Would invite critical (+/-) comments on new site which is nearing completion.
Owen Chubb Landscapers - Maintenance

Thanks

Nice site. Looks well. Couple of little things I'd personally change:

- you need to get actual text (and not images) onto the home page. SE's rank that page the highest usually so it needs to be optimised for SE's. Basically you've got a splash page there - a big no no!
- navigation should change to text and away from the images also. you can create the exact same effect with plain text and a little css.
- I'd change the background colour or add a tile so that the actual site lifts off the page a bit and distinguishes itself from the bg.
- I'd avoid using popup windows for the full size images. They are just annoying and can be blocked. Have a look at lightbox2, it's great for this sort of thing: Lightbox 2
- link logo back to home page and when linking to your home page, always use the full url only. Don't include index.htm at the end. It operates as a duplicate page as far as the SE's are concerned.
- The "shop" popup window - how annoying is that. Can you not put that inside the current design? What's the point of it? Once again, avoid popups like the plague!
- There's W3C (html/css) and WAI errors. Best run it through some standards checking. Look up TotalValidator for a good tool.
- You really should be looking at doing your sites in "table-less" designs. It's so much easier when you make the move over and your code will be so much cleaner and readable by the SE's.

Other than those points, the site is quite nice. It looks well and it loads fast going from page to page. I actually like the home page with the logo in the middle but it's a big no no when it comes to SEO.

Well, hope that helps!

Rgds, Dave

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David Behan
Web Design | Mortgages | Memorial Websites | Digital Printing | Golf Holidays Portugal | Conservatories

David, many thanks for that feedback. I'm a little confused but it does seem your comments refer to our old siteeg the old homepage had a large logo and the pop up shop. I'll check the link to the new site, I think it isn't functioning yet. Sorry

this is what I reviewed

Attached Images

chubb.jpg (65.7 KB, 10 views)

have you changed the dns on the site ? if so it hasn't changed over yet ?

The Druid Valley Design account has been suspended as well ? though you may know about that ?

Other than that pretty much everything david mentioned ... I also like it when logos take me back to home pages ... I kinda expect it

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Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )
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Sorry Guys, old site, will put up link for newer site after I've sorted problem out with web designer.

Again sorry for wasting your time David, but a genuine error on my part.

Will come back later.

No worries! It was 3am when I posted and my eyes were hurting staring at code!

I'm really interested to see what the upgrade looks like as the old site was nice enough!

Its what I was thinking ... looking forward to the new

OK Guys, hopefully this link works to new site:

Owen Chubb Landscapers - Home

quick look ...

the owen chubb ... logo looks slightly wrong ...

The images on each of the pages ... load fairly slowly ...

Your background image the green ... on the left hand side looks quite pixilated ...

Hmmm seems like overuse of background images for menu items as such they don't scale up nicely. recently I've started making a lot of use of ctrl + when viewing websites ... ( maybe I'm growing old ) as such I'm not sure if its breaking some useability guidelines ... (but that is a bit of a technical / useability issue as opposed to an actual fault on the site)

Its not exactly an online shop ... its an online catalog ?

You don't have their business number on the site ...

No link to your own website ?

Hmm... personally I'm not sure about it .. having seen the previous version ... it had a more friendly feel .. this has a more professional feel to it .... which may or may not be a bad thing depending on how you look at it ... but as I said its my personal feeling on it