MK5 Golf GTI
General => Random Chat => Topic started by: JackG on November 27, 2011, 09:19:02 pm
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Hi guys,
As some of you may know I've recently started my own detailing buisness
It's taken me months to get this website sorted and after lots of "it's not right" "I don't like the shade" etc etc
I think I'm happy with it :jumpmove:
I'd just like some opinions on weather it seems to go on too much or if there is anything yourselfs as customers may change
I'm still adding my gallery pages so I am aware that's not great but the rest I'm happy with
I'd just like some opinions on what I should maybe change/get rid of......I've newe done this before so it is my 1st attempt so please be nice :signLOL:
http://www.distinctdetailing.co.uk/
Thanks for all the advice on advertising in places too! This forum has helped me big time with all this
Thank you guys :notworthy:
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Site looks professional enough, maybe a little basic (you might be aiming for this im not sure?), only thing I would fix is the main Purple bar at top, it has jagged edges as if its not coded correctly and maybe make the GTI Pic a little more realistic as it looks a little squashed currently.
Under showrooms header your "basic Bi-weekly wash" currently reads "Baic Bi-weekly wash".
Also a testimonial page for your customers to write reports would be helpfull for others thinking of using your services.
Otherwise it has most things you need I think.
Good luck with things!!
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Site looks professional enough, maybe a little basic (you might be aiming for this im not sure?), only thing I would fix is the main Purple bar at top, it has jagged edges as if its not coded correctly and maybe make the GTI Pic a little more realistic as it looks a little squashed currently.
Under showrooms header your "basic Bi-weekly wash" currently reads "Baic Bi-weekly wash".
Also a testimonial page for your customers to write reports would be helpfull for others thinking of using your services.
Otherwise it has most things you need I think.
Good luck with things!!
Thats great, thanks for pointing that out :happy2:
I'm trying to keep it "simple ish" I don't want it mega tricky and want it to have the answers pepole may ask
So I am aiming to be intermediate simple of that makes sense :signLOL:
Thanks for your input :congrats:
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Services page is too long. Too much text and takes too long to read.
A website should have impact, be simple, and most the pages should be limited to 1 screen.
All imo of course. :happy2:
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Services page is too long. Too much text and takes too long to read.
A website should have impact, be simple, and most the pages should be limited to 1 screen.
All imo of course. :happy2:
Have thought that myself...do you think it would reply questions you may have tho?
Thank you :happy2:
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The Showroom page is currently not looking 100%
A problem occurred the other day, :scared: and the one fix the 'tech experts' at the website host help line could come up with, was to delete the page and start again.
So I need to completely rebuild that page. First job to do Monday morning
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The Showroom page is currently not looking 100%
A problem occurred the other day, :scared: and the one fix the 'tech experts' at the website host help line could come up with, was to delete the page and start again.
So I need to completely rebuild that page. First job to do Monday morning
This is my partner in crime too :signLOL:
She's the brains behind this all.....I'll just blame her for any probs :fighting2:
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Personally (and I like to see websites pleasing on the eye) there's too many different styles and fonts, too many different colours, etc. on the home page. I didn't go any further as it put me off.
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Distinct Detailing "Discover Whats Possible"
this is at the bottom of the Homepage. It should read "Discover What's Possible" as per the top of the Homepage.
HTH
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Distinct Detailing "Discover Whats Possible"
this is at the bottom of the Homepage. It should read "Discover What's Possible" as per the top of the Homepage.
HTH
Yes it does help :happy2: after a few weeks of it and making change after change after change it all seems bang on but a fresh set of eyes allways helps :drinking:
Jack
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+1 on sorting the pic at the top as it does look squashed. :happy2:
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Home page looks much better now. :happy2:
Another thing to look at is the pictures. Your work will show off the paintwork and finish of a car only as well as the picture you take. Your pics on there are very hard to see any detail, (with the exception of the Mazda which is fairly good) and could just be lifted from Google pics. You need good quality before and afters, or 50/50 splits to really show what you can do.
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contact page looks bad being one image + will take forever to load, get rid of the hit counter thats so 1960's, the top menu bar shouldn't really be on 2 rows, hi res images would be a bonus, the page title is still "webbuilder"
Just noticed most pages are images not text, thats bad it will never get referenced by any search engine.
think the background should be more than just black, dont think the purple suits the color scheme.
Its a working progress :signLOL:
These are imo and i dont mean to offend, only help as i know enough to comment.
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I do like the company logo and font but the menu bar and counter grate against it.
