SITE REVIEW: www.advert-n-mark.com

Hi there,

Please review this website http://www.advert-n-mark.com in terms of layout, usability, aesthetic, typograph, animation, programming, and etc...

Thanks in Advanced.

Cheers
Kassim

Hi Kassim,
The loading time is fast,creative and nice design,also graceful music.
But I just lost myself when visit the site, do not know how to use it? or what's the site for?

Thanks.

your Site's working now, the site looks good
I like the site - the colours, the layout etc
Getting a nice logo, keeping the homepage clean and clear

Kassim,
Nice design. Really clean with good use of colors. Its a little hard to remember the nav is at the bottom not really used to that but as an ad agency you get certain passes most companies don't get when it comes to web design. I think creative institutions and companies should be different. I do have one usability issue on the portfolio archive page, i dont like the fact that I have to roll over something to figure out what it is. Can you put the name in the slots on the USB drives? Either that or just use the left nave and dont have the drives at all.

The portfolio presentation is nice though. I like the site a lot and i normally am not a huge fan of flash (I feel like a lot of designers tend to abuse it and go over the top). Good Job.

Quite a nice design in terms of simplicity and use of colours. I find navigating the site a problem on a 21" screen because the nav is all the way at the bottom.

To me, you have all the content on the left which is fine but I see no good use of all the rest of space except the bg effects and that's not good enough.

In terms of your portfolio, a little too much effort to browse your work. I have to click, drag, drop everytime to see 1 piece of work. The fact there's no thumbnails doesn't encourage me to continue browsing. It's a great idea but from a usability standpoint, it's too demanding of the user.

The other thing is when I go to a page, there's a 5sec delay before the content on the page loads. This often leaves me wondering...

It's a nice design, just needs a few fixes in my opinion.

Oh and one other thing, the domain name should be easier. I know it doesn't tie into design but it ties into ease of use. It's not easy to type or remember, for me at least. Google.com, Apple.com are all easy domains. Yours could have been advertnmark.com or even advertmark.com.

Overall I think the color choices, general style and layout are great. However, I have some huge issues that could be easily solved via some tweaks.

I agree with CXLink that ad agencies sometimes get a pass even though they probably shouldn't (An agencies' target audience is usually other business and not creatives who might be willing to experiment a lot).

Ok onto the actual review.

1. I really hate having to deal with a splash page. I really feel that they are pointless since you should be able to tell everyone enough about the company with the actual home page. Also statistics say that you lose 1/3 of your audience per click so a splash page automatically eliminates a huge chunk of potential business.

2. Your animations take way way too long. 1/2 second would be more than enough. On the home page I had to wait quite a while before I could read any content after it animated in. Also on each page where the white bar animates out from the side waits just long enough that I'm trying to engage with the content in the colored field when it slides to the right. Don't wait to animate things long enough that a person's brain is trying to make sense of the content before it starts moving.

3. I want to commend you for making a really good use of the html behind the Flash for your alternate content. Most people completely forget that stuff. However, I don't really understand why you needed to make a full Flash site. You don't transition between sections and there's really very little "page" level animation in fact nothing that couldn't have been accomplished with jQuery/Mootools/etc. Don't take this the wrong way. I love Flash and I even teach it, but I don't see how you really get any benefit from its use.

4. If you are going to use Flash, I would highly suggest you look into a deep linking solution and a way to implement the browser back button. These two things will make your site much more user friendly.

5. Personally I feel that an agency website (especially one that does web/interactive projects) needs to be very conscious of how they present their own site to potential clients. The sites must be both beautiful/engaging and present a very good user experience. This site does a pretty good job with the first part, but the second leaves something to be desired. Honestly, if I wasn't planning to write a review I probably wouldn't have stuck around long enough to even find out if the company is any good at what they do.

Personally, I think kassimwithu is only here to spam their site considering the bulk of their posts have already been removed. That being said, I'm a fan of flash but the navigation is about near impossible to figure out as a blue jay from a blue bird unless you know what you're looking for. I predict failure for the site and kassimwithu at OZZU in general.

Thank you so much for people who posted their honest quote,

I have updated the website http://www.advert-n-mark.com based on your comments.

Please leave some comments if you want to...

Cheers
Kassim[/quote]