Need Review. - Page 2 - WebmasterForums.NET

a1whs.com · 02-15-2006, 10:02 PM

Yes i suppose that could be done but i doubt that everyone like me is on 5mbit line , cause when is started website stuff i was on dial up :(. So i care a bit about dialup people also.

a1whs.com · 02-16-2006, 08:38 AM

Hello guys,
I played a bit with the images on the main page as they seemed blurry so can someone revist and tell me if the new images look better and if site reloads faster at : http://a1whs.com/testsite
or would this look better : http://a1whs.com/testsite/index2.php i will edit the header images to get rid of the light blue if the latter is liked more.

John D · 02-16-2006, 02:24 PM

First one looks better

This type of news doesn't look good made so prominent on the homepage:

Site Downtime Observed due to Firewall Issue. It has been resolved now and we apologize for the downtime.

About the FTP..your better off getting that fixed than making people use a workaround.

I think you have too much information on the two paragraphs on your homepage, make it simple and to the point, I know I never take the time to read large paragraphs on sites anymore, if you pur your good points/features in small bulletpoints people are a lot more likely to read and pay attention to them.

a1whs.com · 02-16-2006, 06:52 PM

By first one john did you mean http://a1whs.com or http://a1whs.com/testsite ?

John D · 02-16-2006, 07:15 PM

http://www.a1whs.com/testsite/

http://a1whs.com/testsite/index2.php - This has some images missing for me.

a1whs.com · 02-16-2006, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John D

http://www.a1whs.com/testsite/

http://a1whs.com/testsite/index2.php - This has some images missing for me.

But i am still confused which one you like better of the 2 dont worry about missing images i will fix them. I need to know which one gives better performance

.

John D · 02-16-2006, 08:33 PM

The first link /testsite

I can't tell which gives best performance really...I'm on broadband so I never notice any difference in site loading times unless they are really slow.

Morphine · 02-17-2006, 04:36 PM

First off, I'm a designer AND developer myself so I'm most likely harder to satisfy than your average customer. But a review is a review and a review you will get.

I'm sorry if I will come off harsh, it's nothing personal. I write my reviews like this to keep my steam up and remaining honest about things. So whatever you do, don't take anything personal, this is just my (mine, not others

) opinion about your site (not the one behind it) and what I think could take it from an average (not bad) to an excellent site.

Design

On the design in general, it doesn't feel very professional, the design elements feel like something someone would do after reading a Photoshop tutorial in a way.

Another thing is that the images are stored in a low-quality JPG format, that's a horrible choice. Go with GIF instead. It loads very slow for me (I'm on a 24Mbps line, it just can't be my connection that is the thief here). There could be a temp problem with either my routing to your server or your server in general. In either case you should go with GIF for the web whenever you can.

As it was said before in this thread, it feels very much like an edited template. Nothing really fits at all.

What's up with that random blue gradient that wraps the layout? If you don't want to do anything else, at least remove that thing.

That corny image of a girl with a headset that I have seen 678 times should go too IMO.

The flash navigation and header doesn't bring anything but usability problems. For example you can't open links in new tabs which I dare say many users do nowadays. You want the user to be able to browse around on your site as smooth as possible and in the way he/she is used to, preventing this will give them a claustrophobic feeling that in the end makes them go elsewhere.

Coding

The coding of the entire site is a big turn-off. It's ugly and it uses so many size-expensive methods for things that it makes me want to cry. You have no excuse nowadays to not code your website in a clean, semantic, and usable way. Since the coding should be re-made from the top to bottom I wont say anything else on the subject. If you can't do it yourself, hire someone who can.

This is something 99% of your users wont notice (unless they are using the site through something besides your average browser) besides that the page loads slow (design images in the HTML is horrible).

