Critique Required

I've spent this weekend trying to re-design my football teams website using MODx. I'm not much of a designer so my sites don't always look that "appealing", however, putting them together is the easy bit
Could I bother you guys to maybe have a look at my site and offer a bit of feedback on it?
This is the site as it currently stands (not been changed in 3 years) http://www.birchmerefc.co.uk. Ignore the banner, I lost the original .psd of it and needed to change some details on it quickly (where I got the idea to start redesigning it).

This is the new site http://new.birchmerefc.co.uk, I know there isn't much in terms of content at the moment, I want to get the site looking good before uploading all of the content...

All feedback will be greatly appreciated. Sorry if I'm breaking forum rules

Cheers,

Dan

It needs some bgsound and a nice big javascript popup that asks the user to take a survey. Have it so it constantly moves. It could do with some bright coloured strobing flash headers and menus too. I was also able to leave the site without being asked, via a few alerts, if I was sure.

Edited by deleted (Mon 15-Mar-10 00:14:11)

In reply to a post by 12eason:

It needs some bgsound and a nice big javascript popup that asks the user to take a survey. Have it so it constantly moves. It could do with some bright coloured strobing flash headers and menus too. I was also able to leave the site without being asked, via a few alerts, if I was sure.

Implement that on 12eason.co.uk as its such a good idea ya know!

Seriously though, the plain green colour scheme could do with sprucing up a bit. You can still maintain the colour but just add a slight 3d button effect to the menu links. Either that or go the youtube route and strip all the colour out of the thing and have coloured rollovers.

Edited by deleted (Mon 15-Mar-10 13:21:11)

I know what you mean, where the main content goes, I'll probably change it and have a gif there as a box with rounded corners and maybe slightly raised to give more emphasis on it.

Regardless of the design, you need to be careful regarding search engines. Appreciate search probably isn't a priority for you but you have left the entire test site available for indexing and this is being indexed. That could well cause issues re people finding you.

Always best to password protect an area you are working on to stop any chance of being indexed, a little late for that or other forms of blocking now. Easiest solution would be to move the test site to a different subdomain/subfolder and password protect this, then 301 redirect from new.birchmerefc.co.uk to the main domain.

Page by page is always ideal but looks like not much indexed yet, a basic domain wide 301 should be okay.

Oh, and the hard-coded widths... Am I the only person this annoys? How hard is it to use percent instead of pixels?

I'll be honest, the site will be going up on the main domain in a few days, I didn't really want to password protect it as I wanted to let people see it to give me feedback.

I don't particularly like to use liquid widths, that's just my preference...

Nowadays though, with cheap widescreen LCDs, having fixed width websites often means they waste have the screen real estate. It does mean you have to spend more time making stuff reflow sensibly though. I suppose it comes down to skill in the end.

In reply to a post by metalhead41:

I'll be honest, the site will be going up on the main domain in a few days, I didn't really want to password protect it as I wanted to let people see it to give me feedback.

just set up a robots.txt file to tell search engines not to index

In reply to a post by 12eason:

Nowadays though, with cheap widescreen LCDs, having fixed width websites often means they waste have the screen real estate. It does mean you have to spend more time making stuff reflow sensibly though. I suppose it comes down to skill in the end.

its got nothing to do with skill.. more so what the designer wants to do with the site.

Bad designers, maybe.

Fixed design is fine, don't worry about that. Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea, ect, all have fixed width designs. They clearly either had ropey designers or it made sense to them.

What I found weird is that your site's background colour is more or less of similar colour to Firefox's back button.

Is it? My back button is black

In reply to a post by metalhead41:

Is it? My back button is black

hehe. regards to the background i've have done a grass background with a football in it and the right handside with the team's shield

Hmm, good idea, I'll have a play around with that and see what I can come up with. I assume you mean the body background and not the background behind the the content text?

In reply to a post by metalhead41:

Hmm, good idea, I'll have a play around with that and see what I can come up with. I assume you mean the body background and not the background behind the the content text?

yep body background... would suggest fadeing top half to black and making the football huge

What do visitors to the site want to do? If you put links to things they want the most top left then they tend to see them sooner. If they want upcoming fixtures then have that as a quick link.

The site is plain but it is more important that visitors find what they want easily than have a fancy looking site with poor usability.

Also add a search feature as it will tell you what people are looking for if the links already shown don't seem to offer what they want.

Not sure a footer with the same links as the menu bar is a good idea in such a large typeface. Shrink the footer as the top menu should be the primary navigation.