Website Critique

I know what you mean about something missing. It feels a bit sterile and lacking a personal touch but it does get the facts across.

It would be nice to have more emphasis on the home and staff. They seem to be two big selling points over many homes.

With several acres of beautiful woodlands and overlooking the River Avon, all roomes are assured of a beautiful view. Our private courtyard and beautiful gardens are maintained to a high standard..
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Sounds beautiful, pity there are no pictures.

I would like to hear a little more about the full time staff. Maybe a little bio or some quotes from the Matron.

A news section could bring the place to life. Details of outings and notable events. Maybe the odd write up.


Also what is going on with that scrolling banner? It seems to be missing a few words.

"Members of staff build personal relationships with residents and take"

"Our staff will work with residents to transform their rooms into their"
 
Agreed, i've already relayed the lack of pictures back to the owner. It is a nice looking place and makes no sense to have no pics. Bio's and what not seem like a nice idea, will suggest that one.

Re the banner the sentences finish for me, what browser are you using?
 
skiba said:
Bio's and what not seem like a nice idea, will suggest that one.
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Not necessarily full bio's just something so you know Angella has been doing the job for donkeys years and loves it. Maybe a quote from one of the residents saying how good the staff are.

Re the banner the sentences finish for me, what browser are you using?
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Firefox and Opera on Linux.
 
If you view source it looks like it was built about 10 years ago.

Its a bit naff, but I assume they didnt pay much for it.
 
I'll agree that the code is VERY outdated.

The table based layout is bad enough but the navigation is even worse.
Not only is it done in a table but it uses javascript for the mouseovers. There is zero text as it's done with images only. Seems rather silly to have the navigation for a nursing home website not follow basic accessibility guidelines. He could at least have done it as a list, used the images as backgrounds and indented the text of the list items so it would still show up for screenreaders and search engines.

Further, the designer needs to pay closer attention to typography. The fonts used and the way the text is laid out is horrible. This was fine in the 90's but it's not anymore.

Just seems to me that this site was coded by someone stuck in days gone past... or someone using a very old copy of some random WYSIWYG editor.
 
skiba said:
How do you mean? And what would you expect to have paid for a site like this?
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well the site is just made up of a load of square blocks with very little changing on each page i.e just the main content really so i would assume, depending on who made it, it was a very quickly made site (could even be a premade design and just copy/paste text). tbh i'd pay no more then £100 for that but that's a real top limit.

tbh though it does come down to who made the site, time spent, cost etc. If that site cost the friend say £30 and was made by an amature website designer then i'd say it's very good, if one of the owners of google made that site and charged £5,000 and it took him 3 weeks then i'd say it was rubbish.

do you know things like cost, time etc?

[edit]

silly me just had a look, so it cost £150 for everything and took 2 weeks, i'd say rip off tbh. Do you know what the £1 per day running cost is?
 
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Tripnologist said:
[re site navigation]
There is zero text as it's done with images only. Seems rather silly to have the navigation for a nursing home website not follow basic accessibility guidelines.
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Wow, I hadn't noticed that. Along with no alt text the images are not even given descriptive names e.g. "page4.gif".

Surely this must fall foul of the Disability Discrimination Act? Especially as the target audience is more likely to suffer visual problems. My Laymens opinion is "reasonable steps" have not been made to make the site accessible.

What do you lot think?
 
sounds like he got ripped.

Looks like a basic dreamweaver site.

One thing that makes it look pants - tomuch free space.

But otherwise as long as it does it job its fine.

Its a retirement home but that just looks amature like my sis had made it or someone for there GCSE project.
 
Some useful comments here, thanks all.

No idea about the running cost, I have asked them to find out as they already owned the domain and with the volume of traffic I would expect it to get they could host it on my webspace that costs me $3pcm.

Didn't notice the non-descript links and whatnot, will follow all this up.
 
Theres something about the white space, needs something suttle in the background just to liven it up. I have a 22" screen and it looks very lonely in the middle of the screen.

Also I'd change the font of the main text, just changing it Arial would probably just make it seem a little less "standard"
 
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