Please Review: Flatiron Sprinkler

[vangogh]

I recently finished a site for a client and wanted to get some feedback. The original design changed significantly based on suggestions from the client and I'm curious how the final design come across.

The site is Flatiron Sprinkler (http://flatironsprinkler.com/) and any thoughts you'd like to share would be welcome.

This is the clients first foray into being online. At the moment the site is somewhat thin on content and it's mostly serving as an online brochure. In time the client expects to grow the site.

Any thoughts or suggestions you have for how additions to the site would be welcome.

Is it obvious what the business is about?
Does the site make you feel comfortable contacting the company?
Is there anything obviously missing?
What suggestions can you offer for the future?
Anything else you'd like to comment about?

I'm hoping to put something together for the client to give them some ideas for future development. My guess is much of what you'll suggest is similar to what I already plan on suggesting, but sometimes hearing it from people who aren't connected with developing the site resonates stronger.

Thanks.

[cbscreative]

This must be one of your few "local" accounts. I like it, clean, straight to the point, and it seems personable like a family biz should. I'm sure it will help their business significantly. If your community is like most, very few of their competitors have any web site, much less a nice one. They made a good decision to have one built and I think you did a great job.

I did not see anything obvious to point out. I suppose the logo could be a little smaller to push the content up more, but it also looks fine being bigger and I don't think you would gain all that much by reducing it.

[KristineS]

It's a good clean site. The copy is tight and to the point. I don't see anything obviously out of place or missing.

If it were me I might make the pictures a little bigger. I would also think a portfolio of some of their best design jobs might be nice in the future. Also you might want to consider expanding a bit on the eco-friendly side of things. I noticed you touched on it a bit in the text, but that's a big issue right now. It might be worth covering that topic a bit more.

[thx4yrtym]

Logo loaded a bit slow the first time.

Really nice clean design.

would like to see a bigger picture of the crew.

for the future... Pictures(gallery) of various stages of several jobs that can be used during in-home sales presentation. second private gallery for those situations where the client is having a vacation property or new home purchase done and they want to see pictures of the progress... next best thing to being there.

very nice CSS site,

Regards,

Gregg

[billbenson]

My only comment is what cb steve said as well. Why the huge logo area. It looks good, but I try to keep the header area small so you can have more text above the fold. He may have more info later and require longer pages?

[Blessed]

I think the picture in the header could be bigger... it's hard to even tell what it is a picture of. I would think that it could take up more of the white space to the right of the logo than it does with the tabs to click through the site simply moved to the left a bit.

Other than that I like it a lot and I agree with the whole add pictures of work in progress idea that has already been suggested!

[Dan Furman]

I LOVE the design. I love clean, easy to use sites.

I'm not in love with the copy - it doesn't really flow very well (the bullets and the sentence that follows it are really awkward.) But as someone else mentioned, that might not be all that vital because they are likely the only ones around w/ a website. To use a cliche', it's "good enough" :)

But the design is really, really good. I do agree w/ Blessed about the pic (that was my first thought - I literally said "that pic should be in that white space... almost making a banner w/ the logo")

[jem]

Nice and clean - agree with the comments about making the logo a wee bit smaller.

Now when I put on my person looking for a tradesperson hat I have a this viewpoint.

What concerns me is quality, reliability and price (amongst other things)

So I would love to see the guarantee made a little more prominent (show me the quality & reliability).

Also the same for the BBB logo - let em know they are sound. Also (and this is a pet peeve) some cool gimmik around returning calls, what about having the customer leave their # and they will resturn their call with 2, 4, 24 etc hours. If not $100 off of their project....(just wild Friday night thinking)

Maybe some testimonials from satisfied customers??

Finally would add some mechanism to capture email addrs e.g. report "The 7 Things Most Irrigation Companies Dont Want You to Know" or something like that.

All in all very nice.

OK enough of my ranting, the kids need a bath (bathtime with a 6, 4 & 3 yr old is 'interesting')
Simon

[Steve B]

I like the look and feel.

Ironically, the one thing I noticed is that the page button doesn't stay highlited to indicate which page you are currently on.

[vangogh]

Thanks all. Sorry it's taken me so long to respond.

Interesting that the two main things people pointed out were two things that were out of my control. There was originally a different image in the upper right. The image you see of ther crew I had planned as a larger image within the copy of the services page. The client asked me to switch the images at the last second.

Ther was no copy delivered. What you see is what I wrote based on fragments of conversation with the client and a rewrite of much of the text on other marketing materials. Both myself and the client agree more and better copy is needed in the future.

Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions. Seems as thought you like the site as a whole, with the exception of the few things mentioned. I'll be passing on most of the info here to the client. Thanks again.

[rezzy]

Am I too late to comment? If so, I still write my thoughts. I think the page looks good overall. On my browser, the contact does not hold its position. And I cant see it unless I move the mouse around and bump into it on accident.

I hope the contact page has some sort spam catching tool in use. I have found those forms get pounded with spam. --I found this out the hard way, and now insist on putting some sort of spam protection on sites now.

[nealrm]

Vangough,
It's a good look site. My only suggest would be to add some photos of their product.

[kml9870]

I know I'm a bit late in this, but here you go Steve:

1) At 1024x768 the design is a bit wide. I think a lot of their clients that view the site will be a bit on the "tech challenged" side of life and not necessarily notice the scroll bar at the bottom. If they don't notice the scroll bar it give the design and unfinished feel.

2) I would swap the "You Can Depend On Us" and the "We Stand Behind Our Work". It's the logical progression....customers want to know they are going to get a timely response then they are concerned with warranties.

3) I noticed some minor editing things with the copy....a few grammar changes. You know how to find me if you want specifics on that one :D

[vangogh]

@Bryan - what OS and browser are you using to view the site? I haven't seen anything like that anywhere I've tested. If you're running *nix I'm thinking it won't be a problem since I can't see this business having many *nix users. Still it would be good to know.

@Neal - I agree. And if the client sends me images I'll happily add them to the site. What you see are the images I received.

@Kandi - works for me at 1024, but I'm certainly not everyone. I do notice if I make the font larger then I get the horizontal scroll bar. I might have to test under more conditions.

I like the idea about changing the two items around in the sidebar. I'll run it by the client and see what he thinks. What you're suggesting is the more logical progression.

As far as the grammar I'm not sure how much I can change with that right away, but if you want to PM some of the things you notice I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I mentioned this in the original post that this is the client's first foray into the online world. We both know there's a lot more than can be done with the site and this was the preliminary step.

The client while admittedly unsavvy at the moment about websites is really nice guy and someone who would like to learn more. I do think he's wanting to make improvements and additions to the site in the future and hopefully some of the ideas here will find there way into the site at some point.

[rezzy]

Yes, Mr. Vangogh it is a *nix machine. I bet its a width or padding issue.

[vangogh]

Thanks. Probably not an issue for this site, but if the client is up for another round of work I'll see about looking into it.

[rezzy]

Thanks. Probably not an issue for this site, but if the client is up for another round of work I'll see about looking into it.

Although one thing I find interesting, the *nix version of FF renders differently then the windows version.

There are some corporate sites that are almost unusable with this browser because weird issues similar to this.

[vangogh]

That is strange. I have noticed websites looking different on the same version of IE installed on two different systems too, though not on this site. Makes it harder to fix when you have to deal with the OS on top of the browser.