My parents opened a business and my mom designed the website. This is her first time doing any of this and I've never really gotten into site design but she was asking me for suggestions so i thought of you guys



http://www.hurricanegarage.com/

7/20/2007 7:39:30 AM

I'm no web designer, but the text isn't placed right when I view it.

7/20/2007 7:46:48 AM

typo on the garage doors main page: "Hurricane Garage Systems in a Authorized..." should be an.

7/20/2007 7:55:58 AM

your mom designed and built the site? It's not perfect, but for a first time designer and/or builder, it's pretty good.
In Camino on my mac i have the same problem as joe17669 though. The main page text fixed to the upper left corner. Looking at the code, there seems to be a weird mix of tables and divs. It's like the designer wanted to use proper CSS for layout, but got scared and started inserting tables to make it easy. I say, ditch the tables, study-up on CSS some more, and re-implement.
This one problem, though, indicates this site was not tested in anything other than Internet Explorer. Not good. Basically anything that you put on the internet should be tested at the least in IE6, IE7 and Firefox, and preferably also Opera and Safari (Mac).


My main problem is the lengthy catalog on the left side of all the pages, except for the front page.
1) there's too much information - too many options, each of which open another submenu. I see a list of that size and I become overwhelmed, and I end up not reading it at all. As long as you have the catalog divided up into categories, you should only show the items in one category at a time.

2) the white on black text hurts my eyes. white on black is good for short text that should be highlighted or stand out, but not used in the main navigation tool of the whole site.

3) this would be solved if number 1 was addressed, but at first glance I have a hard time differentiating the main categories because they all just blend into one big black and white mess

4) why is the catalog on the left side of every page (except for Home), but there is still a Catalog menu item at the top? I first clicked About Us, and honestly was a bit confused at first why there was all this stuff on the left side of the page. Was it the sub-navigation for the About Us section? Oh, no.... seems to be selling stuff. Then I click on Catalog, and nothing changes. Then I realize that it says "Catalog" at the top of the list, and that the Catalog is actually listed on every page. I realize the desire to get the products out in front of the eyes of the website viewers, but this is not the way. If you want to have the products available on every page, that's fine, but don't get it all confused by putting another Catalog link at the top of the page which actually doesn't do anything.

5) I would like a much more "visual" way of browsing the catalog. To see any pictures at all, you have to drill down to the exact sub-menu that you want. If I want to peruse the site to see if something jumps out at me, then I don't want to have to click on every single sub-menu to see if that particular item is the one I might want. Especially since most of the menus and sub-menus rely on brand names that most people wouldn't be familiar with.

7/20/2007 8:21:52 AM

Quote :

"Hurricane Garage Systems is aan Authorized Windsor Republic Garage Door Dealer and Installer. "

A little grammar fix there...

I didn't have any major problems viewing in Firefox 2 or Safari, except like joe, the text was off and in the corner instead of beside the picture - in both browsers. In IE6, the text appeared where it should be, just left of the photo. I'm running 1440x900, so it wasn't all up in the menu bar like his, but it was noticeably out of place.


IE6

Firefox 2, Safari for Windows

7/20/2007 8:38:55 AM

safari hates your web page.

7/20/2007 9:03:12 AM

tell her to add

position:relative;

7/20/2007 9:29:37 AM

IE6 4 life!

7/20/2007 9:55:02 AM

The "Pimp Your Garage" image doesn't really fit with the rest of the style. It looks as if it should be a link to some promo/contest based of positioning and appearance... I kept trying to click on it. I would either give it some content or remove it from the top banner and move the "raleigh | durham | chapel hill" bit to the right so the banner can be a little smaller in height

7/20/2007 11:06:25 AM

^ good point. 1) the logo, and 2) the vernacular ("Pimp your garage") doesn't really mesh with what you're trying to do with the rest of the site, which is to show a clean, professionally run service. Pimping stuff is fun and in style these days, but you should chose strategy and a market and stick with it.

7/20/2007 1:27:01 PM

^ and ^^ I agree.

The logo in the upper left is a little much for me too, but not enough to sweat over.

Only other thing I would say is to put basic contact information (phone number, email) in the footer or somewhere consistent throughout the site. You'll be amazed how much more off-the-cuff calling you will get from perspective clients.

7/26/2007 3:23:43 AM

Both times you use "compliment" on the about us page, it should be "complement"

7/27/2007 9:25:05 AM

as long as the site is live and apparently taking customers and orders, you at least need to fix the home page alignment issue, now.
Firefox and Mac users are up to 50% of the market in certain segments, and easily 10-20% in normal segments. As long as the home page is unreadable to those people, you are going to be losing customers.

BigMan157 already showed you how to fix it. Just put that 1 line into the CSS

7/27/2007 9:58:04 AM

i'd get rid of the pimp your garage

7/27/2007 10:20:59 AM