I'd redesign the menu into a single bar (rather than two) and change the design of it. If you want to keep the purple, fine but lose the paint/crayon effect and make it solid and sharp. Alternatively, design it so that it's a menu with a coloured solid background but a "~" appears under each item as you hover over it. It'd fit more with the logo.
For the "service" section, consider links on the side so you can jump down to the relevant section without having to scroll.
On prices, might be worth explaining or giving examples of what small/medium/large is eg hatchback/saloon/truck etc
For the contact detail, use the 'f' symbol that's now associated with facebook. Make the contacts links so I can click on it to email you or go to your facebook website.
Showrooms - again, congested menu - think about redesigning this.
My tuppence. :happy2:
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Ok I will be honest, being a part time web designer I feel I need to contribute!
First thing your attracting to is the "Welcome to Distinct Detailing" banner. Now you have less then 6 seconds to capture someone and keep them on your website so my maint suggestion here would be -
Remove the main top image with the golf on, replace this with the one mentioned above.
Next up is the Nav Bar, the colour isn't too bad, not my personal preference, but try a nice simple CSS3 nav bar, nice gradient on there with drop down menus. When I hit show rooms it leads to what can appear to be a blank page, either have this page and then large clickable icons to other pages or make it so it's options drop on hover of showroom. It took me a while to find the sub-navigation in all honesty.
If you are 100% commited to keeping that navigation bar then align the "Products" and "About Us" links to the center and remove and excess purple blocks.
When I did find them, I found them clunky with pictures and maybe a little less descriptive of what's happening, take a look at Mig's detailing blog posts on his website, look at the descriptions and see how each post is set out, some pictures aligned left, some right and then finals are all centered.
Some pages are aligned to the left, others are aligned to the center, you want to make sure all pages are in uniform and all match the same.
Once thing I do like is the font one each page such as this -
(https://www.mk5golfgti.co.uk/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.distinctdetailing.co.uk%2Fresources%2Fwhat%2Bis%2Bdetailing%2B-%2Bblack.png&hash=cead2207dcfe438decd7f57f4ab6ca70c7bab98c)
That's a nice touch, but I seriously don't see your main logo as a company identity.
Also on some pages you have images of text, it's sometimes better to type these and maybe create a DIV for quotes so it shows in a different format so you can instantly tell it's a quote of some sort.
Hope you don't feel I'm being out of order just I'm in that business and do a few corporate identity designs a month so I know how important it all is.
If you need any help then just ask me I will see what I can do ;)
Heres an example of a nice simple dropdown menu -
(https://www.mk5golfgti.co.uk/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.s3.envato.com%2Ffiles%2F7917579%2Fpreview%2F1_Blue.jpg&hash=5f22e62b489dd996f68d7955bea8ec60930e25fb)
Simon
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Lastly look in the <TITLE></TITLE> tags on your website, you need to change them ;)
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Thanks for the info Simon :drinking:
Jut a few pointers at the moment then guys
•we are in the process of fixing the gallery page but will wait until our new camera arrives to take more pictures due to the quality of my old camera
•we will add a testimonial page
•fix the main homepage/banner image and make the golf look better (may even make it cartoon like yet)
•add a blog page
•adjust the amounts of words in the services page and make it more simple to read
•keep only 2 colours and fonts to make it more simple
•explain vehicle size chart
•generally improve the main page theme and try to simplify it
Thanks for the input guys !
Will report back once work is done :happy2:
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No worries if your stuck on anything just drop me a PM or ask here I will try my best to help!
Best get back to my own design jobs I have to finish haha!
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Lastly look in the <TITLE></TITLE> tags on your website, you need to change them ;)
this....
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Brilliant!! Thank you all for your input!
the GTI Pic a little more realistic as it looks a little squashed currently.
+1 on sorting the pic at the top as it does look squashed.
Remove the main top image with the golf on, replace this with the one mentioned above.
Banner is now no longer squashed, and changed to “welcome to Distinct Detailing”
Under showrooms header your "basic Bi-weekly wash" currently reads "Baic Bi-weekly wash".
DONE
a testimonial page for your customers to write reports would be helpfull for others thinking of using your services.
Ive now added a ‘Testimonials’ Page. It looks horrible. But im really limited to how it looks. I want yellow font with a black background. But it doesn’t alow that colour scheme.
I can have a black background, but yellow font then isn’t an option.
And if I have yellow font, I can’t have a Black background :fighting2:
Need to test it out. I might have to change it later, so I just get personal quotes from customers. And just write the quotes out myself, and just list the quotes, rather than having an imput system.
