A Site Review Of Gaslamp.org By Jonathan Hilgeman of SiteCreative.com.
Two thumbs up for the front page. It feels JUST right! The black background and the jazz/trumpet player goes hand-in-hand with the idea of a fun night for me, and I’m not even that much into jazz.
Although you can’t really see his feet, the curl of his right pant leg lets me imagine that he’s tapping his foot. A great, readable set of fonts and a wonderful blend of colors and details – clear, concise, and fits the theme perfectly. There aren’t too many sites that get two thumbs up from me, so bravo!
However, as with any site, there’s always room for suggestions, and I can’t really say that these are ones you NEED to take – they are simply ones to try out sometime. First, move the “text only sitemap” link up to the very top. Reduce the size of the letters and move it over the top of “san diego.” Since people interested in text-only are usually going for speed, this keeps them from having to wait longer than necessary to click on that link.
Second suggestion – perhaps add a faint gaslamp in the background towards the top to reinforce the gaslamp idea, since it seems to be part of your logo on the other pages.
Before I move on to the other pages, a final suggestion – you may have a small <p> and <br> mixup of some sort on the front page. The first paragraph ends with “Victorian-style buildings constructed between 1880 and 1910.” There seems to be a wider gap inbetween those last two lines – my suggestion would be to add a <br> right after 1910. That should probably fix it.
Now, your other pages are the problem, in my opinion. As you implied in question 2, they don’t feel like they’re all in the same site. I think the problem is that there’s no shared elements among the different pages. They all look good, but they’re all too different. The sub-pages all have similar navigation and the same logo, but there’s nothing to tie them in to the front page. The front page doesn’t even have that logo (and doesn’t really need it, in my opinion).
Now, this doesn’t mean you have to change everything on the site. I think you could easily tie in the extra pages with minimal amounts of work. Instead of having a light-blue/orange/white/red/etc colored navigation bar, use that top area to tie in to the nightlife theme. Turn that top inch or two into a navigation bar with a black background with text that reflects the theme you have on the front page. You can leave the bottom, content-portion of the page with a white background as long as you have that black, nightlife-theme going at the top.
3. Is there a better way to organize the business or event information we offer on the site, or is this way acceptable?
It looks acceptable to me.
4. Are there any glaring errors in code?
I did a brief skim and didn’t see anything glaring. However, I try to stay away from Flash if possible. It doesn’t look like Flash is anywhere else on your site except for the current navbar, so if you take my navbar-replacement suggestion, you could turn it into HTML and be that much more compatible (some of the older crowd may still be using outdated browsers).
5. What in your opinion would take this web site to the next level?
1. The entry page – including links to all the web pages the site contains
I would recommend against this. While it may be easier for spiders, it might offset the “less is more” sort of teasing theme you have on the front page. If you do add more links, try to minimize the visible effects.
2. The location map – Show the Gaslamp in relation to the greater San Diego area
That would be a good idea. Also, on the same map page, you have a “fun” description of where the GLQ is (Just across Harbor Drive, etc…) – I would separate those out with line breaks if possible.
Other than all that, compliments to the web chef. He or she did a good job.
Jonathan Hilgeman http://www.SiteCreative.com
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