Re: http://weddingvideo.com/

by "Chuck McGee, Jr." <cmj(at)airmail.net>

 Date:  Wed, 21 Jan 1998 13:28:24 -0600
 To:  hwg-critique(at)hwg.org
 In-Reply-To:  default
  todo: View Thread, Original
At 11:50 PM 1/19/98 -0800, RS Droppa wrote:
>I'd appreciate a critique of http://weddingvideo.com
>
>Most interested in general look and feel.  Does the site navigation make
>sense?  Does the site clearly state its intent and then follow through with
>appropriate content?  Is it interesting?  Oh, yes, and is the HTML correct?
>
Hello RS (I presume I am speaking with Robin),
(In any event, all references to "you" are actually directed at the
designer ... thought I'd clear that up before we started)

I viewed with NS4, T1, very large res and HiColor

Initial visual impressions as a basic visitor ... very nice ... pleasing to
the eye and lots of good, relevant content at the start.

>From a designers point of view ... the layout is basic and comparable ...
without a lot of hoopla commonly associated with opening pages.  I found
that it loaded fairly fast, except for the 22k background image (a little
bit large for me).

I think that the header stands fine by itself, without the need for the HR.

The nav buttons are a different characteristic than the rest of the opening
page ... meaning that the buttons are raised and plump while the rest of
the page is flat and sharp.  I'm not in disagreement with them, that's just
my personal thought on the matter.

If you've created most of the images, then I would think that your talent
is sufficient to create original images to replace the public domain
images. (like that  lil' ol' lady of a mailbox to be specific)

The associative images do not adhere to your clean, sharp design ..
specifically ... The Association for Wedding Professionals and Wedding and
Event Videographer's Association have supplied you (presumably) with images
that do not represent your site very well ... notably, they should be
transparent and the text on both of them are barely legible.  Also, it is
common to link, or at least present the URL, to those sites that you are
associating yourself with ... and I would not present these before the
email address or the navigation ... I would move them to the bottom or
create a separate page and have the visitor click-through to it only after
they have seen everything you have to show them first.

Try to remove yourself of the "Click Here ..." syndrome

I am not in favor of the two directional buttons towards the bottom ...
they aren't very specific (I know you have them ALT'd) ... and they are
displayed directly above the text nav section.  Now you have four
navigational themes running at the same time .. don't get me wrong .. I'm
all in favor of strong navigation ... but four? (graphical, text,
right/left and inline text)  I would rid myself of the directional
left/right theme.  If you must keep them, then I would center them to the
text nav section ... they look offset otherwise (not only on this page ...
the subsequent pages reflect centering as explained and some do not).

The "E-Mail Us" has two (2) addresses associated to it ... the icon is
linked to "droppa@" and the text is to "steved@" ... I realize that both
are Steve Droppa but I would think that the only one needed would be the
one with the company name in it and not the personal one.

Some content comments ... When you are using quotes to encase certain
titles or links, I would not use spaces (" The Wedding Video Journal ")
First, it is slightly improper and second ... when linking them, I would
not include the quotes as part of the link.  Why you ask? ... mostly
personal and partly because if the link is involved with wrapping text, the
beginning/trailing quote could be left all by its lonesome.  Which in this
case, has happened.  I would do like so: "<LINK>The Wedding Video
Journal</LINK>" .. now the link is carrying the quote AND the first/last
word but only linking the actual word and not the quote also.

I don't have a problem with the font choice used (arial, comic sans, times)
but I would only use the Comic Sans on the titles only and not throughout
the text.  The smaller it gets, the harder it is to read ... "50 up to date
links to wedding planning oriented web sites"

What are you offering the visitors by displaying the visitor count?  I do
not apply any relevance to these types of statements as a visitor, only as
the site owner or person responsible for the marketing program ... In any
event, when the count is displayed in text rather than associated with some
stat package, it leads to suspicion of the true count.

Now let's browse through some of the ancillary pages .... 

