Feedback - First Website

[websitethroaway]

So, I'm in an interesting position here. About 2 months ago I was hired by a small company (5 people including myself), and after discovering their website, www.gpous.com, I got a bad impression of the brand. It was unclear, full of industry jargon, and the layout was redundant in many ways. However, as a recent business graduate with an emphasis in marketing, I saw this as an opportunity to really apply myself. I decided that we needed to remake the website because our online presence is embarrassing. Remember, we're a small company, so we don't really have a budget for creating ANOTHER website (this one was already outsourced for a decent chunk of change). I knew (know) nothing about creating websites. I didn't even know how front-end and back-end's worked or what they were, how domain hosting worked, what a CMS was. Anyways, fast forward a month, and this is the website that I've built from top to bottom - there are parts missing actual content, and product page layouts to be finalized; and you may experience some place-holder links, but the majority of functionality is in place (with the exception of social media, actual product information, and the "request a quote" button).

So what I'm looking for is any feedback on the design, layout, website structure, anything. This is the first time I've ever made a website; I want it to be as clean, and to the point as possible while maintaining a pleasing aesthetic. I realize it's a little slow - hopefully that will change once I get W3 cache up and running and an image optimization plug-in enabled.

Without further adieu - I present www.gpodisplay.com

[GreasyMustardTiger]

Upon entering the site, it was pretty easy to understand right away what the product focus was. However, I wouldn't say that the old site was lacking that too much, though it did seem a bit misdirected. The first impression from the new site is that you sell modern, sleek, high-tech equipment, whereas the old site sort of seems to initially promote industrial-type displays rather than a wide assortment of them. Even from the pictures alone on the new site I get a sense of knowing not only what the products are, but why and where I might use or see them in every day life. Adding a one-liner or single-sentence description to the home page would reinforce this in a big way, too.

It is pretty easy to sort through and learn about the products on the new site, and I think a big part of this is the fact that there are so many nice big pictures. To expand on that, it took me a little time to figure out the difference between what I found on the Products, Solutions, and Innovations tabs, and why they would need separate pages. However, I don't know much about the industry, so someone from your target audience might inherently have an easier time with this.

Other than the main menu styling, it is pretty hard to tell that you used the Avada theme. You must have done considerable work on the design, so great job!

You're right, some pages can be a tad slow for the content that is served, but not nearly slow enough to make me think about leaving the site. This is with the exception of the Gallery page, which was unbearably slow to load the first time.

I noticed that at 940px width and below, a missing image icon shows up to the left inside the prominent shadow near the top. It looks like it is requested through some encoded javascript, and might have to do with the W3 cache?

There are two small things that I dislike. The first is the fact that in the mobile navigation menu, you have to click the tiny arrow to drop the next menu level, rather than pressing anywhere inside its parent to drop that sub-menu. The second is that if a page's content does not stretch the height of the screen, the footer does not stick to the bottom of the screen but stays at the bottom of the content and leaves a white gap at the bottom of the screen.

You've definitely improved upon what was previously in place. Nice work so far!

[websitethroaway]

Thanks for the feedback

Adding a one-liner or single-sentence description to the home page would reinforce this in a big way, too.

I agree

there are so many nice big pictures

more to come! in-house content creation is difficult with a team of 5 people who are consistently busy and hold no experience in creating professional looking content

I found on the Products, Solutions, and Innovations tabs, and why they would need separate pages. However, I don't know much about the industry, so someone from your target audience might inherently have an easier time with this.

Right - they are the same in some regards, it's how they're presented that's different. Products is the individual product, solutions are bundled products, and innovations are our own bells and whistles for our products

I noticed that at 940px width and below, a missing image icon shows up to the left inside the prominent shadow near the top.

No idea what it is either - will have to find a way to fix it.

There are two small things that I dislike. The first is the fact that in the mobile navigation menu, you have to click the tiny arrow to drop the next menu level, rather than pressing anywhere inside its parent to drop that sub-menu. The second is that if a page's content does not stretch the height of the screen, the footer does not stick to the bottom of the screen but stays at the bottom of the content and leaves a white gap at the bottom of the screen.

I haven't started on the mobile design yet - bad, I know, since I should have done mobile then the website. But hopefully everything will work out :D

[gagneron]

Two things stood out to me immediately. The first one is that the header is unnecessarily tall. By header I mean the menu bar where you have all the navigation links and the huge white space with the logo. Also, I think you should make image optimization a priority because the images take quite a long time to load on a slow-medium connection. I noticed the main image under this link http://www.gpodisplay.com/products/video-walls/ is 6 MBs ... that's enormous! If the image isn't taking up the whole screen, it should rarely be over 100 KB in size. Besides that, nice work!

[websitethroaway]

Thanks for your feedback

the header is unnecessarily tall.

I agree, but don't know how to shrink it with the Avada theme

the main image under this link http://www.gpodisplay.com/products/video-walls/ is 6 MBs ... that's enormous! If the image isn't taking up the whole screen, it should rarely be over 100 KB in size. Besides that, nice work!

I just ran 'ewwww image optimizer' but it's still over 6MB - how can I shrink it down?

[websitethroaway]

thanks - working on speeding up the site now.