Critique my (first) website

Kimi · 14 May 2014 at 12:18

Hi guys, i was just wondering if i could get some input on my website.

I have no experience of HTML or CSS so i had to do a course and this is what i come up with so far.

I thought it best to learn how to do it myself rather than use a template or pay someone, that way i can change stuff in the future.

Im still working on content, but i think the layout is ok?

Any input is most appreciated

http://www.heatcollector.co.uk

AHarvey · 15 May 2014 at 02:14

"For any enquiries please call or email our team" at the bottom of the page isn't central...and it's annoying the OCD side of me

lol

Nice site, clean, simple and straight to the point. Should be happy with that as a first site

I'm sure some people will have more suggestions for tweaking it, and shame you're not closer, I'd request a job

love this kind of thing, more green living

How about a projects & testimonial pages? Customer feedback and photos, designs and costings for current projects would be great to let people see what you do

Kimi · 15 May 2014 at 09:34

Thanks for the feedback AHarvey, if you refresh now i hope to have eased your OCD!

A testimonial page is a great idea; i will put one together today.
The most important thing is showing people how much they will save/make back, so im just trying to figure out the best way to show it.

At the moment im trying to learn some very basic Java script so i can put together a form that people will be able to input how much per year they spend on heating, which will then show how much they would save by having the various types of heat pumps and most importantly how much the government pay you back to have it!

Im really enjoying learning HTML, its great to see how things work and ive found myself looking at bits of code and stylesheets on all the regular sites i visit.

AHarvey · 15 May 2014 at 09:55

That's better

Codeacademy is good for learning HTML5/javascript.

I've a couple of projects for work I want to get started with it so need to crack on myself. Good to see you are already looking at expanding, and the trick with design it planning ahead. Is there room for extra buttons/links etc..

dmsims · 24 May 2014 at 13:33

OK I'll wade in:

I really like the layout and it's a model of clarity

please take these in the spirit they are intended

http://www.heatcollector.co.uk/contact.html -why is there a scrollbar on the form?

"Never submit passwords through Google Forms." is completely inappropriate

no mailto: tag on the [email protected] address

Telephone number goes green and underlines on hover

On an Ipad:
you have margins down the right hand side of all the pages
http://heatcollector.co.uk/rhi.html: the bright blue text in the dropdowns is very hard to read (it's OK on a desktop). Also the calculator is outside the viewport on the right in portrait and the heading text has no padding in landscape

that will keep you busy

AHarvey · 24 May 2014 at 17:08

unless he's made changes already, I can't see a scroll bar on the contacts form

Some good points though

dacads · 24 May 2014 at 18:29

On services page there seems to be less spacing between the navigation bar and rest of the content, compared to the other pages. Other than that impressive start

Randomface74 · 24 May 2014 at 18:33

really good for a first attempt - keep going

After JavaScript you'll need one of these pairs:

PHP + MySQL
ASP.NET C# + SQL Server

dmsims · 24 May 2014 at 18:40

AHarvey said:
unless he's made changes already, I can't see a scroll bar on the contacts form
Some good points though

Scrollbar happens in Firefox (IE and Chrome are fine)

GravyMonster · 24 May 2014 at 18:59

It scrolls because it's an iframe pointing to a google docs form. I doubt he'll be able to change much on that page.

Fallen god · 24 May 2014 at 21:27

Hey I went through your site and found a few simple UI/UX problems;

'Email' button at the bottom of the homepage is not really visible - Change the test to white like it is on the contact us page
http://www.heatcollector.co.uk/services.html - More info buttons use the same hover colour as the button, so when you hover over it with your mouse the text is not visible
iFrame on RHI page needs fixing, it doesn't fit inside the border, and has a broken image at the bottom. Not sure if this is in your control

Rest is actual really solid

.

nuzik · 26 May 2014 at 11:12

Hate the email button at the bottom of the website its green no need to be! it looks ugly
Your twitter and google links at the bottom arent on every page
when you hover over he readme the text goes! maybe make it black or bold i still hate that green block, change it to text that changes colour to green or start green and change to black anything but those blocks
Id get rid of the google contact, lets be honest you want people to call you not send you random messages, far better with your email address and a telephone number on there it will weed out the idiots
Also on the black white black white services the white has a background on it which does nothing for it, remove it. Id also just keep that all one colour again no need to use the humbug coloruing it doesnt look sexy.

