Critique our new website please...

[Mudpup]

I've just had my first go at creating a website for the band.
We have used Facebook and Lemonrock for a while but wanted something a bit more like a "brochure" to promote the band. So, i discovered Weebly and had a go last night whilst watching the football with the other eye :-)
Could any of you who have experience with websites have a quick look and throw some suggestions at me for anything i am missing with the design of the site please? I am going to add a media page with some video and audio but the stuff we have available now isn't quite up to scratch in my opinion so needs redoing.
Thanks in advance

Heres the link
http://yellowhouserock.weebly.com

[r16ktx]

Two things stood out for me immediately - decapitated home page photo and the menu button is indistinct. Viewing on 7" tablet.
Also from a personal taste pov I would get rid of most of the about band CV speak and move what's left into a single paragraph on the home page. The contact us links should have the text as 'email', 'facebook', 'web' etc rather than the Uri text.

Edited July 1, 2016 by r16ktx

[joey1234]

Hey nice and simple website, I would say not to use free hosting though (IMO url looks amateur). The site looks clean though, I would possibly suggest linking your videos to the relevant songs in the song lists. So people can click a song and go right to you playing. Also might be worth having some customer reviews (i.e landlords ---Just make them up if needs be). I think the about the band soul have a picture and small bio for each member.

[Mudpup]

hmnnn....i did it on a macbook and the menu looks fine on that. I'll have to check it out on a tablet.
and the decapitated piccy was deliberate - we're very ugly so i thought the lights and knees would show us at our best :-)

[Mudpup]

[quote name='joey1234' timestamp='1467385897' post='3083349']
Hey nice and simple website, I would say not to use free hosting though (IMO url looks amateur). The site looks clean though, I would possibly suggest linking your videos to the relevant songs in the song lists. So people can click a song and go right to you playing. Also might be worth having some customer reviews (i.e landlords ---Just make them up if needs be). I think the about the band soul have a picture and small bio for each member.
[/quote]

Yeah i know what you mean about the url - we'll look into proper hosting. Linking the video is a great idea - i wouldn't have thought of that.

[r16ktx]

[quote name='Mudpup' timestamp='1467385934' post='3083350']
hmnnn....i did it on a macbook and the menu looks fine on that. I'll have to check it out on a tablet.
and the decapitated piccy was deliberate - we're very ugly so i thought the lights and knees would show us at our best :-)
[/quote]

As long as the lights are bright enough and behind you then you'll probably get away with it :-)

I'll second the points made by joey1234 too (and I edited my first post with some more input..)

Hopefully you'll get enough basschatters to get good coverage of likely devices, really could to with the Yamaha NS10 of browser/device combos for this sort of thing!

[Mudpup]

[quote name='r16ktx' timestamp='1467385723' post='3083344']
Two things stood out for me immediately - decapitated home page photo and the menu button is indistinct. Viewing on 7" tablet.
Also from a personal taste pov I would get rid of most of the about band CV speak and move what's left into a single paragraph on the home page. The contact us links should have the text as 'email', 'facebook', 'web' etc rather than the Uri text.
[/quote]

The text 'about the band' is to give any potential bookers a better idea of what we can offer them thats different to other bands on the circuit. I didn't want to clutter the front page ideally. And yes, good point about the link titles, cheers :-)

[joey1234]

Go daddy do some good hosting options for first timers, you generally have to pay for the year upfront, but then the following years are like double triple the original price. I actually know a web designer who does an all in one package for hosting/design. I can give you his details if you like.

[Mudpup]

[quote name='joey1234' timestamp='1467387165' post='3083372']
Go daddy do some good hosting options for first timers, you generally have to pay for the year upfront, but then the following years are like double triple the original price. I actually know a web designer who does an all in one package for hosting/design. I can give you his details if you like.
[/quote]

Cheers for the offer joey - we have a dep guitar who does that sort of thing so we'll probably use him

[Stylon Pilson]

Haven't looked at other peoples' feedback, because that way you can be sure that my opinions are my own!

Firstly, that font is an abomination. Maybe it's just rendering weird on my machine, but it's not enjoyable to read. The thick diagonals on the lowercase 'a' and 's' leave it feeling really unbalanced.

Apart from the front page and the gallery, there's apparently no images on any of the pages. You need something, even if it's just a band logo. Also, the image on the front page looks like it's poor resolution and has been scaled up. Try to get something a bit crisper.

You could use typography to liven things up a bit - for example, on your "About" page, put your band name in bold. On the "songs" page, put the band names in italics.

"Contact us" page is just a bunch of links. Again, spruce it up with icons and such like.

When I shrunk my window so that the popup menu appeared, it didn't work properly. When I click on it, I can see that something appears, but only the top half of "HOME" is visible.

S.P.

[ColinB]

Web sites are very personal otherwise they'd all end up the same....... but that font stops me reading it. It's awful. It's off-putting. It makes me click away.

[M@23]

The banner photo on the homepage; even if you are ugly - it looks wrong. Also, this bit:
"..............one helluva rock covers band - playing live all over the South East of England"

I'm being fussy, but, an ellipsis only needs three dots. I would use a capital O for 'one' too; as it seems like the start of a sentence. But, that could be argued against.

The site is nice and clean and easy to navigate. I just think the homepage could look sharper.

Edited July 1, 2016 by M@23

[paul_5]

I like it - not too much scrolling on any of the pages (apart from the songs, obviously) - the media page is empty, but I gather that the is a work in progress, so not too worried about that.

The font issues that some BCers have mentioned aren't happening on my machine (late 2011 Macbook Pro running 10.8.5 using Safari 6.2.8). the spacing between the text is easy on the eye too.

