Check out my site, let me know what you think

[Proto Media]

This is a site that I have been working on for some time. I am no pro at making webpages, so this consists of mostly PSD files taken into imageready and spliced up, then everything is kinda touched up and smoothed out in dreamweaver. Let me know what you think, and feel free to leave comments, suggestions, rants, raves, whatever, just give me some real world feedback from a end user point of view.

- Is the navigation easy to follow?
- confusing at all?
- how does it look on your browser/computer screen
- how quick does it load (I KNOW THIS IS NOT A QUICK LOADER)
- anything contructive about the site, please don't just say "It Fu***** sucks"

CHECK IT OUT HERE: www.protomediadesign.com

 

[grapes911]

- how quick does it load (I KNOW THIS IS NOT A QUICK LOADER)

Way too slow. You really should think about scaling some of the imagery back and using a little more straight HTML or something. It is slow enough that many users will probably turn away before the home page even finishes loading.

 

[besler3035]

Honestly, I don't like the design at all. It's way too busy and the fonts are somewhat difficult to read. Definitely not appealing in the way of graphic design.

 

[dornoforpyros]

just give me some real world feedback from a end user point of view.
- anything contructive about the site, please don't just say "It Fu***** sucks"

CHECK IT OUT HERE: www.protomediadesign.com

Better luck next time

Sorry, that was harsh, let me reprash, as a new designer you are going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. 2 years from now your "coolest" designs are going to make you cringe.

But it's part of the process, everyone has to start somewhere. I will say this, your site is better than some (heck, probably even better than my earlier work) people's first websites. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, just be willing to learn from them.

A good resource for just checking out cool designs is (as always):
http://www.csszengarden.com

It's a great resource for different design ideas and such.

but hey, this is just my 2 cents. Other's might disagree

 

[Lixivial]

Long post? Wow... too long.

Well, let's dispense with the bad first. On your gallery page you have a typo. (Being a Mac user this is inexcusable! ) "CONTRUCTION" should be "Construction."

On your main page, I'd prefer being able to click on either the icon or the word and being able to go to that page. Having an icon with no "clickability" is somewhat misleading and can lead to confusion. Also on your main page, I'm not sure what those three boxes at the bottom are for, but having them there, empty, makes it seem incomplete.

And, yeah, speed is a big issue. Being that you did a lot of this in splices from ImageReady/PhotoShop makes a lot of sense -- the layout is nearly entirely formatted with images. There are ways for you to make this lightweight, while retaining the layout you desire. http://www.csszengarden.com for example.

On each page, take services for example, having "busy" text-formatting in the title makes the word difficult to read. If you take out that formatting, and simply put "SERViCES" in normal formatting, it'd be easier to read and look less busy. You did this with "Welcome to PROTO MEDIA DESIGN" on the main page, so you should do it with the headers of every subsequent page, too. Consistency is beauty.

Finally, the site artificially makes me scroll down. On 1024x768, hiding the bookmark bar and the status bar in Safari, I still had a small amount to scroll. See if you can find a way to shorten up the design a bit to make this a bit more res-neutral; there are still a lot of people on 1024x768 and scrolling makes it seem as though there is more there, when, in this instance, there is not.

Now with the good: While the design is a bit bold, I'm assuming you did so to give your company/services a certain "edge" or "attitude." While I ascribe to a more simplistic route, I'm sure this will appeal to your target audience. Being that I don't know that target audience, I'd say a more neutral design is better, but that's all highly subjective.

Your navigation does what it's supposed to do and, therefore, is rather logical. While that may sound basic, lord knows how many pages I've gone to where the navigation is at the top of the page in one page, and at the bottom in the next.

Yeah, this was way too long of a post.