Now all that said its an easy site to navigate round.
you need an about us section, i want to know who i am buying from and why i should you basically just have a site make it to say why i should come to you and some pics of the directors. Sounds silly but i have had loads of feedback on my sites for not having it people want to know why they are coming to you and not just googling someone.

Keep up the good work

Kimi · 27 May 2014 at 11:19

Thank you for the feed back guys, it seems the email buttons are very unpopular! lol im just changing them now.

I didnt notice how the buttons on the services page changed to the same colour as the button on hover! i better change that to.

Ive removed the google form on the contact us page, it does look really tacky, just gone for the address and phone number for the moment.

The iframe on the RHI page is only temporary at the moment, in the end this is the most vital page of the site because it shows how much people can save. At the moment i am unsure of how to actually implement what i need, i just downloaded some software that would convert a excel spreadsheet into an embeddable html doc, the calculations are correct but i need to learn how to turn this into java or a more suitable solution?

I really appreciate your feedback, its hard to start from scratch and i keep forgetting bits and pieces and methods, but really enjoying learning how to code

Fallen god · 27 May 2014 at 13:38

Its easy to miss a lot off small things, that why its always wise to have someone over look it.

For the RHI you could just make it in plan html and use some Javascript to handle the maths. I'm not exactly sure how complex it is but if it is just figuring out some rates Javascript handles those things really well.

You might need a few function to work out everything but it won't be too difficult. And the html I just say keep it simple, make it a basic table.

Kimi · 27 May 2014 at 15:48

Im going to have a go at that tomorrow because the RHI form is currently in a bit of a state! i tried to edit the style sheet that it outputted and managed to ruin it lol, i overwrote the edited one with the original and it hasn't reverted to normal whoops

Kimi · 2 Aug 2016 at 15:25

I started again! I was having trouble adding more pages because the layout was pretty compact and was hard to add a menu so i went down the template route.

Ive chopped and changed the template to come up with something that suits.

Now the problem i have is attracting customers! my ranking on the search sites is really bad so i have had to pay for google ads and bing ads. Turns out they aren't cheap!

I would appreciate it if someone could have a look at the new site and give me some feed back? its hard when your looking at it yourself all the time to see what needs to be done!

http://www.heatcollector.co.uk/

currantloaf · 2 Aug 2016 at 16:19

Not much that i can add but i really like the website - it is nice and clean

roccles · 2 Aug 2016 at 16:49

Hi

Looks very nice, tidy and easy to navigate. Although the site seemed to run very slowly for me. I would suggest running the site through Google PageSpeed and fixing the issues its suggests. PageSpeed

On the main menu I would remove the drop down arrows for menu items that have no drop down content (Home, Design, Blog etc)

The "Our Partners" section is positioned nicely on the home screen but on every other page I tried it touches the left hand side and bottom

The photo slides at the top have 2 rectangles "Ground Source" and "Air Source" I assumed these were buttons but they have no actions. Are they buttons?

In the area with coloured boxes (Heat Produced etc ) some icons spin and others are static. This looked odd to me.

Only really had a chance to look at the home page as it pretty big site. But its looking good just some general tidying needed.

Hope that helps a little

supafly · 2 Aug 2016 at 21:28

Main menu, green bar under Home/Heat Pumps/Design etc does not work properly.

Kimi · 3 Aug 2016 at 07:14

Ah, thanks for your help guys, i hadn't noticed any of these things!