My impressions of the "About Us" and "Meet The Owner" pages are that they
should be combined.  Reason: The "meet" page is sufficient and tells me
who, what, where, when and how of the company ... Much the same information
is presented in the "about" page as well ... except for the fact that
everything is now "we are, we do, etc..."  I find no mention of any
employees and the first sentences states, "... is the owner and operator"
.. that, to me, suggests independent operator without the mention of how
many employees, what they do for the company, etc ... There is nothing
wrong with saying "we" as long as there is "we".  Should I be interested in
the service, researched the Internet for like businesses, found this one
and read through the site ... I would be left with the impression that you
have employees and that I would expect to see them should I decide to
choose this company ... if after Steve shows up, without employees ... I
would be left with the impression that I was misled.

I noticed that you removed the link of the visited page entirely upon
arriving ... this is good and bad IMO ... the good part is that you won't
make the mistake of leaving it active, but the bad part is ... it now
changes the consistency of the navigational look and feel ... possibly
leading some to get lost.  I prefer to follow links in order and after
spending a significant amount of time at the site ... I prefer to find the
links at the same pace I original clicked-through.  That is my opinion and
preference ... not to say that it is incorrect mind you.  It also makes it
easier to create one navigation and use it throughout the entire site
rather than having every page with a different nav bar.  Most specifically
when maintenance is for an entire site with global changes.

After reading through the site mostly at first, I found that there are a
number of references to the "reservation form" but listed in a whole bunch
of different ways .... "data reservation form now", "Fill Out Form Now",
"reservation form" and so on ... I would define this link and stick with it
throughout.

You have something seriously wrong with the "samples page" ... I haven't
found it yet, but it is scrolling horizontally at about 2700 pixels approx.
 There it is ... Reason: because NS doesn't treat align= and valign= in the
TABLE tag properly and the reason it looked fine in IE is because it
properly ignored it.  Try it ... remove the align=left and the
valign=middle from the table tag starting with ... <!-- wedding video
samples table -->  Also, I was impressed with the coding in the earlier
pages, but it appears to have declined  .. perhaps the use of a WYSIWYG
editor {RealPublisher HTML Generation Wizard} has come into play.  This
problem doubles in intensity especially when you begin to nest tables.

I've never been in favor of using color names in place of hex values ...
they're just not as reliable yet.

You have an impressive collection of "like me" sites listed in the "related
links" section ... there appears to be quite a bit of time spent in
collecting, cataloging and verifying all of them .. what a task!

There is another nav inconsistency on the graphical side ... 
at Home ... you have About, Brochure, then Samples
at About Us ... you have Home, Brochures, then Samples
at Brochure ... you have About Us, Home, then Sample
at Sample ... you have Home, About, then Brochure

Do you see the inconsistency? HINT: start with Brochure

Very informative Newsletter section ... the only thing here, I would create
an archive section of past articles should someone reference a particular
one by bookmarking and come back later to find another in its' place ...
having an archive allows these visitors to refer.

Your glossary is also informative and relevant to the site and its theme
... what i would do here is add a submission soliciting others to send in
their terms for the Glossary ... not one of the automatic ones, but form to
email then decide if it should be included, based on the experience of the
Steve of course, and maybe give them credit or something ... This keeps it
from becoming stale and also keeps from having to think of all them
yourselves ... just an idea.

The Home has  ... "This site was last updated January 10, 1998.", but the
rest of the site uses ... "Last updated Tuesday, 13-Jan-98 19:04:12 PST"
(or similar effect) ... just another reference to consistency.

Well ... that's about it I suppose .. I ran out of pages ... ;-)

I hope that I been helpful in pointing out a few things ... Like I said, I
liked the site ... colorful, informative, not extremely difficult to
navigate, relatively fast ... overall a good experience ... reflects well
on the Photographer that has a well designed website.

As for the HTML ... you've adhered to the standards and you've not "hacked
the code", albeit the Samples page was messed up but that page seemed to be
built by another entity ... whether that be human or program ... the vast
majority of the site appeared to be coded rather well.

Good luck in the Business (as I mentioned earlier, if Robin is the one I
speaking directly to ... it would be advisable to add your name to the MEET
page if you in fact assist Steve in his endeavor ... it would look a lot
better to me from a potential customers' frame of mind anyway)

If there was anything that I mentioned that was unclear or you need
clarification, don't hesitate to just ask ... 

cmj

------------Web Site Development & Consulting-----------
Chuck McGee, Jr.	http://web2.airmail.net/cmj/
---------------Member of HTML Writers Guild----------------
 Area Guide Manager - Theory / Critique / Standards

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