alpha testing a site for me please

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Hi all, having a website built by our saturday lad as part of his school project.
if all goes well we will actually use it for our hire bike booking.

could you please test and report back any advice or thingsd that might need changing please let me know.

thanks Ali

www.tuul.tl/sam
 
Having the main background as an image is making the site slow to load (relatively speaking). Change this to a CSS element perhaps?
 
Having the main background as an image is making the site slow to load (relatively speaking). Change this to a CSS element perhaps?
Or just change it from png to jpeg and reduce the quality, you can easily reduce file size down to <10kb

but i also prefer the main site tbh
 
Another vote for your original site...

A couple of things that make the newer one look a little cheap...

Such as the Facebook and Twitter icons, they look a little stretched / oversized.

I don't really like the outer glow on the big gray bars, or the gradient on the background.

The current site has just about everything you need on the home page, but the new one doesn't really have anything..
 
Hi, so basically the new one isnt for sales like the current one its purpose is so that people can prebook bikes online, im aware that the front end isnt excellent however the backend is mainly what i focused on as i thought functionality would be more important. Im currently taking A levels and this is the first website i have built its for my computing coursework. I apreciate the advice, however you must understand that the new site is entirley seperate and isnt meant to be a replacment for the old one.

sam
 
Functionality wise, you're missing things like... when I enter in a date in the past for booking it still takes me through to the next page, shows me a bike option while telling me I can't book in the past.

If someone sets a date in the past, don't show the bikes to choose. That's the same for all your error messages.

When I go forward with an incorrect date, then return, if one of the dates was correct and I don't change it and I then make the other correct, it still shows it as invalid. I have to physically refresh the page to re-enter dates. (as opposed to going back in the history).

When it says "choose a bike". I click a picture... that's my first reaction.

On the booking form where I enter my details, it only validates when fields aren't empty...

For name and last name it should only allow letters. Telephone only number, emails should validate as [email protected] No point accepting an email address without @ .


I'm only going over your booking form, but these are things you have to take in to consideration when building it and testing it yourself.


I know the point of checking the site out is for it's functionality... but the design is a huge part of a website. I would advise you to mimic the front site or grab a free theme from a website.

You've made a good start, it's just not finished. Always think of making the user journey as smooth as possible. For instance, "Should the user see the next page in order to find out they didn't fill out a field correctly? Only to have to go back a page and fill it in again." Validate and show errors on the same page. Use Javascript & PHP to make it look nicer and more secure.
 
Ok, i like some of your suggestions i'll probabbly make some changes tommorow. those were all things that i wanted to do but initially i didnt have the time as i needed to write up the project (which takes a very long time) admist all my other A levels
 
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