Matt
Elated



--
Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/

Thanks for the feedback, Matt!

I agreed whole-heartedly with all your comments and made all the changes.

I increased the banner area from 65 pixels to 70 pixels, and increased the vertical space between the left and right column in the main frame an additional 10 pixels as well.

Also, I added the other links to the the Quick Menu, and got rid of the blue border on the Contact Us page.

Thanks a lot for your comments.

John

Cool, that looks much better!

Matt
Elated

--
Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/