ok... Company firm new site almost completed.. thoughts?

[martekbiz]

Hi All,

Well.. its bene a long 2-3 months trying to determine a new direction our firm should take with its own web site.

We did not want to produce a flash based site.. but we did want it graphically pleasing to the eye.

Some compromise had to be made on the graphics versus viewing audience. Meaning.. on a 56K dialup.. for a COMPLETE load it takes on average 20 or so seconds (that's our average benchmark using a couple different dialup accounts and machines of various speeds).

Its suited for the business market and around here, at least, a lot of businesses now seem to have high speed (all my clients). So it should be ok.

Text is currently being polished off. 2 sections are fully written yet.. but we wanna try and sneak this in for a Google update or at the very least grab the 40+ hits a day we receive from Google.

Any initial design/style comments, flaws, etc anyone care to point out?

Thanks all.

Here is the link: http://www.martekbiz.com/NEW/index.php

Warm Regards,

Aaron

[Dan0]

Fatal error: Unable to open /u/l/lgi/www.martekbiz.com/NEW/index.php in - on line 0
No input file specified.

Aaron:

I've never heard e-marketing explained in quite that way before. :D Let us know when you're done uploading the latest build.

[martekbiz]

Sorry all.. the site was prematurely launched last night. People here just wanted to get it up and start generating some attention for it.

site addy is: www.martekbiz.com (http://www.martekbiz.com)

Dan - you have a PM :)

Thanks all.... Really.. any input is awesome.

How about the load times? Anyone finding it an obscene amount of loading time?

Thanks again.

Aaron

[Dan0]

I don't know what the old site looked like, but this is a very nice piece of work. It speaks very clearly in terms of demonstrating a level of professionalism that is well above the norm in this business. If that's the new site (www.martekbiz.com), it's very nicely done.

How many hours of work went into this?

[Blue]

Site looks Great Aaron!

Loaded fast, legible, attractively professional, and easy to traverse.

Only problem I had was I had to wade through 6 or 7 pages before I found any contact info other than the info@ email addy.

How to contact you - where to call - where you're located - hours of operation - and such, should be prominently displayed on every page for a business of your type IMO.

The other thing is that the white header looks sorta empty and plain jane - compared with the rest of the page.

If you fixed up those two issues, it'd be just right.

:cheers:

[martekbiz]

Originally posted by Dan0
I don't know what the old site looked like, but this is a very nice piece of work. It speaks very clearly in terms of demonstrating a level of professionalism that is well above the norm in this business. If that's the new site (www.martekbiz.com), it's very nicely done.

How many hours of work went into this?

Dan, once again thanks for your feedback. I won't go into everything I said in my PM.. but you have my gattitude :)

Hours? well.. 4 designs later this was finally born. Our logo.. is a very good, clean and crisp logo.. but the colour sceme make it difficult to work with in web/print materials. When the firm was started it wasn't fully thought out the impact the logo might have on print/web collatoral materials.

In all design total I think rough numbers are close to 300 hours.

Thanks again.

Aaron

[martekbiz]

Originally posted by Blue
Site looks Great Aaron!

Loaded fast, legible, attractively professional, and easy to traverse.

Only problem I had was I had to wade through 6 or 7 pages before I found any contact info other than the info@ email addy.

How to contact you - where to call - where you're located - hours of operation - and such, should be prominently displayed on every page for a business of your type IMO.

The other thing is that the white header looks sorta empty and plain jane - compared with the rest of the page.

If you fixed up those two issues, it'd be just right.

:cheers:

Blue.. thanks for your insight - you're right about the contact info... somehow that got left off the boat *chuckles*. Eventually it will make its way into the top header as a link, however for now we have put it at the bottom in the white space.

As for the header.. completely agree.. we're still deciding what to do with this area. Don't want something gimicky or to put something there for the sake of putting something there.

Thanks again Blue.. much appreciated feedback.

Regards,

Aaron

[martekbiz]

Anyone else...

I do welcome other opinions. Blue and Dan have been very generous in their time to provide some decent feedback - publically and privately.

Any other comments are certainly welcome.. any downfalls you can spot? Misguided direction of content and usability? Anything negative is completely tolerable - can't focus on the positive if one cann't spot the negative :)

Thanks again!

Regards,

Aaron

[bwelford]

Aaron

Like the others, I think this is an excellent showcase of what you can do for clients. I like it a lot, apart from the missing page for the Feature Project.

For a slightly different perspective, perhaps I can direct you to a SMM Newsletter that has just been issued. The title is "If Your Website Isn't Your Best Sales Representative, Fire It and Get a Better One." The link is www.strategicmarketingmontreal.ca/newsletter-25.htm.

Good Selling.

Barry Welford

[dsearchguy]

Nice job on the photo images used. I know they're download intensive, but it gives a site a professional look.

I also like how the contact info is at the bottom of every page.

...
d

[esavvy]

Very nice site. Congratulations! :)

[basnyd]

I agree with everyone else. It is a very professional site. I have only a couple suggestions. On the home page "...and start investing to separate your business from your competitors" appears on top of the last 2 lines of paragraph just above it. No one else mentioned this - so, I'm not sure if it is just something with my browser settings. The green navigation bar across the top I find a little hard to read. The text in this area doesn't seem as crisp as the text in the other areas. Other than that everything looks great!!

[martekbiz]

Hey everyone,

Thanks again for your comments.

Feedback from some trusted clients have been very positive as well with some interesting suggestions.

In fact, we landed a redevelopment deal on Friday because our new site design. I had been trying to get this one client to invest in a new design which was inline with a new our new design CONCEPT and newly researched appraoched to a web presence for a business...

Well.. after seeing our new site.. they "got it". Understood finally the direction we wanted to take them in.

Thanks again for all great comments.

Anything further and I'd be happy to listen to your comments.

Regards,

Aaron