Website Review Required,

A friend has a business that has a website. I was approached to perform a review of the site and , well, I have my opinions, but I told her that I would ask my friends in Trap17 to also do a review to see if the site could be developed differently and perhaps get some new, fresh insight into the existing design/layout.

The site is http://www.coachinsideout.com/.

Kindly have a look and comment on the site, as it exists, with an eye towards improving it. Thanks.

First of all let me start by saying that this website looks very professional and well done. However there are some small UI tweaks that I would suggest to make it look a bit more "shiny".

First, make the look a bit more soft. All those perfectly square edges make the entire website look a little too blocky for my taste. Having rounded corners would make the website look more inviting.

Second, that top banner just doesn't fit in right in my opinion. It just looks out of place where it is. I have a few suggestions to fix this however! First, make it slightly bigger so it takes up the full width of the inner layer. Secondly, round the top corners to look a bit softer. Finally I would suggest to make it look a bit more "shiny" by adding a white, very light, slightly rounded top gradient, and a very light black gradient at the bottom of the bottom of the banner. This will give it more of a 3d look. Here is an example:

However, for the sake of example I exaggerated my image. I did put a bit too much white and black into the banner.

Third, there is a little too much blue for my taste, however I don't think this should be changed. The website has a nice color scheme and I'm sure most don't mind it, I'd try to add a little bit more of a variety of colors in there. What I was actually thinking of is adding a subtle black gradient to the bottom of the dark blue background on every page.
Here is an example:

First impression is it's a nice, clean webpage. My major concern is THE HEAVY USE OF CAPS on most of your homepage text which looks noobish and will put a lot of readers off. A minor quibble is the "reach for the stars" graphic seems a bit too close to the header graphic, cluttering it slightly.
Navigating through the content is very smooth and instant which is a plus - and you dropped the ALL CAPS approach after the homepage.
Actually it's a well laid out website with only a few minor details to pay attention to.

The webpage looks pretty clean and fuss free, but I don't like the header image. It's cliched that everyone relates team building to mountain climbing. Furthermore the combination of the green grass and the (small) rocky mountain don't really go well together, and I'm not sure what that orange thing is. It would be more appropriate to design a header with people instead (maybe people working together, people attending a class or something). That would give more life to the homepage, and complements the nature of the job, which is about dealing with people, not dealing with nature.

I'm not a fan of those caps fonts on the main page too. I also think a more common font such as verdana, tahoma, arial (basically the one on the rest of the pages can be used) should be used, just in case the website viewer doesn't have the font installed in his computer.

"© 2005-2006 Inside Out Coaching & Consulting. All Rights Reserved." Do update the copyright year. Otherwise, it gives people the impression that it's a dead website.

This post has been edited by bishoujo: Oct 10 2008, 03:02 PM

I agree with the other comments, particularly rounding the corners and using less capital letters.

Everything else looks nice. Only suggestion that I can think of would be to make the big banner at the top a link to the home page on all of the pages of the website. It is just something I'm very used to on just about any website. Hope that helps.

That site's layout really isn't bad, but I did not like the orange text. It just kind of hurts my eyes when trying to read it. The black was fine though.

It contains all of the information that would be needed from you though, so I mean from the "informational" point of view I think it's pretty good!

Hi!

The website surely looks like 3, 4 years old, with the graphics and the CSSs used. You (your friend) could try looking at other coaching websites, and see how they arrange their graphics and contents.

Two puctual suggestions (which could be implemented fast):
1. As bishoujo said, the copyright must be updated. On some pages it's 2005, in some is 2005-2006. As a general thought, there should be a common footer for all the pages containing the copyright, so the change of year would be done just in one place. But at least it should be changed for now on all the pages.
2. There is a Testimonials page, accessible from the About Me page. There should be a link for it on the left menu, so people would see it and jump directly to the customer's opinions. There is nothing more important for a business website than showing that their customers are satisfied.

That's about it with my quick thoughts. See ya!

first off.. first thing i thought i went inside the website was "is this a garden solutions website?" i think the header is completely offtopic with the theme of the website.. and some of the graphics such as the stars could be more profesional and slick, rather than looking like a powerpoint presentation..


im not sure what the main audience is intended to be..

but im 17, and if i was googling coaching&consulting and i ended up in that website i would probably hit the "back" button because of the layout.. but then again thats just me, basing my assumptions on previous experiences

I have gone through the site. Really good one but the one thing which lacks is the choice of fonts and the single background colour of the whole table. Please convey this message to your friend and say her to change the background clour of the whole table used in the page. The side pannel and the main body matter containing cell if changed to different contrasting colours would look really attractive and catchy. Otherwise the whole site it good.