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rvrugg90

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 28, 2008
37
0
Hello everyone! I redesigned my dads business, Ruggiero & Associates. It was very, very simple, but it hadn't been updated since 2002. So I would appreciate any feedback good or bad. Ruggiero & Associates concentrates on Auctions and Appraisals of antiques (as you will be able to see in the website).
The link is:
http://www.ruggiero-associates.com

Thanks in advance!
 
Just two quick things here, as I don't have time to run through the entire site right now:

1) When I put my mouse over any of the navigation links, I found that I couldn't really see what I was putting my mouse over. I would change the hover colour to something the is more visible.

2) There's not really any need for a Main page and a Home page. It may just confuse users. You could have a splash page that users see when they first come to the site, but having both in the navigation could be confusing.
 
hmm. I can see what your saying. I like them dark and elegant, but I see where you are coming from.

I'm for/against the main page...I do see where it could be confusing...especially if you are deep into the site and you see main, you might end up clicking that instead of going back to the home page. But at the same time, I think its classy and its almost an introduction to our location, and business style.

Thanks so much for the feedback! Hopefully I'll get some more suggestions/comments.
 
The main page doesn't tell me what kind of business this is. I saw the picture and I thought maybe a farming company or real estate maybe. I had no idea it was an auction house.
 
On the about us page, the pictures that are in a slideshow, the definition is really kicked up. Its almost painful to the eyes. Maybe soften them up a bit.
 
The dark rollovers on the nav do not give it an elegant look. I simply cant read the text at all at roll over, it causes the site to end up being difficult to navigate.
 
The most important thing I would do is move the nav up above the picture. Having it way below and then the dropdowns even lower is not very usable.
A quick sentence or two about what the business is about on the 'splash' page would be great both for search engines and just the general public. However as mentioned before I would just scrap the splash page all together. It's just an unnecessary extra click to access the site. Having a 'main' and 'home' pages is just confusing.

The design is clean but I find it quite dark overall .... I would have maybe used more dark browns or even dark greys over plain black if you wanted to go with a darker theme.
 
Hmm. So i will try to re-size the pictures on the about us page. I'll change the font a bit. and the mouse-over style. I might delete the "main" page from navigation on all other pages except for the "main" page itself. Which may make it easier to navigate (maybe) ??? Thanks so much for your help thusfar! We (Ruggiero & Associates) really do appreciate all of your suggestions and comments! Its very helpful to have some pro-web people here as I am a beginner.-Bob
 
as others have stated, the links are a tad dark. but on the about page, the flash is way too small to use properly. tbh i would think that an animated gif would be best - although it may be a bigger file.

some images are also a tad big (actual memory size) - im not sure what you are using (pc or mac) but either way find a image resizer, if its PC then microsoft have actually done a properly working program for once, type powertoys into google and get the MS image resizer and then resize the images to the same pixel resolution, but it will make it a lot smaller file size, but its only jpg.

on the same about page, dont have click here for map as it take the user out of the site. embed something, maybe an iframe or a php page with html or whatever and use something such as goodle maps which already have the code ready done

on the contact us page try to find a simple form through your search engine so that the form simply emails you with what the user has typed in - easier and more effective than an address

on this page http://www.ruggiero-associates.com/important_dates.html you have a rollover which doesn't do anything and the dates are a bit difficult to read.

you have also got: to join our mail listing email us - again have another form to do that all for you. you can get some good bits of web based software which will allow you to do that in a much easier fashion.

hope that helped - if you need any hosting my company is able to offer some great hosting. if you are interested email me personally at bigmanathome24@me.com - link below is from an old site, browse round but its a bit rubbishy...
 
Thanks so much bigmanathome24! I'll fix all of this stuff after I get back home.

I wanted to have a site that was different than most sites in that it had a black background. I have a lot of negative feedback on the darkness of the site, but I really do like the look of a black background. What do you guys think i should do?
 
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