Bike Shop Site - Very Rough Draft.

[charris]

There are still some issues and bugs that I need to work out but I though that I'd see what people thought.
The 'service' page is not active yet. The rest should work. I will be adding pre-loaders to all of the separate links and the opening. We are doing a photo shoot for the place holder images in the coming weeks.
Keep in mind that this is my second attempt at a flash site.

The text on the home page is dynamically loaded as well as the hours so that my client can easily update those.

Any suggestions?

Never mind the crappy free hosting ad at the top of the screen. It will ultimately be hosted in place of the current site.

http://www.cwhdesigns.com/bbfinal/New%20Shell.html

Thanks in advance.
Corey

[Stratification]

Well, the scroller on the "Bikes" page is almost possessed, I'd be hard pressed to actually intentionally click on of the logos. The logos themselves also look pretty bad. There are only 5 of them, do you really need them to scroll like mad? You've also wasted a lot of space on the site, though if you don't have much to say I suppose that may not be much of an issue. My other real gripe is the scrollbars, they are really thin, and on the right, which is the opposite of most bars, so they're hard to use and hard to find. The overall look isn't bad at all, but you've got some definite usability issues, and a little polishing up to do on some of the images. It's a good start, but you've got a little way to go before you ought to release it.

[charris]

Well, the scroller on the "Bikes" page is almost possessed, I'd be hard pressed to actually intentionally click on of the logos. The logos themselves also look pretty bad. There are only 5 of them, do you really need them to scroll like mad? You've also wasted a lot of space on the site, though if you don't have much to say I suppose that may not be much of an issue. My other real gripe is the scrollbars, they are really thin, and on the right, which is the opposite of most bars, so they're hard to use and hard to find. The overall look isn't bad at all, but you've got some definite usability issues, and a little polishing up to do on some of the images. It's a good start, but you've got a little way to go before you ought to release it.

I'm actually awaiting better logos from the manufacturers. I was working with what was supplied to my by my client. On that note, I think that there will be quite a few more logos being added. I guess that intention was to leave it open for as many logos as are needed. If it were up to me I think that I do away with the bikes page all together and just add the manufacturers to the links page but the client wants the logos/bikes page. Or, since the client does do a lot of custom builds, dedicate the bikes page to a gallery and info on custom builds. I kind of figured that page would not sit right. It doesn't really sit right with me either. I am going to do some work on the scroll bars as well. Something more standard I guess.

Thanks again.

Corey

[Stratification]

You could probably get away with the scroller for the bike logos (though a gallery of custom work would make more sense). But you need to slow the mouse-over way down, it's a bit hyperactive as is, and it seems to keep operating after I roll out of that area. The scrollbars do look nice, but yeah, something more standard will probably be easier to use. Good luck!

[dentricrio]

If possible change the look of the scroll bar, it looks a bit rushed and the rollover areas are tiny, put a background on the button with 0% Alpha, to solve it. The 'opening hours' at the top of the page could be in the same font at the logo perhaps, As could each section heading. The scroll bar for the 'press' doesn't seem to work.

I don't want to seem like I'm going on, but the blue stripy background doesn't fit with the red in the logo, maybe make the backround and lines red.

And check the font, in the 'links' area, make sure it matches with the rest of the site.

Like Stratification has hinted at it would be good for there to be more photos of bikes.

Apart from all that it seems to be working well. Will be good to see the end result.

And for a second flash site its not bad at all.

[azdak]

Agree with above, but I like it a good bit, actually. Cept the way the background just cuts off to a black box with the logo.... maybe fill the height with it and incorporate the perma-header (logo, contact, whateves)?

[wes_design]

yeah the scrolling is a killer, it just moves even though I am not even within 20px of it

use a if and then statement to detect the distance then do scroll or use buttons
buttons are always good

I love the font selection, I like the dotted motif, I like the bg

everything else is horrible or rushed

good luck!

[charris]

yeah the scrolling is a killer, it just moves even though I am not even within 20px of it

use a if and then statement to detect the distance then do scroll or use buttons
buttons are always good

I love the font selection, I like the dotted motif, I like the bg

everything else is horrible or rushed

good luck!

Wow! Horrible. I didn't think I'd hear that one but thanks for the input anyways.

[charris]

Please tell me if this looks any better. Like I said - I'm still pretty new to web design.
http://www.cwhdesigns.com/bbfinal/NewBBhome.html

My thought with loading all of the pages individiually is that it is better to see something quickly (the home page) then to wait for all of the content to load. Might as well load the rest of the content as needed. Am I correct here or is it annoying?

Corey

[azdak]

Just curious here- why are you using flash at all? Maybe it's the server or my connection, but this guy took kind of a while (30sec or so) to download, and I frankly have no idea where all that bandwidth went- you're not doing anything that couldn't be done better, more usable and more lightweight in plain ole CSS. Flash is really for rich user experiences, and is altogether clumsy as a simple css/dhtml replacement.
Just a thought-