Services page is too long. Too much text and takes too long to read. A website should have impact, be simple, and most the pages should be limited to 1 screen.
Will leave that to Jack ;)
there's too many different styles and fonts, too many different colours, etc. on the home page.
DONE
the bottom of the Homepage It should read "Discover What's Possible" as per the top of the Homepage
DONE
get rid of the hit counter thats so 1960's,
DONE
Another thing to look at is the pictures. Your pics on there are very hard to see any detail, (with the exception of the Mazda which is fairly good)
This will hopefully get sorted after Christmas, when a new camera arrives
For the "service" section, consider links on the side so you can jump down to the relevant section without having to scroll.
Would love to do that, and looked into before as it was something I wanted to. But as far as I could find (searching thru the 1&1 website) it doesn’t seem to be something they offer.
If anyone knows how to do this let me know ;)
When I hit show rooms it leads to what can appear to be a blank page, either have this page and then large clickable icons to other pages or make it so it's options drop on hover of showroom. It took me a while to find the sub-navigation in all honesty.
This might have been whilst the page was under construction. The page went nuts the other day. Just kept showing the ‘renovation details’ page, and also the banner and nav bar came up 3 times.
I phone 1&1 and the only solution they could come up with was to delete the page completely and start again.
Its looks slightly like it did originally, except some of the links I’ve put up don’t work. This seems to be hit and miss with 1&1. I had a problem for ages with the links not working. I could link to facebook fine. But links to pages inside the website, just wouldn’t work. I phoned 1&1 helpline, and the reply was ‘uuummmmm…..it should work’. One day the page links started working fine. But now since re-doing the page. Only 2 out of 4 work. I have no idea why! I do all the links the exact same way. They just seem to choose of their own accord if they work or not :fighting:
THE NAV BAR
the main Purple bar at top, it has jagged edges as if its not coded correctly
dont think the purple suits the color scheme.
I'd redesign the menu into a single bar (rather than two)
The top menu bar shouldn't really be on 2 rows,
Next up is the Nav Bar, the colour isn't too bad, not my personal preference, but try a nice simple CSS3 nav bar, nice gradient on there with drop down menus. If you are 100% commited to keeping that navigation bar then align the "Products" and "About Us" links to the center and remove and excess purple blocks.
Obviously something you all agree on!
We are using 1&1 as our webhost. And use the ‘simple builder’ web design. This is really really limited. Jack has been asking me for ages to get a Black background. As we’ve always had white. But there was never a pure black background.
I finally found one the other day. But the purple Nav Bar is part of it I’ve tried changing the colour, but change the colour and the background changes. They seem to have certain colours that go together.
And there’s no option at all to change the shape, or make all the pages appear on one row
It defiantly would be worth upgrading ‘web design’ so I could have more options. Especially as the purple is something you have all picked up on. But im not sure if actually designing layouts would be beyond me – if anyone uses 1&1 and is more experienced , and has advice, I would appreciate it! ;)
That's a nice touch, but I seriously don't see your main logo as a company identity.
The Logo thing changes quite a bit atm.
One of the first things we did was buy the business cards, and invoice paper and t-shirts and so on. Which uses the certain fonts we use. When we set up the website, I managed to work out which fonts and colours were used on the cards and such, and match them up to use on the website.
I’d prefer not to have the image at all. But just the words and phrase, but we weren’t certain if this was to simple or boring.
If you need any help then just ask me I will see what I can do ;)
Please make it all for me! I’m not even kidding!
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Thanks again for all your replies. I’m still working on it bit by bit, and working on the other comments that i haven’t quoted above.
if anyone is experienced with 1&1 webhosting website builder, feel free to give me some tips. the people on the helpline, don’t even seem to know how to use it, so I feel a little blind half the time!
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Banner looks 110% makes a huge difference! But is it just me or does it sit to the left a little?
I viewed the source the other day of your website and noticed it was a custom builder thingy, will look into that and see if you can fully edit .css and .html files now ;)
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Banner looks 110% makes a huge difference! But is it just me or does it sit to the left a little?
I viewed the source the other day of your website and noticed it was a custom builder thingy, will look into that and see if you can fully edit .css and .html files now ;)
:drinking: thanks, big thanks to verity for doing it for me :signLOL:
I don't understand the whole builder thing....would rather pay and have a really good one I think!
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Well theres enough of us here to get something knocked up buddy! ;)