http://www.griffinwebdesign.co.uk/
OK, so not a favourite design-wise, but Andy Shaw keeps coming back for more... this is a reply to the 3rd time he posted his site asking for feedback:
Did you save the replies on your previous thread? If you did, most of my comments apply to this redesign.
- The stock imagery used is lazy; the images chosen don't add any value to the page.
- Too many font faces used. Lack of cohesion.
- From a personal POV, I dislike the "web 2.0" trend of size 36 text, graphics that make anyone on a 1024x768 display or lower have to scroll down to read what a page is about and in.
- Still confusion about whether you are a freelancer or an agency/company, which carries on through with your "beta" design (oh purlease!). Trust is vital in business - there's nothing wrong with being a freelancer, but be honest about it and embrace it. Congrats on getting rid of that ridiculous pricing guide, though.
- Your copy is still atrocious. "medium size business's"? Oops. Get a dictionary, get hold of a style guide and get your copy in order.
- There's some serious problems with trust. Your "beta" site claims you were "recently tasked with re-branding Griffin Web Design". Bullshit. YOU decided to rebrand - no-one 'tasked' you with it. The only sites in your portfolio are your own and one for your brother/other male relative. That's fine as examples of what you can do, but don't pretend you've got experience of working with clients or that you've got any on-going professional relationships. Be honest - at the moment, anyone will be able to see straight through you.
As a general note, I actually prefer your previous design. I said in your previous thread that I'd be surprised if you were still around in 12 months time, and I stand by that - you don't seem to have the business acumen required to go it alone. That your portfolio hasn't grown, your Plumber "client" doesn't even seem to have a domain name and that you've got the time to go through a rebranding suggests two things - that you've not had any clients and that your priorities are completely wrong.
If you're serious about going it alone, go out and make connections and get clients in. It takes a helluva lot more than to put a portfolio site up and hope that people visit and buy your services.
E-commerce has never been easier. There are many cheap and even free e-commerce packages (such as the dreadful OSCommerce and its many forks, Magento - the new darling of free e-commerce, and CubeCart), hosted solutions such as EKM Powershop and even the major hosting players sell bundled e-commerce solutions cheaply. The entry point has become extremely low.
Having such as low entry means anyone with a net connection and perhaps a fiver a month can set up an e-commerce site. Indeed, many hosting packages now come complete with a one-click installer called Fantastico, which enables a handful of e-commerce applications to be installed easily. Sounds great? It's not.
Aside from choices being too easy to make (one-click installations and a play-around hardly constitutes the sort of research someone serious about online retailing should take; one should at the very least create a written brief, even if only to be used internally, and then look at the various solutions both free and paid, off-the-shelf and bespoke to fit around their requirements), versions are very often out of date on Fantastico packages.
Risking your entire reputation and fledgling business on a potentially insecure shopping cart just because you don't have the technical know-how of how to install and secure a shopping cart script or willingness to pay somebody who does have it is foolhardy.
If you can't figure out how to install a cart, especially given the simple setup scripts and instructions most have, you've no place running an online store. There's a helluva lot more to setting up a secure shopping cart than a one-click-install and uploading a skin.
For hobbyists looking to test the waters of e-commerce, they shouldn't be looking into setting up their own application. They should use a hosted service (EKM, etc) or even Ebay or Amazon's marketplace and let them worry about security, backups etc. Lack of knowledge (technical, business, legal) is a disaster waiting to happen.
