New Website good/ bad/ ugly

Hi Folks

Just launched our new Website and we are open for comments or suggestions.

Yes I know the word digital is prevelent and there are lots of nasty devices inside the pages, but you can see we are very much commited to the analoque side of our growth.

be gentle now www.elevatordigital.ca you may have to refresh your browser if the new site does not come up.

thanks
Bob

Hey Bob! I like the new site! It flows well, and the static menu on the side always keeps you "grounded". About the only thing that people may find odd is that the one word items at the top of the page beneath the 3 Elevator "mains" are not links! Most people expect to find links there if there are words there... and it would not be a big deal to make them links. That way if a busy (ie, much busier than me) person wanted to find some framing pricing, they would be able to get there by clicking on either link (words on top or words on side). It comes from people (non-Asian-reading-people) reading first across, then down. We generally scan over before down.
All in all, great stuff! It loaded very quickly and while there is a lot going on on the opening page, it's quite organized which makes it full, rather than cluttered.
Nice job!

Looks far better than the old site, the words at the top Jeanette mentions would definitely be better as links.

Nice to see a site filling the screen well too.

Ian

Desk pause viewing: great site Bob. Ran through it quickly and it worked well. And it was impressive; I might even try some professional lab services. Did not try to open any of the pdf's; will try later. The picture of you and Kevin appears pretty dark on my screen. I did lose the static menu when I went to the workshops and events page.
Brian

Bob, some comments:

I also expected the top to contain links.

You used a lot of images of words. Search engines can't index these. For example on the printing page your top three levels of page header will not get indexed. They also prevent your page from flexibly resizing to fit different window sizes and adjusting flexibly as people set different default text sizes. Also, screen readers for the visually impaired will have trouble with them. These issues may not be important given your audience, but in general it is best to avoid graphics for menus and text.

The font used for "Download PDF Price Guide" and "Mailing list Sign-up" is not easy to read. It is blocking up at the default font size in Safari and Camino (Mac Mozilla browser - firefox core). Check that you are not using a plus 1 font size as your browser's default.

There is no "home page" for the Lab. Clicking on the camera image on the sites main page doesn't take you to a new page like the other two options do.

One more comment that isn't related to the site: have you considered offering paper samples? West Coast imaging does this and I found it very helpful to have a small image printed on all of their paper choices. They use a very long and skinny image (2" x 10") for their color options and a small 3.5" square image for their black and white options. Maybe the samples could be done as filler between images when you have space.

Have you stopped offering hand printed ciba and RA4?

Leaps ahead of the last one Bob...
Nice..

Not ugly, not bad, I think its good. Man I wish Dublin had an Elevator !!

Anyway I'm using Safari on a MAC to view and its better than your old site on Safari.

In terms of the look and feel. I like the green and the speckled or frosting stuff. I like the 3 logos for the different departments. The PDFs are nicely done, the shading on the tables nice again.

I would suggest that Workshops and Events opens a new window because there is no navigation to get back to the main site except the back button.

It's a personal thing but I'm not crazy about using capitals the way you have in SUBMIT and UPLOAD FILES etc. That and the slight off-centre alignment of 1,2,3, B in the Image Upload page too.

One last thing for now, the left hand navigation area [on Safari anyway], jumps around a bit and the spacing between the different 'buttons' is not consistent. I think the variation for the rollover should be slightly different to the variation for the page open.

I hope thats not too much of the negative...

Great improvement Bob.

BTW, you look very fetching in orange.
(How was Cuba? )

Tim