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[Tripnologist]

Considering this is your first website, it's pretty damn good mate. Far far better than my first website (though my first site was done in 1999/2000)

So here is some constructive criticism.:

- I know typography can be quite tricky but what you have now is really letting the design down.
To help point you in the right direction, read this and then check out these tools.

- I'd revisit the layout of your header as something about it doesn't sit right with me. Unfortunately, I can't pinpoint exactly what's off with it.

 

[dave_a141]

It's nice and simple and very good for a first website.

I'd say that I find it a little too simple, it just feels like it's missing something. I'm not sure exactly what but here are a few suggestions that you could try:

• Add a bit more colour - the grey and red is maybe a bit too minimal. If you're not great with colours then this is a great tool
• Rethink your header: I'd maybe make the top grey bar into red, make it a bit taller and stick your 'it's a wind up, vintage watches' in there.
• Make your logo a bit bolder and more attention grabbing. Maybe a more old english style font or just bigger and bolder
• Maybe add some texture to the background - not too much but just a bit to enhance the vintage feel. Here is a good place to start
• Maybe add some slight gradient to your blocks of colour. Can just bring it out the page a bit
• Add some negative letter spacing to your headings, nearly always helps!

Just a few things that might help, don't worry if you think that they're all rubbish!

 

[simisker]

[...]I'm not sure exactly what but here are a few suggestions that you could try:

• Add a bit more colour - the grey and red is maybe a bit too minimal. If you're not great with colours then this is a great tool
• Rethink your header: I'd maybe make the top grey bar into red, make it a bit taller and stick your 'it's a wind up, vintage watches' in there.
• Make your logo a bit bolder and more attention grabbing. Maybe a more old english style font or just bigger and bolder
• Maybe add some texture to the background - not too much but just a bit to enhance the vintage feel. Here is a good place to start
• Maybe add some slight gradient to your blocks of colour. Can just bring it out the page a bit
• Add some negative letter spacing to your headings, nearly always helps!

[...]

Heh - in a demonstration of how subjective this whole design thing is, I disagree with nearly all of dave's suggestions

The background texture and gradient ideas are worth exploring, but with a light, sparing hand. This is a site selling high-order goods of significant perceived value, and the design language for luxury goods is very much a case of 'less is more, and we don't have to try' minimalism and spaciousness.

With this in mind, you may wish to give your headers and certain other sections a bit more white space. Similarly, if you must use letter spacing in headers, go with a touch of positive spacing, but be careful you don't steal sheep

I don't think there's as much wrong with the typography as Trip's implied; simply giving headers and descriptions more room will help; especially if you manage to implement some sort of vertical rhythm. You do need to sort out the 'price' section of each watch page, though. It's not as clear as it could be.

And remember: the images of the watches are the most important bits of visual content. Dont overshadow them with anything that's actually less important.

My first impressions were very positive. If this really is your first website design, then you've got a good eye

 

[Tripnologist]

I don't think there's as much wrong with the typography as Trip's implied

I didn't say that it was absolutely terrible, I just said that I thought it was letting the layout down and could do with some improvement. Great typography can make a layout go from being great to being fantastic.

 

[NathanT]

I would actually manually re-size the images (on the front page featured watches) to the desired size rather than letting the CSS and design do the work. Your loosing a little bit of the clarity and quality on those images.

I agree less is more, generally the site is very good and what I'd expect for the product lines you are selling.

 

[Edward01]

Your site map footer is bugging me. The info column isn't in the middle and the shop column wasn't to be indented from the left margin as much as the payment is from the right.

Other than that, very nice site.

 

[Tripnologist]

Oh and I forgot to thank you for your jquery stuff on my help page tripnologist, I nabbed it from shifty_uk's thread. Reading and implementing that code has finally made me comfortable with javascript/jquery (even if my skills are very limited...previously the code was a complete foreign language!)

You're quite welcome! If you ever need any jquery help, feel free to send me a message. Email is in trust.

Basic jQuery is actually quite simple and easy to learn. Once you have the basics, you can move on to more advanced stuff.
At least that's what I did. I learned the basics and since then, I've just been learning more complex stuff as I need to.

Also, there is a wealth of plugins available for jquery.
I'm a fan of the jquery tools library as I find it's quite easy to add/remove features as I need them.

You can also learn more and discover more plugins by reading various design/dev blogs. Such as this.

 

[thor]

I think the site is very nice - nice, clean and simple. My only suggestions are personal preferences really, and I'm sure others, yourself included, may disagree.

I'm not sure if the images might look better with a slight border around them - perhaps a little padding, then a 1-pixel border. There just seems to be something missing there.

I'm not a fan of the button-like push-down effect that you've added to everything, but mainly the images. At first I thought it was a bug until I noticed it was on all the text links too. For me it kind of cheapens the site.

I don't like the orange hover colour on the buttons (and orange is even my favourite colour!) - would it not look better if you stuck with the deep red colour you've used on all links?

I think there should be a more white-space between the main page and your footer. Once I get down to the bottom of the page, my focus is drawn to the footer because it contrasts so much with the main page - I think my focus should remain on the product.

The header/logo... there's just something needed here to really finish everything off.. but I'm not sure what. At first I thought the header would look better if it was set within the black bar at the top (the bar being extended down of course) but then you'd need to play about with the navigation links on the right and I think they look fine as they are.
I'm not sure if it's been used so much on the web now that it's a bit tiresome, but perhaps just giving the header text a letter-press effect..?

On the help page, you need to add some padding to the top of the text box - perhaps the same amount that is on the left of the box.

I expected the Powered by Paypal text to be a link because everything else in the footer is a link and the text looks identical. Not a massive deal, but it might be nice to either make it link to something or change the style slightly so it's obvious it's not clickable.

As I said, these are all just personal preferences - you should be proud and happy to go with the site as it is now

 

[smogsy]

i thought id post how the site looks on my screen, as i'm using 1200x1920 (portrait mode) it looks a little odd to me

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd267/smogsy/Screenshot2010-05-18at1954562.png

isnt the footer supposed to be linked to the bottom?

 

[Tripnologist]

Yes, I suppose it is, however I do not know how to fix that issue

Simple!
1. Make your body background #292929.
2. Enclose #main in #mainContainer
3. Set the background on #mainContainer to #F4F3EF

The footer won't stick to the bottom of the page (I'm not a fan of sticky footers), but it will make the footer bgcolor extend to the bottom of the screen.

 

[smogsy]

got love giving people more work