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www.ExtremeSki.org

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Hey guys,
I've been adding and adding to my Extreme Ski and Slopestyle website, www.ExtremeSki.org. Please take a look at it and let me know what you'd add to make it better. I am trying to make this one of the best Skiing websites ever. Please also upload your ski videos to YouTube and let us know that they are there and we will make you a "Featured Rider". This offer is free for a limited time and can help you to get sponsored! Thanks,
Abe
extremeski@extremeski.org
http://www.extremeski.org
ski holidays
 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
ok - i will start the ball rolling with feedback

I am looking at work on a 4:3 monitor and a 1024x768 resolution....not an uncommon setup ...and the site does not fit the screen. it is wider. looks like its set for stupid widescreen (sorry widescreen is my pet hate). can you optimise it for different resolutions. its very annoying having to scroll left and right !
ski holidays
 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
i'll keep the ball rolling!

It takes ages to load. Looks terrible. Hard to read. Confused layout.

it is a "long" way off being the "Best Skiing website EVER"!
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 You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
doesnt take ages to load here and I am on crappy NHS internet ?

also -the video of Juliet cannot be viewed in the UK as some of the content is blocked

the videos of the kids are awesome - what cool dudes ! I have a 7 yr old and 4 yr old and they are no where near as good as this but they are still pretty good for UK kids. i guess living near a ski resort is the answer !
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Giving it a quick look it seems like your site is all based on trick skiing and man-made obstacles rather than real raw mountain skiing so I'm not interested.
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 You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
Extremeski.org...... Hmmm this says to me before i open the site, that im likely to see the nutters skiing the stuff i could only dream of, ie Heliskiing in alaska or the crazy off piste in chamonix.....

What i actually see when i open the page is kids doing tricks on poles, kickers, etc..... maybe change the name of the webpage OR update the site with decent extreme skiing..... sorry for the criticism but you did ask.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
backhojo wrote:
doesnt take ages to load here and I am on crappy NHS internet ?


could be because i'm on a mac using Safari... is that my fault or the web designers?
ski holidays
 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
unfortunately IE rules the world
I have an ipad and many sites dont work to their full potential on safari and I have to go and turn the PC on...dont get me started on the topic of FLASH !
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 You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
Few things:

- Black background terrible - Assuming this is to feed into the "aggressive"/ extreme/ hardcore element the website is trying to depict. In truth it really just makes it tiring on the eyes reading the white text all the time.

- colour scheme and formatting looks very horror-like - I'm expecting animations and audio of zombies to start stomping across the screen any second!

- big nasty white blocks of text (worse agaist the black)

- Maybe just me, but the site doesn't come across as being appealing to both male and female and seems to just target a very masculine audience. I enjoy watching extreme sports and visiting respective websites as much as any guy however I would click on this site and find little that appeals to me. You can make a site look dynamic, extreme and adventurous without alienating a female viewer of the site.

- Terrible terrible layout. So so much stuff is on there which comes from sticking mostly everything on the front page. Then having all your links which simply drag you miles down to the bottom of a page just makes for a very disorganised looking site! I am able to scroll down to the bottom of a page to view something myself and don't particularly need to navigate via a link to take me down the page. Personally I think that you are better off having your different sections on different pages, not all on the homepage. Keep it simple.

- Having an introduction, next to a massive skinny column 'jargon' list? next to pros etc etc makes no sense thus feeding into why having everything shoved on one page never looks good.

- stacks and stack of youtube videos all just put next to each other (i.e pro's tips section) is really hard to find what you may be looking for. Would be better having a list or library of topics or tips from various sponsored riders and link this into a database which then brings up the videos available for each section.

I feel positive criticism is helpful to improve things so I do hope you dont take offence to anything I have said but see the points I have made. If you have done all this by yourself then credit where credit is due. At the mo it just doesn't look particularly professional, polished or user friendly. How was the site made?
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 Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Quote:

I am looking at work on a 4:3 monitor and a 1024x768 resolution

bazbol06,

you have your screen width fixed at 1199 maybe an idea to go to an internet standard or have it un fixed so it will always fill the correct width of screen it is shown on.

