Website opinions please...

[XS1954]

Hi all,

I am working on a website for a friend of mine and would like as many of you as possible to take a quick look and tell me what you think of it and please do be honest!

I am more interested in what you think of the layout instead of the text content etc as this will be changed anyway. The site is not live and is in test phase at the minute and I am aware of a few problems.

Please click below to see it.
https://www.performancedrivers.co.uk/index_new.htm
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You're a cock.

[G]

Okay, opinions:

First, seems pretty professionally put togther, a lot better than some of the web sites stuck up here .

First thing I noticed was the initial download time though. I'm on broadband and still took a while to load up the whole. Might be worth adding up the total sizes of all the files in the first page; divide the total answer in kb by 5 and you've got the time it takes someone on a 56k modem with a decent connection to download it. However I can definitely remember from 56k days that it's easily possible to get 1kbs. That would equate to 18 seconds to load your banner and something like 13 per picture in the top left.

On the rotating pictures... is the really required? Seems to distract more than anything, never mind the whole download time issue.

The car in the background on some of the pages is 88k, that's going to be at least 17 seconds on 56k. While it is relatively nicely done; ie faded out slightly so it doesn't impose so much; I still felt that it was a bit intrusive and ultimately unnecessary.

I thought the style of the top bars was quite nice, maybe that could be carried onto the side bar, which not only looks a bit unfinished, but doesn't seem to do much the top bar doesn't.
If you're going for that style it might be advisable to carry it on through the rest of the site, ie for other bits in the content, the top right little boxes thing etc.
Which, by the way, doesn't quite seem to make sense: ie a box that says 'Advanced Road'.


All the above is just 'In my opinion', so don't take offence, just trying to help .. and has been pointed out recently, I don't get paid to make websites unlike some others on here .

[Bendy]

My main issue would be the duplication of the navigation - it's confusing. You have 'about us' on the top and side nav, both taking the user to the same page, while other sections only appear on the left nav.

You should either have top level navigation subjects which show their sub-levels when the user mouses over them, or you should present the whole navigation to them at once.

And as you're trying to make money, 'How To Book' should be at the top level.

The big car in the background needs to be knocked back a bit more, as it still interferes with the reading of the text slightly. Also, I feel it needs to be used consistently (ie. on all pages) - at the moment it's not on the How To Book page although you may have just not done it yet.

On the payment system, you've got it popping out of the frameset which is good as people are trained to look for that padlock icon. However, it would be nice if it opened as a new page, leaving the main website still in the background. Also, only having payment by card is a risk - you *will* get people unwilling to pay that way, so a cheque or at least 'phone us with your card details' would be advisable.

Agree with what G's saying on download times - it loaded really fast for me, but it's something to check and make sure everything's optimised to be as small as possible without compromising quality.

Nice clean site though - a good start. Oh, and I do get paid to make websites.

[XS1954]

Thanks for your replies. I will take note of what you have both said. My real problem is the framesets, they look fine at 1024 res but go totally shite in 800x600 so I am effectively going to have to design the site twice! In terms of the background image being a big file size, that is becuase I cannot get it to stop repeating itself so half the image is pure white background until I figure out how to stop the image repeating.

On the whole then, the feedback is pretty positive. Please keep em coming!

Cheers..
____________________
You're a cock.

[Bendy]

bg properties = "fixed"