4FWpromoter Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 Without much knowledge of website designing, after been let down on several occasions me and a member of 4FW staff decided to create our website from scratch, in my opinion we've put together a fairly decent looking site for the company. Â My question is what do you feel makes a website look professional and what would make you keep checking back to a companies website? Â As we are starting to spread our wings and promoting in different areas I want our customers and potential customers to click on the website advertised and see that they are going to a professional product. Â Â Here is the website WWW.4FW-ONLINE.COM Â Â Have a browse and I will take on board any advice/criticsm. Â Would be greatly apreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I quickly validated the website and found 16 errors and 7 warnings. Not a good start. Â The links to validate with are provided - they don't work though. Â The twitter logo is out of date and social networks limited. Use a proper bookmarking tool to increase visibility, aid viral lift, and remain up-to-date etc. AddThis are pretty decent and the analytics will help. Â Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richie Freebird Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I think, visually it looks great. The cycling images look really well produced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted June 2, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted June 2, 2011 I think the best thing you can do right now is get up some more information, videos and stuff for people to see on the wrestlers. Kinda like how WWE used to use those 30 second little box promo things, just to get over the basis of a character, maybe have that in each profile bit, like if someone's going to watch the show, sees the promotional poster, sees the website name and goes to check it out, at least straight away that night they're gonna know who to boo and to cheer straight off. Â Otherwise the whole website does look quite good and rather professional, better than a lot of efforts in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aosist Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I think it looks great. The professionalism of the website was a big part of convincing me to check out one of your shows. Â The quality of the images of the wrestlers is great, particularly in how they match. A strong, consistent theme to the design is important. You don't see that in every wrestling site. Â It's not a site I'd regularly visit though. There's only so much information you can put out there. A thriving forum would help, but that's not something you can just create without lots of fans getting involved on their own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Your Fight Site Posted June 2, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted June 2, 2011 For any website, not just wrestling websites, the flow and layout/design of the site has to be consistent. Navigation menus can't change page-to-page; and layouts should adhere to an invisible grid as it makes it easier for the visitor's eyes to follow your content. Â Specifically for wrestling (but not specifically websites) I think written content needs to be cut down dramatically. I know as a product owner you can get really passionate and want to write nice in-depth reviews of upcoming shows and matches and back-stories and so on, but to be blunt not many people read long passages of text. Maybe a sentence or two for each match if needs be that grabs the reader's attention as to why they should care about that match and why they should care only. Â In terms of design, keep your brand in mind. If your logo's blue, don't make a website that uses a lot of red. Keep fonts consistent for text. Don't have one paragraph in Arial then another two paragraphs in Verdana, and definitely don't use different sizes for paragraphs and list items. Colour and sizing should be used to indicate the difference in content from headings. Â That's the first things that sprung to mind for me, but I'm sure I'll chip in with other thoughts if and when they come to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4FWpromoter Posted June 3, 2011 Author Share Posted June 3, 2011 Cheers guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members tiger_rick Posted June 3, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted June 3, 2011 I think it's a really good effort. A pet hate of mine if that your drop down menu's are have a black background and drop down onto a dark picture, which makes them almost disappear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stealingsilver Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 Hi 4FW  I think your website is really professional and was one of the reason that I went to one of your shows.  2 thoughts for the frontpage  1) Even though your picture reel of your headlines looks cool. I would never wait for it to rotate to all 10 pictures. Maybe just have them listed as text links? 2) Maybe have a list of show dates on your front page too?   Also with your forum maybe make it open to be viewable by visitors? People will never bother signing up just to see if the forum is active.  Keep up the great work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron Posted June 7, 2011 Share Posted June 7, 2011 I think your website is really professional  W3C says it's really not though as I said in my first post.  It's clearly not written by professional developers, as good as it may look. It may be by professional designers though (bless them)  I'd be querying the cross-browser testing that took place and ask why they did not produce a valid website.  