1. Overall look, feel and content of the Blog?

I really like the light blues. It's all very soothing, but the only issue that I have is the light blue lines behind the text on the buttons. It might be just my monitor, but the light blue vibrates against the text and makes it hard to read and a bit of an eye strain.

2. Overall look, feel and content of the website?
I think it's very user friendly and that perhaps you could incorporate more of the pinkish maroon-y colour that is in the header image into the site more.

2. Ease of use and navigation elements of the website? Pretty good navigation, only one problem with that which I mentioned below.

3. Is it readily understandable what we do?
The buttons on the top pretty much explain everything, though I will say that the fact that there is also a blog is a bit unusual and confused me a little, but now that I've been here more than once I think it's a really fresh concept to have a blog on a desgin / hosting site. (It also didn't help that I came from BlogExplosion, so the first thing I saw was a blog page.)

4. Any changes you would make or like to see. The button issue that I mentioned above as well as the fact that I think your blog link should be more prominent in other pages so that it's easier to navigate back to.

Also, your questions have two #2s.

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Well done Ali you win the favicon. Once I get my design team back from their xmas holiday I will mail you with a design brief ok.

Mark...

Aloha,

I have bookmarked your blog when I first got here a couple of months ago by blogexplosion. There are a fair number of reasons why I enjoyed visiting your blog. Your blog features valuable information on internet marketing and webmasters and overall content is very appealing and not pushy. The design of the blog is well-colored and not disturbing. It is easy to navigate around the website although I would make the fonts a little bigger and brighter. Especially the links on the top-menu bar. I would like to suggest a new location for your logo and description of your blog. I think it's better to place it in the center. Also, you could change the font style of your blog's logo. Happy New Year and I wish all of you the best!

Great blog!! Just one small thing that I noticed straight off the bat is the existance of category elements in the righthand side menu that do not function. I know that is probably because they are defined but have not content, but it can be a little confusing for people who expect it to find a link there.

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Hi Paul

That`s odd as all links have been checked throughly. There was a lot of coding went into those two expanding menus. All my categorys have many posts in.

Endurance kart Team
I robot

They should both expand and indeed do for me and my team on Netscape IE and also Firefox. Can you tell me what config you are using please

OS
browser version
java enabled etc etc

Mark...

1. Overall it's well done and self-explanitory. Even though blue is my favorite color, I'm a little overwhelmed by how much blue you use. It's such a cold color. Although, that is in keeping with your graphic scheme. Still... it's cold.

2. I wouldn't have known that you had a main website if it hadn't been one of the questions. And even then it wasn't readily apparent how to get there. Not being front and center... not to mention huge, your banner isn't the obvious place to click on that it would be on a more traditionally styled layout. Still, I figured it out easily enough. But as I say... if it hadn't been one of your questions, I wouldn't have thought that there was anything beyond the blog.

That said... ditto my comments on the blog. Well done overall and self-explanitory.

3. With the exception of how to get to your main site, as noted above, navigation is simple and easy to use.

The two category elements on the righ-hand sidebar seemed dead to me too. It was only by reading your comments to Paul that I went back and poked around until I accidently discovered the drop-down menu function.

Visually those two look like dead links except that they have the little greater than ">" symbol next to them. It was actually when I went to cut and paste the first one here so that I could comment on it that I accidentally triggered the dropdown menu when my cursor contacted the ">" symbol.

I'm using AOL's 9.0 version of IE and Windows XP.

Again, the dropdown menus do work for me. It's just that it was not at all obvious that they were dropdown menus. Plus, I have to click on the ">" to activate the dropdown menu. To me that was not at all obvious. In fact, what it looks like, visually, is a broken HTML tag. I wouldn't have guessed that the ">" triggers a dropdown if I hadn't accidently triggered it.

4. Yes! You've done a fantastic job of making it very obvious what you do.

5. I would tone down the blue a bit. Or... I would go with a warm off-white background for the blog entries area. I know that crisp white is supposed to convey a professional appearance. But, it's hard on the eyes when there's so much blue around.