Quote:

unfortunately IE rules the world


mmm they are suffering these days, I find that I am running at approx 35% firefox and 10% Chrome so only about 50% IE on hits to our site, I awlays use firefox now as its much faster than IE
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
you know whats really funny - just realised I am using firefox and not IE !!! LOL
we use IE6 at work as there are some issue with an NHS application if we go to 7 or 8. its useless for most modern websites so I only use it for work stuff and installed firefox for stuff like this !

I agree with the comments about layout. structure is the key. layers of sensibly indexed and labelled pages is better than overloading the home page. I design websites and this is principle i use - my sites are very simple but suit the client base i have -usually GP surgeries who just need an online version of their practice leaflet. very static. no major upgrades. jsut little tweeks now and again....BUT fundamentally important is ease of use bearing in mind many users are "silver surfers"
home page ideally fits on one screen with no scrolling. all other pages are linked from there and I use as very clear "organisational tree" approach to designing the structure so its not confusing

I think this site coudl be good - just needs objective comments from people on here and then a look at the structure.

i dont mind the black background

have a look at some of my examples here http://www.jcwebcreations.co.uk/52334.html
I am not touting for business as I really dont want the work at the moment - just offering my take on clarity and layout. you may think they are rubbish - its a very personal thing - but i have had lots of good feedback and even featured in a trade magazine when i wrote and article on how to build your own website. got a good review from an independent reviewer as well
I struggle with difficult techie things like flash, PHP etc but make up for it with a logic layout - i approach things from a user point of view rather than geeky point of view and it seems to work
happy to take critism by the way - although a little off topic as nothing to do with skiing
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
backhojo, You seem to have your head screwed on Smile I Think the only way to approach websites is for them to be from a user point of view otherwise what's the point! I like your sites, they seem to do what you want them to! I doubt people will think you are touting for business. Nice Smile

My OH is a web developer and I have created a few things myself so have picked up a lot of knowledge from him over the last few years so I hope I have a good appreciation of what works and what doesn't!

I think one of the key things r.e my comments on the colour and styling is that it doesn't feel like a ski-related website which surely is the fundamental aim before yu even start tackling anything else.
ski holidays
 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
FiFi_Trixibell, Very Happy
thanks for your nice comments
it started out as a site for my amatuer dramatics group and a way to save money for my day job (I am a practice manager at a GP surgery) and snowballed (gets snowheads relevant link into post) as more practices asked me to do their sites for them.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Lol, all that freestyle jazz is well extreme...
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
FiFi_Trixibell wrote:

I think one of the key things r.e my comments on the colour and styling is that it doesn't feel like a ski-related website which surely is the fundamental aim before yu even start tackling anything else.


Snowheads does alright and, even leaving alone the kind of pre 2004 forum look it is a pretty dreadful piece of design. Snowheads maybe does well "because" of the cranky designed for Netscape 4.0 style user interface but it certainly proves that for anything social the right community is the key element.
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Quote:

Giving it a quick look it seems like your site is all based on trick skiing and man-made obstacles rather than real raw mountain skiing so I'm not interested


+1

..and some of the background music is terrible. Real basic lowest-common-denominator let's offend the parents by swearing as much as possible stuff

Some of the park videos ARE amazing, it's just that no-one over the age of 14 aspires to ski like that
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
User interface design for applications and websites is a part of the projects I do (system design and build). Although the UI design is done by others, I'm very involved in that process so have a good view of what works and what doesn't. With my quasi-qualifications to comment out of the way, here goes:

* Browser usage: current stats show IE sitting between 30% to 40% of total browser usage worldwide (that figure changes a little depending on the source), so you should seriously consider CSS for Firefox, Chrome and Safari (for the iPhone users out there). Take a look at: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp to see some stats on browsers and operating systems

* Content and structure: the content has potential and will appeal to a rapidly growing audience of freestyle skiers. You are using a three-column layout where all three columns contain content of the same hierarchy. Better, in this case, to use a two-column layout where the main column is wider and contains the most important content for that page and the secondary column contains highlights of other content or related links. That secondary column does not need to be filled to the bottom of the page. Separate the content into different pages/sections.