7/12 of the pictures in your gallery are of your lead singist - do you not have any other photos of other band members?

[HowieBass]

I don't like the font at all and the apostrophe pedant in me wants you to get rid of 80's, 90's and 00's and instead use 80s, 90s and 00s - though with your font the weird zeroes would look odd against the 's' or perhaps you can use 'eighties, nineties and the noughties' instead. The Gallery page has a rogue leading underscore that shouldn't be there. Be consistent with capitalisation for headers on the individual pages ('ABOUT THE BAND' vs 'Gallery'). There's nothing appearing in the Media section for me. This is all viewed using Firefox on a Windows 10 laptop.

[Mykesbass]

[quote name='HowieBass' timestamp='1467399717' post='3083504']
I don't like the font at all and the apostrophe pedant in me wants you to get rid of 80's, 90's and 00's and instead use 80s, 90s and 00s -
[/quote]

80s v 80's is really a question of style these days, and it could be argued that as it is the music of the 80's it is possessive so must have an apostrophe.

What worries me more is
[quote[color=#515151][font=Actor][size=5]The songs are chosen to be a little different from most rock bands you will see on the circuit[/size][/font][/color]][/quote] and then you list Sex on Fire and Summer of 69.

I know writing about your own band is very difficult, but I really do think this needs a re-write.

Now for the good bits - nice and clean layout, easily navigated, the decapitation didn't bother me, neither did the font choice.

[dmccombe7]

Looks good to me. Easy to follow, god quality pics and quite an amazing set list i have to admit.
Well done.

Dave

[blue]

I haven't read all the posts. Not a bad site. My suggestion, the second thing people should see on your home page is the time, date and place of your next gig.

Blue

[paul_5]

[quote name='dmccombe7' timestamp='1467400929' post='3083517']
...god quality pics...
[/quote]

I wouldn't go that far…

[Mudpup]

All useful and valid, thanks v much

the font - i think that may be an incompatibility perhaps or personal dislike, looks perfect on my macbook, hudl and iPhone (although the tabs appear as a washed out drop down box on the smaller devices - i'll have to fix that somehow) and the band guys like it

images - we wanted a very clean looking site, theres images all over our Facebook and lemon rock stuff. Happy with them on the gallery page really, everything in one place if people want to see what we look like. The home page banner is upscaled and a bit fuzzy, agreed.

Did the typography thing - good spot, it looks better now ta

Icons on contact page - again i agree but haven't figured out how to do it yet (but it is my first ever attempt at anything like this so go easy on me :-)

our ellipsis is now reduced to just 3 dots too - i got carried away with those

too many pics of geetardist/singer - we all look like mongs most of the time on stage, he tends to photo up better

80's 90's against 80s 90s - yup, dictated by the font unfortunately, probably going to stick with that. Sorted out the capitalisation though, good spot and thanks... and media tab is work in progress - gonna delete it until we are ready to load it on

songs chosen to be different and then listing sex on fire and summer of 69 - we offset that by stating that there are some classics in there. And those particular ones are part of a whole different post - my view is if they wanna hear them, we'll play them. We're paid to get people singing and dancing and rebooks come from playing what people want to hear. They're actually not in the set list most of the time, just there if we need them - we have plenty of others that do the same job.

Blue - good idea to put the next gig on the front page. We always have it as a pinned post on our Facebook but it wouldn't hurt on the site as well.

All good and constructive stuff guys, thanks for your time and efforts :-)

Edited July 1, 2016 by Mudpup

[wateroftyne]

Your homepage needn't be cluttered, but for the sake of you, your visitors and Google, it needs:

- Who you are
- What you do
- Where you're based
- Are you any good? (a nice, big quote from someone)
- Details of the next gig or two
- A decent photo

You should be able to say all this in not many words.

[TimR]

In the about section you use 'they' and 'we'. You can also alter "around the m25, <list of counties> " to "London and the South East but are willing to travel further."

and like WOT - keep it simple ditch the about page and stick the info on the front page.

You should have a link to Twitter and Facebook on the front page.

Edited July 2, 2016 by TimR

[gary mac]

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1467402405' post='3083528']
I haven't read all the posts. Not a bad site. My suggestion, the second thing people should see on your home page is the time, date and place of your next gig.

Blue
[/quote]

Agree with Blue, I suggested the same for our home page, when the band website was being put together. So, the band went with my suggestion, which was great but then it very rarely got updated, definitely not so great. I've since argued, that if it's not regularly updated, then it should be removed.

[TimR]

[quote name='gary mac' timestamp='1467450878' post='3083738']


Agree with Blue, I suggested the same for our home page, when the band website was being put together. So, the band went with my suggestion, which was great but then it very rarely got updated, definitely not so great. I've since argued, that if it's not regularly updated, then it should be removed.
[/quote]

Yes. There are widgets you can get that will pull the information directly from Facebook. You just have to update your events on Facebook and it'll automatically list your upcoming events.

Edited July 2, 2016 by TimR

[gary mac]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1467462153' post='3083845']
Yes. There are widgets you can get that will pull the information directly from Facebook. You just have to update your events on Facebook and it'll automatically list your upcoming events.
[/quote]

Tim, although I love playing with the band, I now mostly keep out of the PR/management and suggestion side of things and just play the bass

[TimR]

[quote name='gary mac' timestamp='1467462432' post='3083849']


Tim, although I love playing with the band, I now mostly keep out of the PR/management and suggestion side of things and just play the bass
[/quote]

It's usually the best way. It can be a thankless task. I'm trying to adapt our running club website and bring it into the 21st century - there's a lot of inertia.