Just by way of comparison... if you look at the color scheme at my theindependentvoter.com site, you can see that blue and a warm off-white background can be complimentary as well as easier on the eyes. I... um... stole the background color specs from my domain host. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they use a warm off-white background on their business site. And I personally love it. It's close enough to white to still give that good contrast that conveys professionalism, yet vastly easier on the eyes. IMHO that is.

Also, in my browser the unread link color is a shade of blue that's not all that different from the color of your blue background - making them a little hard to read.

LOL is that more than you bargained for when you decided to solicit reader reactions?

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Hi Kevin

No this is exactly what we all need in order to improve on what we do :) No design is perfect for all people. I am always looking to improve upon all aspects of my business not least customer service and feedback..

Mark...

1. Overall look, feel and content of the Blog?

- It looks great, easy to read, no grammar mistakes, nice color scheme.

2. Overall look, feel and content of the website?

- Ditto.

3. Ease of use and navigation elements of the website?

- One thing I don't like is how LONG the first page is. The scrolly bar thing is tiny. Maybe have a little less on the very first entrance and link the rest.

4. Is it readily understandable what we do?

- "Internet marketing and web design" apparently, right? Heh, yes.

5. Any changes you would make or like to see.

- Maybe a "new announcements" section at the top so we can see what's new.

Preliminary comment - As I am a rather obvious amateur (I still can't get 3 columns in valid CSS on my site amongst other problems), I feel out of my league offering my suggestions on your site. These are just my humble comments:

1. Overall look, feel and content of the Blog?

I have come across your site many times in my BlogExploding and have always been impressed with your use of this soothing blue. I particularly enjoy the graphic of the degrees of a circle with the 15 degrees highlighted. I also like your "corporate" logo on the left . The repeated use of the "off center" graphic is fun. I have thought ot myself that I wish there was more of a separation between the mountain graphic and the menu item. For example, starting the left hand menu items further down the page slightly. I wish I saw more of those other colors in the mountain used elsewhere in your blog. One last thing that bothered me a little, was the duplication of the mountain image at the top of the posts.

2. Overall look, feel and content of the website?

I find the frequent use of bold font ("Free 2 Sell eBooks Series") uneccessary , but the content is appropriate.

The blog is more inviting than the rest of the site and will help to "lure" readers to uncover more about your services.

3. Ease of use and navigation elements of the website?

Love the little lightbulb and the very relevant menu items; and your categories (Knowledge Essentials, Contact Essentials and Operational Essentials) are unique. I like them.

4. Is it readily understandable what we do?

I was initially scared that I was going to be "sold" something I didn't want when I first stumbled upon you , but in the big picture your message is clear and unoffensive.

5. Any changes you would make or like to see.

Trivial changes all stated above.

Good luck with everything!

Dan

Dan's comments reminded me that I should add a bit in keeping with his excellent observations.

I too loved the degrees of the circle graphic. And I alos very much like the off-center banner. My sole point of constructive criticism with the banner was just that as the link to your main site it wasn't the obvious place to click. And that might just be because it's a more progressive placement thing. Had it been front and center it might have more readily occurred to me that it was the link to the main site.

Hope this helps.

PS, Dan, I'm an amateur too. In fact you're one up on me 'cause I have a devil of a time with CSS. I long for the simple days of just using HTML. LOL

1. Overall look, feel and content of the Blog?
I like the general look and feel but I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of menu options :-)

2. Overall look, feel and content of the website?
Content is very well written and clear, no complaints there

3. Ease of use and navigation elements of the website?
Uhm I think I said it too soon on first comment hahah. But you know I'm lazy and don't spend more than 2 seconds 'sizing up' a site. When I land on a page if the main point that brought me there doesn't jump out at me. I'm not going to look I'm gone.