Right clicking

Why on earth do you have that "no right-click" JavaScript? I can view your source (and so can anyone else) in other ways, and I personally (same for many others with good browsers and development tools) can turn off JavaScript with a simple click. Others simply don't have JavaScript enabled at all. In other words, the JS is 100% useless (for whatever reason you put it there to start with). All it will do is annoy people, it doesn't even give you one of those annoying messages so people will just think your site broke their computer. I personally (and I'm far from an inexperienced computer user) got confused why I couldn't right-click (which I do to open links in new tabs).

Confuse, annoy, and prevent users from browsing like they are used to is the LAST thing you want to do with a professional website (or any website at all actually).

Text

One of the most important places to put your name in is between the <title> tags, but you haven't put it there at all. Instead you have "Reliable Hosting 99% Uptime & 100% Customer Satisfaction" there which on a first sight doesn't look attractive at all. Don't get me wrong, even though 99% uptime isn't more than other promises it's nice, but it just doesn't look good, it never does.

On your front page I can read the following almost right away:

Quote:

Here at A1 Web Hosting Solutions we believe in your success in whatever you do online, and we are here to help you succeed. Each shared hosting plan comes with latest build of cPanel control panel. Every account hosted by A1 Web Hosting Solutions is hosted on high speed servers utilizing Intel Xeon processors with top of the line bandwidth provided by Savvis and Level(3). It doesn't get any better than that.

We cannot offer a 100% uptime guarantee, due to the fact that repairs/ maintenance/ upgrades take place. For any downtime over 72 hours we will refund the cost of 1 month's service less paypal fees**. Our sales and support team is available 24 hours a day***. We also offer a 30 day 'no questions asked' money back guarantee****.

So why not give us a try!

The text I bolded is the part that turned me off the most. In one way it's good that you are trying to be honest with your customers, but there are other ways to be so. Never put what you can't do (or in general negative things) on the front page. Don't lie (never lie), but let the customer be able to find out if he/she wants to (for example by looking at "Uptime" in some in-depth info-page about the hosting packages).

Also, having a bunch of asterisks behind statements will send the message that you don't really mean what you say (even though that's not the case). If you absolutely need to have that information right there on the front page, clean it up and write it in a way that makes you able to take the asterisks away.

Marketing Idea and Concept

Hosting is without a doubt one of the most competitive businesses you can enter on the Internet nowadays. There are so many alternatives that if the user just finds one (1) thing to complain about with your host, they will look for someone else. Your site does nothing to convince me that a1whs isn't just another hosting company in the bunch. The things you say, the plans you have, the design, the name... All of these factors simply puts you in the "generic hosting company dot com" box (you don't want to be there, trust me). Stripped to the bone, all hosting companies do the same thing, they put people on a server. But no matter how much I know this, I will always be attracted to the ones that play their cards and all the tools they are given right (design, name, typography, mission statements, intelligent advertisement, etc.).

Other Things

The order process isn't integrated with the site in any way, this is very common but tends to not look so professional. If you can, do integrate it in some way.

The navigation isn't very well-thought out either, this is a very common problem. I want to tell the site what I want to see, not vice-verse.

You want to give the user a solid feeling, that you always was there and always will be there. Don't think boat, think island. Actually, don't think island, think continent.

And regarding re-designing your site all the time, don't. Good designers redesign, great designers realign, think MediaTemple.

That has to be it for now, I'll edit this post or post another one if I come up with something more to say.

a1whs.com · 02-17-2006, 08:11 PM

Thanks for the review, but regarding blue gradient are your talking about those pillar sort of things or in general the background gradient?

Yes order page is not integrated and aim to do that this weekend. And for the plans and stuff i have used gifs in general and not for backgrounds and stuff so i need to change them to gif?? I disabled right click cause i dont want people to snoop around the various directories like image directory , i am looking for a way to make it such that only localhost can download or display images and its hidden from site rippers so you know how to do that?

I am planning to make a gradient button for online offline suppot instead of using that "grainy image" so would that be better choice?

Update 19th Feb: I have integrated the ORDER system with the main site template itself.