Web-monkeys and bloggers can produce great looking sites. They are not professionals though.   The O.P has asked but ignored the answer:  My question is what do you feel makes a website look professional  1. Having a valid site that conforms to standards. Your site is not valid XHTML like it claims to be.    And to make it look like I'm trying to help (because wrestling sites should succeed):  - The twitter logo is out-of-date. The T was 'stolen' by another network, twitter use the the bird - which you would get from twitters site!  - Use a real bookmarking service to get decent analytics - they are valuable!  - Don't write your own links to other networks - that's just plain stupid (no need to be kind here, some fuckers being paid to do a job here, right?)  - Using a real service eliminates the need to update the code. You don't have this luxury - so ensure you keep testing your links because one day they may stop working  - AddThis, ShareThis, SocialTwist... pick and choose one.    This stuff matters. Windows 8 will have "share" built in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Your Fight Site Posted June 7, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted June 7, 2011 I think your website is really professional W3C says it's really not though as I said in my first post. Â It's clearly not written by professional developers, as good as it may look. It may be by professional designers though (bless them) The O.P has asked but ignored the answer: My question is what do you feel makes a website look professional 1. Having a valid site that conforms to standards. Your site is not valid XHTML like it claims to be. You've really got a bee in your bonnet about W3C validation, haven't you? Â W3C validation isn't the be-all and end-all of website development. Just because a website doesn't pass validation in a linter doesn't make it a bad site. Take Facebook for example: both the logged in and logged out home pages failed validation for me, but Facebook will have one of the most cross-browser compliant websites and one of the most gifted website and platform engineering teams out there. Do you think the contrary because the front-end doesn't pass W3C's validation service? Â Although website developers should strive to be compliant with W3C standards since they govern what is HTML, CSS etc. It's not the end of the world if a website chucks up a few errors; web browsers are a lot more forgiven these days for a missing closing HTML tag or whatever. Looking at the 4FW home page's source code, it appears to be a customised Joomla! template that I presume had the W3C links already built in, regardless of whether the template validated or not. (Sorry if I've ruined the magic!) Â A case in point: I use CSS3 selectors and properties in style sheets, which throws up an error in CSS validation because the CSS3 specification isn't yet finalised, so falls back to validating against CSS 2.1. Does this make me unprofessional because my style sheet now doesn't validate? The website isn't going to break in say, Internet Explorer because I've used some -moz- or -webkit-prefixed property. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aosist Posted June 7, 2011 Share Posted June 7, 2011 I guess it can be argued that it's not really professional... but it looks it. At least to your run-of-the-mill internet user who has never heard of W3C. Appearance is everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4FWpromoter Posted June 7, 2011 Author Share Posted June 7, 2011 We are looking in to everything that has been said, we are not professionals, no one is been paid to produce it as me and my Girlfriend have made it without much knowledge like I stated in the original post! Â Â I am currently really busy but will look into everything that has been posted once I get a spare few hours! Â Everything that has been said is very much apreciated and we will try and sort as much out as we can again with not much knowledge of web designing it may take a while but it will help us in the long run to run the most professional site possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhyswynne Posted June 7, 2011 Share Posted June 7, 2011 Completely agree with Khemical's post above. I've made websites in a professional capacity before now, but doubt I've ever made a W3C compliant website. Never stopped them converting into sales or traffic though.  Looking at it from a slightly different perspective here as an SEO'er. Rather than work on what to optimise, one thing that looks REALLY ugly to me is the title tag of www.4FW-online.com. To the layman it doesn't really tell you anything. I'd be tempted to change it (on the home page) to this:-  4FW - 4 Front Wrestling | Professional Wrestling in Bristol & Wiltshire  Something simple. Don't want to go overboard with superlatives or keyword stuff (particularly as it's a Joomla site, and Joomla is a moody bitch of a CMS when it comes to SEO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenhill Promotions Posted June 7, 2011 Share Posted June 7, 2011 We are looking in to everything that has been said, we are not professionals, no one is been paid to produce it as me and my Girlfriend have made it without much knowledge like I stated in the original post!  I am currently really busy but will look into everything that has been posted once I get a spare few hours!  Everything that has been said is very much apreciated and we will try and sort as much out as we can again with not much knowledge of web designing it may take a while but it will help us in the long run to run the most professional site possible. Looks good enough to me mate....but then have you seen mine? It's shit! Haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.