4. Is it readily understandable what we do?
Most definitely and I can pick up the heavy Corey Rudl influence too! :-)

5. Any changes you would make or like to see.
Hmmmm not really. I just find the top section a little busy is all.

Hey - I've added some honest comments. Hoo ha. All intended as fully constructive and ways in which you can improve the site from here. Good job so far - great competition idea too.

Happy new year,

chris

1. Overall look, feel and content of the Blog/Website?

If you're looking to make changes (and this is a very subjective area) then consider the following...

Image - there's potential to improve quality of the image to form a narrow backdrop to a redesign horizontal nav - http://bivouac.com/img/trip/1707_Traverse.jpg

Logo and Headlines - You could a semi-transparent section on top of the mountain image to provide more contrast. See how the BBC displays headlines on top of images - http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/12/06/house_of_flying_daggers_2004_review.shtml.

Content - it's good stuff, you clearly know about internet marketing and running a business online. Enjoyable to get this kind of enthusiasm for what is undeniably a brilliant medium. Well-written too. Keep it up.

2. Ease of use and navigation elements of the website?

Page Length - It's a pretty intuitive site to use though your pages are too long, something that sets alarm bells off at Google (considers this a spammy tactic). Try optimising your pages between 300-600 words, to minimise keyword dilution (and keyword spamming, as too much of a good thing can be a bad thing). Spread quality content across more pages. More pages = more content. More content = better Google ratings. She is, after all, our very own internet God.

Links - Make sure you have plenty of internal AND external links to quality pages (they don't have to be on your own site - a good outbound link adds weight to your page's relavancy ranking). Google loves links contained within 'normal' text, rather than links found underneath a section titled 'links', if you know what I mean.

Formatting - http://www.15dn.com/html/web-design.htm. This page sucks, if you don't mind me saying so. It isn't in line with the look and feel on your other pages. Are you using CSS to stylise your pages, or is it all hard coded? Anyhow, I'm sure you've recognised this. Outline your services, with links to sub-sections, something like webdesign/services/newsletter-design.htm. This page doesn't sell your combined services. Add a case study or white paper to prove you know your stuff (Google loves PDF and Word files, so add these as well).

Navigation - I think you could be doing a little better in this area. I couldn't tell, with the cool blue thing going on across the various areas of the page, where I was meant to look first. Also, you're using images when text (which can be placed on top of images - again, look at CSS) would work better for Google, though there's ALWAYS a look and feel vs SEO trade-off. You could get a few more keywords in these headers too. I'd consider fully restructuring your nav. Main site sections on top using just one line (tab structure, perhaps). Left nav to contain sections that reveal sub-sections, but don't use javascript, use DHTML. Consider colouring nav more prominently as it gets a little lost in the cool blue wash (blue text on a white/blue mid linear fade against a blue border on a blue background). Might be a little too Pantone287. Subjectivity vs accessibility / ease of use. Consider increasing font size of nav text too.

Alt text - not all images do their best in this area. Your logo, for example, could be your full company name and even a keyword or two, rather than its existing abbreviated file name.

4. Is it readily understandable what we do?

At first I was unsure as to whether you were a publisher or a services provider, but it soon became apparent. Note that your horizontal nav has a header titled 'Web Design', with a not too good page of content contained within. Once your on that page a secondary level of horizontal nav appears, with another area called 'Web Design Services'. This page is one step away from your checkout, yet I couldn't access it from the homepage, and only from the not-too-hot Web Design page (if I was looking for web design services I wouldn't have stuck around - the page look and feel didn't do it for me). You have to make Virtual Pioneer available directly from your homepage.

Also, I couldn't find an About Us or Media/Press page. This, as well as contact details, is essential to boost credibility.

5. Any changes you would make or like to see.

More internal linking. More external linking. Remember that the link text is very important - think how users will search.

Trust this is helpful - good luck fellas!

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Hi Chris

Officially this site is still in dev which is the reason I decided to do the comp. I wanted a fresh set of eyes on this project as its my baby :) Im pushing the Blog but nothing else at the moment untill we finalise design and tidying.

Mark...