SITE REVIEW: Benjamin Financial

http://www.benjaminfinancial.com

I know a few things are not working yet, but comment away.

The colors are soft and pleasing to the eye, I like that. The header of the site is good and I love the logo to the left of Benjamin Financial. On the main page there is a girl at her laptop with coffee in the background. The image is blurring to white on the right side. I know you were trying to do some kind of cool effect, but for some reason I do not like it. It doesn't even look like its evenly blurring out either (not sure if that was done on purpose). I think it would look better as just a regular picture or with some other kind of effect if you want an effect.

As far as the iframe on the site I do not like it. You already know I hate them to begin with so that was probably expected, but why not just let it take up the remaining page and use the regular scrollbar on the browser? I think this is definetely one spot you can do without a frame or iframe, unless your client made you use it. I would only use them if absolutely necessary, and I think this is one case that is not necessary.

Your services page looks good, and so does your contact page. The only other problem I see is that there really is not much content to this site, but I am sure you are still working on that area, or more will be added later.

very nice and simnple, not a lot of clutter, the message is the message, very good static site

I just added the splash page and flash header. what you think now?

The Splash Page:

This page sets the theme of the site. It is appealing and is easy on the eyes. The only thing that I would change is- The faint, slanted lines inbetween the 'Enhanced version' and the 'standard version' links. You could replace it with the solid, transparent color you have starting off behind the links on the left. [near the 'enter' text]

'Enhanced Version'- Home page:

The flash header- I noticed that when you first enter, the navigation bar, and the bar above the dark grey strip on the background, They enter once the Picture/logo is loaded. Perhaps you just make the flash part only the size of the picture, [the clouds/logo thing] and have the navigation bar and the bar ontop be there already. I also noticed that once it is almost done showing up, it slows down a little bit and gets a bit choppy.
I like the 'shine' effect every once in a while on your flash logo.

Frame and rest of the website
I believe that you could do without the frames as BWM said. The only reason that I can think of why you used them is because it would sortof look funky with two [header] sort of things right below and ontop of eachother. The rest of the website is good. The graphics flow with eachother and they are all related with the topic.


I think you did a great job on the website! I hope my comments help you in some kind of way!
Overall on neatness/ clearity- 9/10

Hay I work for Benjamin Financial! WOW What a small world . I bet I know that Unflux guy!

oh yeah! nice addition, I'm usually opposed to flash as amenu because it lack the ability to be dynamic but this is a nice graphic with alot of impact and makes a huge difference in the feel of the site. Flash without going overboard. VERY nicely done
10 stars dude!

You have a great looking site! Nice graphics, and I kinda agree with the other fella bout the lady with the coffee fading to the right. It might look better without the fade because it starts out as a box. If you didn't have a definite border around the box and the image didn't take any kind of shape, the blending away feature would work good.

More than that, I really dont like how the space is being wasted from top of page to the menu. That takes about 1/3 of the whole page! In my opinion, that is too much space just for the logo, some picture of the sky and the menu. Cut that down some and make it a rule of thumb to have at the most 20% of the page reserved for logo. By doing that, I dont have to use the vertical scroll bar to read about "What Makes Us Different?"... Other than this, everything else is very professional and works well. Good job! I loook forward to any criticizm of my own site as well... (http://www.HealthDevices.net)

-bluechip
http://www.HealthDevices.net

The site looks oke.

Nice layout! Good execution.


IStockPhoto?

clouds? nope...took it myself.

The other images probably came from there, I don't remember I have so many.

I hear ya UNFLUX. I love IStockPhoto. I've pbly spent $75 to $80 there in the last 5 months, or so. The one I was referring to was the lady with the laptop. I'm pretty sure I've got that one in my archive.

I really like your site.

thx

Great site. Only additons I have:
-Pic in Company profile (hands/face) at first reminded me of a medical company,,,looked like an eye operation!--but nice effect. Would it be possible to put a pic of a head office or something.
-I personnally don't like the scroll bars,,find them irratating in a site,,,if I have to scroll I use my mouse or on IE -prefer not to find one in a site.
-I really like the nicely toned down sounds for the rollover.
-nice use of color, simple to navigate.
s

Hi,
Overall really great work, very pro, they should be happy with it.
What I would like to suggest is that you publish your flash files so they test for a specific version of Flash Player, or test for a player at all. I try and do work so that it tests for Flash 6 Player (MX) (in Publish settings)and if it isn't there the code generated by flash kicks up an image that says "get Flash player" with a link or something.
Even Unflux, with "Plugins Disabled" (Mac: Preferences / Web Content / disable Plugins) is reduced to an empty page, other than the frames.
A lot of great, award winning sites don't bother with this. I guess it's a matter of client base.
Otherwise really solid work.
t