* Site width: your site width is fixed and not great for people using smaller monitors with standard screen res, never mind those on smart phones. Considering the content (freestyle skiing), your target audience is going to be teens to 20s, all prolific users of mobile devices, who are going to find using the site frustrating if not nigh on impossible. Design for your audience's habits and devices.

* Screen real estate: your header file (image, logo and main menu) takes up 50% of the screen. It's screaming its presence and taking up valuable space for content people want to see/need to get to. I'd recommend shrinking it right down so that it's no more than 150 pixels in height.

* Main menu/navigation: the home link should be first, not last. That is, intuitively, where users look for it. I couldn't find it at first. The forum should load in the same browser window and include a link back to the home page of the site.

* Case: using all caps makes it harder to read text (you're using it in the main menu, an important part of the site). Research shows that sentence case is the easiest to scan and read. Sentence case means only the first letter of the first word is capitalised. Of course that doesn't apply to two-word proper nouns like someone's name and surname. The ISO-9241 part 17 standard seems to recommend that the first letter of the word only is capitalised. "Initial upper-case (capital) letter for field labels: To facilitate readability, the text field labels begin with an upper-case letter. The rest of the label should contain lower case (small) letters except for cases where the label is a logo, an acronym or language convention that requires each word in the label to begin with a capital letter." Here's another reference: http://thewritingbase.com/use-sentence-case-instead-of-title-case

* Contrast: there's not enough contrast between the black background and the images you use for headings, making them difficult to read. White text on a black background is difficult to read, especially when someone is using a really high screen res where the text will appear smaller.

* Style of headings: the style of your headings (broken text, 3D effect with inner shadow and outer glow), makes them difficult to read. They're also quite large and float around on the page with some being centre-aligned, with another row below in the same size spread across the page. Try to establish an hierarchy so that your main page title (H1) is larger than the sub-titles (H2) and so on. That way, your users can quickly recognise a main title from a sub-title.

* Home page: almost all of the site content is on the home page. I'd recommend using the home page as a highlights page, consisting of no more than 6 - 8 components e.g. the latest video (as a thumbnail); a component showing the top 4 tips; the latest rider bio (as a thumbnail and name); a component showing the latest event; a component of about 4 latest news headlines, etc. Clicking on these highlights should redirect users to a new page containing more of that same content. Something like the image below (sorry, couldn't help myself!)

Click the thumbnail to see a larger version.
ski holidays
 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Jeees pretty turgid, sorry, but most of the comments above are apt!

Want a nice design see http://www.anotherharddayattheoffice.co.uk/

And the ski blog starting next week http://www.anotherharddayattheoffice.co.uk/2011.html

And the South Coast Weather Site http://www.anotherharddayattheoffice.co.uk/weathercam.html

Any Snowheads that might want a site (full MODx CMS*) then sites like the above I'll do for £500.

This is a site for MOJO's in Serre Chevalier currently being done, another week or so should be there.

http://www.mojoserrechevalier.com/

*CMS enables you to update the site with text and pictures yourself!
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 You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
Hey guys. I'm an amateur web designer so I CERTAINLY enjoy reading your comments. Thanks for the design thoughts and please keep them Colby as I will incorporate all that I can to better my website.

Abe
Www.extremeski.org
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
bazbol06 wrote:
Hey guys. I'm an amateur web designer so I CERTAINLY enjoy reading your comments. Thanks for the design thoughts and please keep them Colby as I will incorporate all that I can to better my website.

Abe
Www.extremeski.org


you have had a pretty hard time on here - lots of comments. good on ya for taking them so well ! good luck with th esite
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 You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
Nah, not a bad time at all. I think most of the comments are good and I like the fact that there are productive points, not just a bunch of BS critisism. I like the feedback and will continue to grow the site. Thx to all and let me know if there are any other thoughts out there. Abe...

www.ExtremeSki.org
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Hey guys, took into account many of your suggestions, are there any more out there? Let me know what I can do to better my website. Check it at www.ExtremeSki.org. Thanks,

Abe snowHeadwww.extremeski.org
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