Team 263's Website

[mega900997]

Hey people,

It's Summer!
I've made some new additions to our team website such as a drop down menu, a center aligned site, a larger site and more pages. The site is still a work in progress and the forums do not exist for the time being.

www.first263.org

Comment about anything you like or any criticisms please.

[rachelholladay]

My initial thoughts:

Home / Overall Layout / Navbar: I like the styling, it gets your team personality and branding across quickly. Edge but professional, its a nice balance. The rolling photos on the front are of course, always a nice touch. It would be nice to see somewhere on the page the geographic location of your team, I'm having trouble finding that at first glance. Along a similar thought, its nice to have an intro paragraph or something of that nature to introduce viewers to who you are. Pretty solid footer, I like the Copyright Notice (very professional), Sponsor listing (good to give credit where credit is due, although you only show two?) and W3C certification. Also, your favicon is nice. I like the navbar, its very effective, sleek, and visually pleasing. I will note that based on my screen size with the browser at full screen I have to scroll to see each edge of the page.

About Us: I like the idea behind this and the set-up of this section. I can't comment on the content (since its under construction) but if you execute as planned should be very solid.

FIRST: You have the basic description and the FRC logo. I would consider a link to the FIRST homepage a 'must' and more information about FIRST a 'nice to have' but not a requirement.

Sponsors: Solid page, you give the title, the logo and a link. Perhaps think about including a note along the lines of 'If you would like to become a sponsor then blerg do this something or contact someone at this'. It never hurts to ask at every opportunity.

Awards: Its a fairly impressive list. I like that you explained some of the awards that could be unclear to non-FIRSTers, that is very user friendly.

Gallery: At first I was surprised to be directed to a page that did not have the same format as the others. I do like your method for display photographs though. It works very well and is intuitive.

Resources / Blog / Forums / Log In: These four are all in development (or inaccessible to me) so I can't comment too much, but I like the ideas behind them!

Contact Us: Gives the needed stuff, so good. I'm a little surprised (from a privacy or spamming stand-point) that the emails of students are listed, but that's your team's call.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

I like it! A few thoughts:
"About Us" is the only tab with a drop-down menu, and that kinda bugs my OCD senses, so maybe having that be clickable and then from that page have a list of 'programming, electrical, mechanical' or something like that. Also when I mouse over the tab, "PR/Communications" appears, but it's an inch below and I can't click it.
I like the awards explanations, they're good for non-FIRSTers.
An outreach section would be good, to show off what you do to everyone. Also, it's really nice for me (I do a lot of outreach research (outresearch? sorry)) when a team has that listed in an easily accessible place.
"Forums" seems a little ambitious, given that CD is already well established as the FIRST forum, but that's your call. Maybe replacing that with a Q&A or FAQ would be a good idea.
The "Gallery" tab is so different than the rest of them that it's almost a little disorienting. If there's a happy medium between the two designs that would be great.

Great job!

[mega900997]

Originally Posted by TheCascadeKid

Also when I mouse over the tab, "PR/Communications" appears, but it's an inch below and I can't click it.

Sorry about that, you might have been on the site when I was changing a few things around which made the PR/Comms link mess up that way.

Originally Posted by TheCascadeKid

"Forums" seems a little ambitious, given that CD is already well established as the FIRST forum

We're not looking to establish it was the FIRST forum, more along the lines as a way for team members to communicate, share ideas etc.

And yes, I've been trying to make the gallery fit in with the website which is on my list of things to do. I inherited the site from the previous programmer so I've had to make some changes.

[digitxp]

Hey there! Forgive me if I'm a little coarse, I'm a bit rusty with website feedback.

First off, your site is really aesthetically pleasing. Good job on that!

However, there's a couple things that I think would make your site a lot more useful. It's my personal belief that every element on a page must serve a purpose, whether sending a message or giving the user a "next step" to take. So what's the purpose of each part?

1. Logo. The purpose of the logo is pretty clear; it tells you what your website is about. This is a bit nitpicky, but it's conventional to make the logo link back to home. Even though there's a home button right there, users will still instinctively click on the logo to go back.
2. Navigation. This is also pretty clear. I don't think I have anything to add to what's already been said, it's a great navigation system.
3. Header Image. This conveys an emotional message that really characterizes your team to the user. That said, after the home page it grows less effective because it's the same images and takes up a lot of above-the-fold screen space. I would recommend either shrinking or removing the image on pages beside the home page.
4. Background. The background also conveys an emotional message. While what you have right now is definitely better than a plain background, I'm not sure that the mosaic of squares really portrays the feeling of "AfterShock" that I think you're going for. I'd recommend looking into some other patterns you could use for a background.
5. Title. This is probably the most important part of this screenshot. After all, the content is really the meat of the sandwich. To that effect, I think it's a little underappreciated in comparison to other elements on your site. When a user opens the site the first thing they will notice is that nice black and white team photo and not the content he/she was looking for.

Additionally, take a look at this screen:



From this screen, it's difficult to know whether there's more content below or what content it is. Adding a table of contents would help significantly here.

Besides that though, it's a really well-designed website. It's very clear and simple yet shows a lot of effort and detailed thought. Congratulations on creating such a great site, and I can't wait to see it in its final form!