Hello Woz2,
I enter the homepage at:
http://taloma.com/
My first impressions:
- Clear, easy understood layout; could be more "polished" (design, as
well as logo)*
- The pattern to the right side is a bit too much; have more subtle
contrasts to not make it the center of attention
- The font seems to be unusually big, this goes for both navigation &
headline as well as contentual text
Reading through the text of the first page, I find the first sentence
could be a little easier to understand. My suggestion: break it up in
two sentences. Make it as easily understood as possible. Just imagine
somebody has 20 links after entering a keyword in a search-engine:
that person might open up 10 of the pages, depending on if the title
fits or not; that person might give you 5 seconds to get your point
across if indeed you have to offer what he wants.
I mentioned the importance of the title. If taken on its own, with no
additional context information given, do you think a reader will know
it's exactly what she's looking for? You will get many hits by people
entering from search engines; you will get the most hits from that
group if you optimize your title to be as self-explanatory as
possible.
I'm now reading through the list -- the "Taloma will" line might have
a line break to allow for easy scanning of the page content. People do
scan webpages, without caring about what came before and what comes
after, jumping from headline to the first line of a paragraph to list
items, to the text following an illustration. And yes, a list is
already very good to help here.
You mention "MATLAB", "Simulink" and "Real-Time Workshop". If you're
unsure wether your target group knows what this is, why not make a
link out of it which jumps to a little glossary on your page? This
will additionally make sure you have some more of that keyword-heavy
content search-engines love so much.
Now, you say you want to communicate with the customer directly via
email. Suggestion: don't simply end the page when you're through with
the information; involve the reader actively, and end with a very
easily recognizable email-link at the bottom. It should not read
"Email", nor "Contact", but it should explicitly be the email-address
(containing the @-character), in a different color, and underlined.
Finally, the footnote; all I can say here is that I suggest a
left-alignment, while also making sure there is some additional white
spacing at the bottom before it turns into the blue background.
*My suggestion for the site layout; have a design company optimize the
details (e.g. some round edges, some interesting & recognizable, but
subtle patterns). There is no "one right way" to the perfect design,
but a good design company (or a talented freelancer) will offer you
more than one to chose from. If you want to polish the design
yourself, I suggest loading up an image editor and playing a lot with
a variety of designs; to ask your friends about what they think; to
look at your favorite layouts of other sites, and take some
inspiration.
-----
I'm now going to the second page, "Partners":
http://taloma.com/partners.html
The page follows the same basic design, while switching the "tab" at
the top, which is good. Again, you mention "MATLAB" and "Simulink",
but this time without the (R) registered trademark symbol. I would
suggest consistency in this issue, at least on the first pages.
You mention "The MathWorks, Inc" as partner. Why not link to them?
Make sure your site won't attract the customer away with the first
click, but also don't have it look too much like an "island solution",
a self-contained system without communication to other companies.
The second page, in my opinion, could lead slightly more text; I'm
sure you got many things to say, communicate them in small chunks, but
do so. Keep to the "inverted pyramid" approach of good websites, and
start with the most important points first, while slowly going into
more detail.
-----
The third page, "Clients":
http://taloma.com/clients.html
The same comments as for "Partners", like a little more text go for
this page too.
The illustration of a hand-shake is self-explanatory, but make very
sure to not fall into the "clip-arts" trap; you need to communicate
professionalism, and many "hobby sites" also use clip-arts. Often, a
photograph of the same can make the point more subtle, while making
sure the design is as appealing as can be.
I notice a switch in font-size; here too, keep consistency. My
suggestion is to not switch to a smaller font unless for special
footnotes, image captions and so on.
Moving my mouse over the page I notice "Straight-line BER" is a link;
make it visible as such, not just by using a bold font, at least by
underlining; additionally, by using a different color too.
-----
The fourth page, "Biography":
http://taloma.com/biography.html
The illustrational portrait is nice; you need to decide wether or not
to switch to photographs like suggested, but if you do, again, I
suggest consistency. In the right design, such sketched images can
fare very good and make for a modern, fresh layout.
Again, the font-size is switched, and links are not clearly
communicated as such; see comments above.
An email and additional contact information are appropriate on this
page too (it doesn't hurt to have such information contained on
several pages; no need to wait for the reader to go to your last page,
"Contact").
On the biography, it is unclear "who's speaking" about Colin W.;
quote http://taloma.com/biography.html
"During 13 years at AT&T Bell Labs (Lucent, Agere), he had multiple
roles in both the marketing aspects (...)"
You might think about switching to first-person when addressing the
reader.
-----
The fourth page, "Contact":
http://taloma.com/contact.html
Indeed, now you speak in first-person.
My only suggestion to this page is to leave a little more spacing
between the introduction sentence and the actual address, and again,
to clearly visualize links.
The quotation on the bottom hints at being a copyright footnote (rule
above, size, alignment). I would suggest to use a style more
differentiating.
-----
All in all, you did a good job of getting straight to the point. Don't
give up on that by adding unnecessary details, but think about what
may still be important to get across. Some technical illustrations
would also help to add to the content.
As to the quote problems; to avoid any hassle on the browser-side with
so called HTML named entities, I suggest using simple double quotes:
"Like this".
A quick look at the source also revealed the CSS being used in the
head part; you might want to think about putting it into an external
file to allow for caching (and thus, faster loading of pages).
Please note my criticism is very frank (and might appear "a little
picky"); to give you the most value I didn't shy away from negative
criticism. I hope this answer has been constructive and informative to
you. Good luck with your website, and good luck with your business! |
