Need Opinions on our site!

I have had a chance to review this forum and I love the honest opinions (good and bad!!) that I have seen.

I would be honored if you all would view our new site and simply let us know what you think.

http://www.aereus.com/

We are looking for SOME specifics if you do spend the time. We would love to know how easy the site is to navigate. Can you find what you are looking for in relativly few cliks. Does the site wow you? Do you feel overly burdened by the design? Does the sites design get in the way of the intended goal?

Is the site too loud or too quiet?

We went with a simple, standards based design. Our site validates via W3C Standards. We are not asking for a critique in this area as you can validate any page at the bottom of each page.. but if you do and you do find an error please post it here!

We really want our site to shine, and our current and potential clients to enjoy the experience!

Thank you in advance,

Kris

Hi,

I reviewed your site and here are my comments:

The site is well structured and organized. It is quite easy to navigate from page to page. I like the fact that the links change color to indicate what page you are on. Having the left navigation bar makes is easy to view specific information. I was able to find what I was looking for in one or two clicks.

The only real issue that I have is the fact that I have to download a plugin in order to view a portion of the website. Plugins are nice to use but may take time to load especially if you are using dial up. Some people may not want to download a plugin. The background is also a little dark.

Overall I think that the site is well done.

Although this might be a good site, it took over 17 seconds to load, and that's with me on a Fat pipe connection (1gbps).

Users usually wait around 5 to 10 seconds for a site to load some content, any longer and they will click away.

You need to sort this asap.

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WelshStew Site Admin
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tierney rides tboard - uk site | xtreme wales - extreme clothing
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Overall, I like it.

But I agree with welshstew - it would be well worth spending more $ on a faster host.

Also, some parts of the site didn't work without JavaScript, which is annoying and hides that content from search engines.

Again, the site is nice but i took ages to load on an 8mb connection.

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone!

I was unaware of such a lag in load times. The site is not load heavy, so we are looking at our hosting solution.

Thanks for the heads up. After testing we have definetly seen this to be an issue and will resolve it immediatly.


Which parts of the site didn't work btw? We tried to make this site as accessible as possible, and if there are issues please detail them and I can fix them!


Also the plugin issue. Was this the Flash Plugin only or were you forced to download something else? Curious! Thank you!

Gensael

Do you have firefox? take a look here for some useful tools to help test your site:
http://www.webforumz.com/beginner-re...dd-ons-for.htm

for you guys I would really install yslow and take a look at what is taking so long to download.

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WelshStew Site Admin
If you think I've helped, click the "Thanks"
tierney rides tboard - uk site | xtreme wales - extreme clothing
WebForumz - facebook | LinkedIn

I'm not sure what you mean by loud or quiet, but I would definitely visit this website more than once, which is really saying something.

Now the issues:
In the login page, I would change the Forgot Password font to something other than black - it is extremely difficult to see. A frustrated user will not be able to find it when panicking about a lost password. I think it should be changed to something lighter.

Did you know you could create a style value for your buttons? The grey standard buttons stand out like a white dot on a black background. In your style sheet, you could simply type "input" and then the style values, or you could create a class for the buttons.

I think all of the external links should show up in a new window, this includes the CSS, XHTML, 508, Sitemap links in the footer, as well as any other links to websites posted in the blog, particularly when it takes the new page a while to load or when it takes a while to get back to the original page.

In the Support Page, I think the different links should show up in a new window, it would help with navigation, particularly for those who want to look at more than one list item.

I like the font-size option in the Blog; few people have that, but what is the reason for only having it just in the blog? Maybe you could put it on all of the other pages? Just an idea.

Over all, I'm very impressed with the majority of the website. Good job guys!

Hi,

First thing I have to add, this website took an age to load, and I am using a really fast connection here, and for the people on the slower connections, they would have left this website long ago.

Ok, onto the website, the website is very visually appealing, I really do like the look of it.

The navigation links, I feel should be 1/2 px bigger in size, because at the moment they are a little too small.

I don't like the fact that the news bit on the homepage requires another scrollbar, I am aware without that the content wont match, but how about adding some kind of button, advertising, that when clicks sends you to a complete new page for the news? I think this would be a better choice.

But overall, nice website.

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The site looks great but a few pointers:

The background and overall design is perhaps a little too dark. Not that it looks bat necessarily, but users usually (not necesarrily always) relate websites with a white background (or just a light background for that matter) as more professional.

Using flash is good on your site but it could pose problems to those who don't use flash for several reasons and remember that there are a small portion of web surfers whom use text based browsers either because of the speed thereof or because of visual disabilities. That means a whole portion of folks can't view your site (or part thereof).

Overall the navigation is good and easy to follow.

You might also get yourself a decent logo and a favicon (favicon being the little icon next to your URL bar in the browser). A logo is good because users can then associate it with your website when they spot it.

Hope it helps - Good luck!